Does Trump’s anti-Christian bias executive order favor one religion? What experts say

President Trump announced plans to rid the U.S. of “anti-Christian bias” and establish a White House Faith Office. Screengrab from The White House's Facebook video.

Originally published April 29, 2025 for the Miami Herald

President Donald Trump’s executive order promising to “end the anti-Christian weaponization of government” raised questions for some about what it means for the First Amendment right of religious freedom.

The order, issued Thursday, Feb. 6, puts in place a task force — led by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi — to investigate policies that the administration said target Christians. The next day, Trump signed another order establishing a White House Faith Office to “protect religious liberty.”

In the first few weeks of his second term, Trump and his administration’s polices have prompted legal challenges, and some have called into question if the administration’s actions are on par with the rule of law. For some Americans, some new executive orders amplify tensions over the constitutional separation of church and state.

“The government’s job is to protect everyone’s rights, not give special treatment to one religion. Will this office defend non-Christians and the nonreligious, or just push a Christian nationalist agenda?” The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a nonprofit working for the separation of church and state, said in a Feb. 7 statement on X, formerly known as Twitter.

What do experts say?

Rick Garnett, director of Notre Dame’s program on Church, State & Society, told McClatchy News he thinks the executive order to eradicate anti-Christian bias is “appropriate” as a response to reports of the FBI targeting some conservative Catholic groups.

The order cites a retracted 2023 FBI memorandum that suggested infiltrating Catholic churches as “threat mitigation,” among other examples of what the Trump administration sees as anti-Christian bias.

“It is not unconstitutional for an agency or administration to identify a particular problem, and to respond to that particular problem. For example, it was common, after 9/11, for agencies to take particular steps to safeguard against anti-Muslim bias,” Garnett said in an email.

Caroline Corbin, professor at the University of Miami School of Law, agreed that narrowing in on one religion is not necessarily considered favoring one over another. However, she said bigger context surrounding this executive order makes it a little more complex.

“Christians are not, in fact, discriminated against and persecuted in the United States,” Corbin told McClatchy News. “So there doesn’t really seem to be a need to focus on discrimination against Christians.”

As this directive is set forth, other actions targeting groups for erasure are also happening, Corbin said, adding that she thinks the Trump administration wants to deny discrimination against non-Christian groups.

The Trump administration has signed executive orders restricting transgender rights and ending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in the federal workforce.

Corbin said the preference for Christianity seen in this context does raise constitutional problems about favoring one religion over another.

Charles Haynes, founder of the Freedom Forum’s Religious Freedom Center, told McClatchy News that it seems like a range of issues surrounding abortion, LGBTQ rights and religious liberty are seen by the Trump administration as anti-Christian bias.

“It’s little ironic to think that the people who are in the majority — and many places in the country, many states who have great political power — are claiming to be under attack, but from their perspective, the government went off the rails ... and disfavored them because they don’t like their views on the social issues,” Haynes said.

He said that in choosing to focus on anti-Christian bias rather than another religion or non-religion, Trump is fulfilling his campaign promises to a constituency made up of mostly conservative Christians.

Haynes said that while he thinks it’s clear Trump is favoring one religion over another, it doesn’t go as far as to become unconstitutional.

“It would have to be more — have to be government action that somehow favors conservative Christian groups over other religious groups,” Haynes said. “This could be seen more as an effort to fight a societal problem, so the government can do that.”

What do some evangelical Christians think?

According to data from the Survey Center on American Life, a growing number of white evangelical Christians do think Christianity is under attack.

In 2009, a majority of white evangelicals disagreed that evangelical Christians faced a lot of discrimination in the U.S. In 2023, however, the numbers flipped, and this notion became generally accepted, with 60% of white evangelicals believing evangelical Christians are regularly discriminated against.

“Anti-Christian bias is very real in the U.S. Hostility towards Bible believing followers of Jesus is growing,” Jack Graham, pastor at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Texas, said in a Feb. 7 statement on X. “I am grateful for President Trumps order for protection under the law.”

Controversial ‘Hell has open borders’ sign isn’t about US immigration, IL church says

An Illinois church posted an electronic sign with what appeared to be an immigration-related message, upsetting several community members. Screengrab from New Hope Community Church's Facebook video

Originally published February 12, 2025 for the Miami Herald

An electronic sign with a controversial immigration-related message lit up outside of a church in Illinois, but according to the church’s pastor, the sign was not about U.S. immigration policy.

“Heaven has strict immigration laws. Hell has open borders,” flashed the sign outside of New Hope Community Church in Palatine, drawing backlash from several community members who took the sign as politically charged commentary against immigration.

“Part of why we moved to Palatine was the diversity — being able to show our kids that,” Katharine Huddleston told WLS-TV. “Seeing something like this is really upsetting.”

The message — which was displayed on the sign for about six days, according to Pastor James Pittman — comes amid new immigration guidelines from President Donald Trump’s administration, including one directive that allows immigration officials to enforce laws in places of worship and other previously considered “sensitive” locations.

Twenty-seven religious groups filed a lawsuit Feb. 11 challenging the recent policy change, McClatchy News reported.

For the church, however, the sign was meant to give community members an opportunity to examine their relationship with God, not an attack on immigrants, Pittman said in a Feb. 11 YouTube video addressing the controversy.

In the video, Pittman pointed to Bible verses in the book of Matthew that reference a “narrow gate” to heaven.

“We often times take issues of the day and put it up on our sign pointing people to the righteousness of God and who he is,” Pittman said in the video.

Later in the video, Pittman stated that the church is “against illegal immigration” as it teaches that Christians are to “obey the laws of the land,” but he emphasized that the church’s sign was not about that.

Still, many thought the message was in poor taste and did not receive the pastor’s justification well.

His church sign is not only insensitive but also perpetuates harmful stereotypes. It’s a thinly veiled attempt to stoke fears and push a divisive agenda, masquerading as a message of faith,” one person commented on Facebook.

Some residents made plans to place signs of encouragement around the church, WLS-TV reported.

According to a recently released Lifeway Research poll, a majority of evangelical Christians said they believe the U.S. has a moral responsibility to accept refugees and to help immigrants who are undocumented, McClatchy News reported.

Palatine is about a 30-mile drive northwest from Chicago — a city that has received some of the most migrants in recent years, with about 40,000 people since 2022, according to the latest data from the Migration Policy Institute.

Teacher suspended over crucifix that hung by desk for 10 years, Connecticut suit says

A crucifix, approximately 12-inches tall hangs on a wall adjacent to Castro’s desk, along with children’s art and a calendar. According to a lawsuit, Castro was asked to move the crucifix to a spot underneath her desk by school officials. First Liberty Institute

Originally published February 7, 2025 for the Miami Herald

A Connecticut teacher is being reprimanded by school officials for refusing to take down a crucifix, which she said has brought her “peace and strength” over the last decade she’s had it displayed in her classroom, according to a lawsuit.

The complaint — filed Jan. 30 by Marisol Arroyo-Castro, who’s been an educator for 32 years and currently teaches seventh grade at DiLoreto Elementary & Middle School — accuses administrators at the Consolidated School District of New Britain of violating her rights to “free speech and religious free exercise.”

According to Castro’s attorneys, school officials have and “continue to punish (her) for engaging in private, non-coercive expression — specifically, hanging a crucifix among other personal items on the wall next to her desk — solely because her expression is religious and takes place on school property.”

In December, school officials asked Castro to move the approximately 12-inch crucifix after receiving complaints from parents and students about the culture of her classroom — including some students who said the crucifix and religious language Castro uses makes them feel uncomfortable, a spokesperson for the school district told McClatchy News.

“Every decision by the Consolidated School District of New Britain has been made in accordance with the law and in collaboration with our legal counsel,” Superintendent Tony Gasper said in a statement shared with McClatchy News. “This teacher has been offered various options to resolve this matter, all of which she has declined, therefore we look forward to resolving this matter in the court of law.”

The Connecticut case is the latest in a string of federal cases highlighting the ongoing debate of what it means to practice personal freedoms while retaining constitutional separation of church and state.

In the 2022 case Carson v. Makin, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states can not choose to subsidize some private schools and not others based on religion. That same year, in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Supreme Court ruled that a coach’s discipline for praying with students breached his First Amendment rights to free exercise and speech.

Crucifix controversy

For Castro, the crucifix is “part of her personal and religious identity,” and occasionally, she will stay at her desk during her lunch break to look at it and pray, according to the complaint.

Although other teachers at the school have personal items referencing religion on display — including a coffee mug with a biblical reference, a photo of the Virgin Mary and a Santa Claus — Castro is the only one who was asked to move hers, attorneys said.

According to administration notes shared with McClatchy News, Castro was called in to discuss removing the crucifix Dec. 6 after students had previously complained about it and other religious language she used in her classroom. She was instructed to take down the cross by the next Monday.

When school officials saw she had not complied, she was called into another meeting Dec. 10, when she agreed to move the crucifix to the underside of her desk, according to the notes.

But by moving the crucifix under her desk, as instructed, Castro became emotional, feeling as if it was “an affront to her faith,” attorneys said. The teacher then changed her mind and put it back in the original spot. After telling school officials of her decision to keep it up, she received a formal letter of reprimand asking her to move the crucifix and to “remain neutral when speaking of religion,” according to the Dec. 11 letter shared with McClatchy News.

“When a public school employee hangs a religious artifact in their classroom, it sends the message that the school district (which is an arm of the government) is promoting that religion, so putting that religious artifact on the wall of the school building is not legally permissible,” school officials said in the letter.

After still refusing to move the crucifix, Castro was placed on unpaid suspension for two days starting Dec. 12.

Then, Castro emailed school officials saying she could not return to school “in good conscience” if she was required to “hide” the crucifix, attorneys said.

“The crucifix that I hang by my desk does not violate the Establishment Clause. In fact, it is protected by my free exercise and free speech rights,” Castro wrote in the Dec. 16 email.

On that day, Castro was placed on paid administrative leave, according to a letter shared with McClatchy News. “The cross issue and student and teacher complaint are the reason she was put on paid administrative leave,” the district spokesperson told McClatchy News in a Feb. 5 email.

However, Castro’s attorneys told McClatchy News in a Feb. 6 statement that the school district did not bring up other accusations aside from the refusal to take down the crucifix until after she spoke up about her rights.

“We are disappointed that the district is trying to distract from their unconstitutional religious discrimination by smearing this veteran teacher,” Keisha Toni Russell, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute said in the email. “The bottom line is that school officials put Marisol on paid leave because she refused their directive to take down her crucifix.”

The complaint asks for equitable relief from suspending, assigning or disciplining Castro for hanging the crucifix, for her to be fully reinstated without conditions regarding the crucifix and to expunge all disciplinary records concerning the refusal to remove the crucifix.

New Britain is about a 10-mile drive southwest from Hartford.

Trump immigration order ‘invades our sacred space,’ Quaker groups say in lawsuit

Originally published January 28, 2025 for the Miami Herald

Nearly 400 years after members of the Religious Society of Friends, also known as Quakers, arrived in America in pursuit of religious freedom, a new immigration policy threatens the ability of the religious group to freely practice their beliefs, according to a lawsuit.

Five Quaker groups — including the first formal association of Quakers in the world — filed a lawsuit Jan. 27 against the Department of Homeland Security over a new Trump administration policy rescinding a previous guideline in which immigration officials could not enforce actions in “sensitive” locations, such as schools and places of worship.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement made 956 arrests Jan. 26, according to a Facebook post by the agency.

“A week ago today, President Trump swore an oath to defend the Constitution and yet today religious institutions that have existed since the 1600s in our country are having to go to court to challenge what is a violation of every individual’s Constitutional right to worship,” Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward, the organization representing the Quaker groups, said in a Jan. 27 news release.

Several religious leaders have spoken out against the new policy, and while other nonprofit organizations — some stemming from religious groups — have filed similar lawsuits on account of the new policy, this is the first lawsuit filed directly from a faith-based organization.

A DHS spokesperson told McClatchy News in a Jan. 27 email the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit

The 40-page lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, argues that the new immigration order violates fundamentals of the Quaker religious experience, including communal worship.

“For (Quaker congregations) communal worship is not just important, it is the very process of worship itself,” prosecutors said.

In Quaker worship, people sit together in silence and wait to hear from God. Then, anyone attending worship is encouraged to stand and share that message, according to the complaint.

“Quakers believe that those with varied life experiences — including immigrants — can provide unique messages from God. Being able to receive those messages is fundamental to the Quaker religious exercise,” prosecutors said.

The new policy has instilled fear in migrant-friendly congregations and led to the cancellation of some worship services, according to the complaint.

“Our faith requires us to do justice, oppose war and violence, love our neighbors (with no exceptions) and to make decisions with everyone in the room,” the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, one of the Quaker groups represented in the lawsuit, said in the release. “ ... The DHS policy impedes all of these things and invades our sacred space and ability to worship freely.”

The Quaker groups want any policy permitting immigration-enforcement at or near houses of worship to be declared unconstitutional, according to the lawsuit.

Quakers and social justice

Quakers have a long history of involvement in human rights and social justice causes.

They have been involved in advocating for the protection of Native Americans’ rights, were early abolitionists and had many leaders involved in the women’s suffrage movement, according to History.com

The Catholic voting gap was the largest in decades, polls show. Whom did they choose?

Originally published November 6, 2024 for the Miami Herald

As ballots were counted late into the evening on Tuesday, Nov. 5, U.S. Catholics — a group experts see as “sharply divided by party” — broke for former President Donald Trump by a historically large margin nationwide, exit polls revealed.

Fifty-eight percent of U.S. Catholics favored Trump, compared to 40% who supported Vice President Kamala Harris, according to exit polls from NBC News, The Washington Post and CNN. The 18-point margin represents the largest voting gap among the group in decades.

According to the NBC News poll of key states, the divide was even more pronounced among white Catholics, who favored Trump 60% compared to 37% for Harris. In the 2020 election, 57% supported President Joe Biden, compared to 42% for Trump, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center study.

However, a majority of Catholic voters overall voted for Biden in the 2020 election, according to Gallup.

Margaret Thompson, associate professor of history and political science at Syracuse University, told McClatchy News although the religious group still tends to mirror the general public, it has changed a lot over the past two decades, growing smaller and more ethnically diverse.

She said what shocked her was that the gap among Catholics was so much bigger than the general public.

“One thing we do know is that the Latino vote broke for Trump to a much greater extent than it has for any Republican,” she said. “So the question is, does that add significantly to the Catholic margin?”

Cristina Traina, professor of Christian theology and ethics at Fordham University, told McClatchy News in a phone interview that experts used to be able to assume how the majority of Catholics would vote.

“You could pretty much assume that 80% to 90% of Catholics were going to vote a particular way because of their Catholic identity and the priorities that the Catholic church and they as Catholics had,” Traina said. “That’s no longer true. Catholics are across the spectrum.”

According to the exit polls, Trump outperformed earlier predictions of how the religious group would vote. A Pew Research Center study published two months before Election Day found Trump leading Harris by just five percentage points among the group.

“It is surprising to me, especially given that apparently 61% of Catholics would like abortion to be legal in many, if not all cases,” Traina said. “Clearly there’s not an abortion motivation to vote for Trump this year.”

What issues were most important to US Catholics?

Traina said she thinks several people who were on the fence about their vote broke for Trump because of greater confidence in him on issues such as immigration and the economy — mirroring top issues for voters nationally, according to an AP VoteCast survey.

“Catholics are pretty reflective of society at large and of their demographic groups,” Traina said.

The survey also found that Catholics picked Trump as a better fit to handle all issues except abortion and climate change.

How did other religious groups vote?

The NBC News exit poll found that 72% of Protestants — the largest of the religious groups — voted for Trump, compared to 26% for Harris.

However, a majority of Jewish voters, “nones” — people who identify as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” — and others all voted for Harris, according to the poll.

Does theology impact Black churches’ involvement in elections? What experts say

Originally published October 14, 2024 for the Miami Herald

For many who grew up in predominantly Black church congregations, the importance of public involvement was intertwined with historical and theological teachings.

“Part of the importance to me about civic engagement was absolutely passed down as a young person,” said Valerie Cooper, associate professor of Black church studies at Duke Divinity School. “As a person growing up in a Black church, it was impossible to miss.”

According to research published Oct. 7 by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, Black churches are more likely than all other Christian churches to participate in election-related activities, but some experts are concerned the church’s efforts won’t have as much influence as previous years, citing a decline in church attendance.

A 2021 Pew Research Center study found that young Black adults are less likely to attend predominantly Black congregations, and 46% of Black adults in Generation Z say they “seldom or never” attend church.

“Increasingly our young people have no experience with church and don’t have those same sorts of cultural ties,” Cooper told McClatchy News.

She remembers hearing adults in her congregation discussing candidates during the coffee hour or after service, she said, adding that through her church community she understood the sacrifice Black people made to be able to vote.

Black theology emphasizes God as liberator, Cooper said. Historically, enslaved African Americans believed God would deliver them from slavery in the same way God delivered the Israelites in the book of Exodus, she said.

“It was part of our not only theology, but part of our communal salvation story: that God delivered us from slavery and the gift of that deliverance is the right to participate in the civic life of the nation,” Cooper said.

Jennifer Leath, associate professor of Black religions at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, told McClatchy News a politically engaged faith tradition is familiar to her through involvement in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

She said Matthew 25 — a parable about looking after strangers in need — is one that her community remembers and refers to when thinking about community engagement.

It all goes back to a theology of liberation and the belief that followers should fight for freedom and justice for all people, Leath said.

“For Black churches — and I think Black people and communities — our faith is not in politics. Our hope, our trust is in God, and specifically, the God who makes us free,” Leath said. “As simple as that is, it’s also complex because we don’t all perceive freedom in the same way, nor do we fight for it the same way.”

How have Black churches voted in the past?

Traditionally, experts have viewed Black churches as a reliable voting bloc for Democratic candidates.

Jason Shelton, professor of sociology and director of the Center for African American Studies at the University of Texas at Arlington, noted in an article published by the Brookings Institution, “nearly 70% of African Americans across most religious classifications align themselves with the Democratic party.”

In 2008, when former President Barack Obama ran for president, many Black pastors and congregations united to support him, the Chicago Tribune reported. According to a 2017 Pew Research Center report, 66.6% of eligible Black voters turned out to the polls for Obama’s re-election — one percentage point higher than white voter turnout that year and the highest percentage of Black voter turnout ever.

However, African American political alignments have changed as their religious affiliations have changed, Shelton said.

“Recent GSS data shows that there has been a double-digit decline — by as much as 43% — in the percentage of self-described political ‘liberals’ among Baptists, Holiness/Pentecostals, nondenoms, and religious nonaffiliates,” he said.

How other churches participate in election-related activity

The election-related activity with the highest participation across all Christian churches is sermons about what the Bible teaches on specific issues, with 61% of Christians who attend church regularly saying their church did this, the Arizona Christian University study found.

Encouraging people to vote — without endorsing a specific candidate — was second-highest, with 56% of respondents saying their church did this.

Inviting candidates to speak at church, registering new voters, endorsing specific candidates and providing voter’s guides were among the less common election activities churches engage in, with a majority of respondents saying their churches did not do any of these, according to the survey.

The survey, conducted Aug. 26 through Sept. 6, interviewed 2,000 self-identified Christian adults who regularly attend a Christian church.

God is mentioned in every state constitution but not the US Constitution. Why?

Originally published September 30, 2024 for the Miami Herald

A majority of U.S. adults say they believe the U.S. Constitution is inspired by God, but apart from a colloquial expression of the date, there is no mention of a higher being throughout the document.

That’s not the same for the nation’s state constitutions, where there’s at least one reference to God or the divine in each and nearly 200 mentions overall, according to a 2017 Pew Research Center study.

It’s common to find mentions of God in state constitutions’ preambles, but according to the study, a majority of state constitutions refer to God more than once throughout the document.

The Massachusetts Constitution mentions God eight times, and the constitutions in New Hampshire and Vermont mention God six times each, the study found. They also rank among the least religious states in the country, according to a 2016 Pew Research Center analysis.

Why isn’t God mentioned in the U.S. Constitution?

Experts say there are several reasons that might explain why God isn’t mentioned in the federal Constitution.

Jack Rakove, professor of history and American studies at Stanford University, told McClatchy News it starts with James Madison, who played a key role in drafting the Constitution.

Madison believed the more religion is privatized, the better off the country would be, Rakove said, adding that the framers also wanted to prohibit the government from establishing a national religion.

David Bateman, an associate professor of government at Cornell University, told McClatchy News most of the drafters were broadly religious but divided on religion and English traditions.

“It was a lot easier to come up with and agree upon both the language of religion and specific types of religious expression at the state level, where there was less diversity, than at the national level,” Bateman said.

He also said states don’t worry as much about whether or not there’s going to be an establishment of state religion. Since they look to federal rights for protection, there is more flexibility to update the state constitution if needed.

But despite the overhaul of other aspects of state constitutions, especially in recent years, mentions of God or a higher being have remained.

Steven Green, who teaches courses on constitutional law and American religious history at Willamette University, told McClatchy News he thinks that’s because these references to God don’t have any legal weight.

“Why stick your neck out? Why have a newspaper immediately report you as being anti-God because you are a legislator and you want to take God out of the constitution?” he said.

What does the Constitution say about religion?

Fifty-five percent of U.S. adults believe the Constitution was inspired by God, according to a 2022 Deseret News and Marist poll.

While God is referenced in the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of Allegiance and appears on U.S. currency, the most religion is mentioned in the Constitution is in the First Amendment. It prohibits Congress from establishing an official religion and protects the right of citizens to practice their faith.

“You see nothing in the notes of the constitutional convention that make any references to the authority for government coming from God. It’s ‘we the people,’” Green said.

Bateman said Americans’ belief that the Constitution is divinely inspired speaks to society’s high religiosity and politically constructed reverence for the document.

‘Renewed interest’ in religion and politics

Political scientist and statistician Ryan Burge told McClatchy News he’s seeing a “renewed interest” in trying to find religious understanding and justification for positions on social issues.

“That’s leading people to try to trace back this interaction between religion and politics in American culture over the last 250 years,” he said.

According to a September Google Trends report, the question “is god mentioned in the constitution” tripled in search in 2024, with some the top areas where the question is being searched falling in swing states.

The spike in searches may speak to the country’s political engagement, especially in an election year, Burge said.

Burge also explained that people in swing states have a harder time being politically disengaged as they’re more likely to be seeing political ads at higher levels.

“This is exactly what we want elections to do, by the way, from a political science perspective. We want people to be prompted by the election to think about government,” he said.

Harris-Trump race splits US Catholics along ethnic lines, polls find. What results show

Originally published September 10, 2024 for the Miami Herald

A new poll finds former President Donald Trump leading Vice President Kamala Harris among U.S. Catholics just two months before Election Day — with a major divide along whites and Hispanics within the group.

The latest Pew Research Center poll, released Sept. 9, finds that 52% of registered voters who identify as Catholic say they support Trump, while 47% say they back Harris.

Catholic voters — who experts refer to as a “major swing voting group” in presidential elections — make up one of the largest religious groups in the country, with roughly 52 million adults describing themselves as Catholic nationwide, according to a Pew Research Center study.

The poll shows 61% of white Catholics say they would vote for Trump if the election were held today and 38% say they would vote for Harris. But for Hispanic Catholics, the results are flipped, with 65% of respondents saying they would vote for Harris and 34% saying they would support Trump.

According to the poll, “Harris currently garners more support from Black Protestants and Hispanic Catholics than Biden did in April, when 77% of Black Protestants and 49% of Hispanic Catholics backed him.”

The poll, conducted between Aug. 26 and Sept. 2, sampled more than 8,000 registered voters and has a margin of error of 1.4 percentage points. This is the first poll by the research center that excludes third-party candidates when asking about voters’ preferences between Harris and Trump.

A different poll, conducted by RealClear Opinion Research and EWTN, found Harris having a slight advantage over Trump. That poll, conducted between Aug. 28-30, showed 50% of Catholic voters with plans to support Harris and 43% of Catholic voters planning to vote for Trump.

A divide among U.S. Catholics

Hispanic Catholics are the second-largest demographic group among U.S. Catholics, making up about one-third of the religious group, according to a Pew Research Center study. However, most U.S. Catholics are white and tend to have unique social and political habits when compared to the other demographic groups, according to the study.

A 2020 Public Religion Research Institute study found that Hispanic Catholics are more likely to identify as Democrats than white Catholics.

The top three issues Hispanic Catholics identify as critical are health care, terrorism and climate change, while the top three issues for white Catholics are terrorism, health care and immigration, according to the study.

In the 2020 election, white Catholics favored Trump over Biden by a 15-point margin, while Hispanic Catholics backed Biden over Trump by 35 points, according to the research center.

Trump focuses on Catholics

Last week, the Trump campaign launched Catholics for Trump, a coalition highlighting the former president’s policy efforts that align with Catholic ideals. A few days later, on Sept. 8, the former president tweeted a virtual birthday card to the Virgin Mary. The post on X, formerly Twitter, was met with mixed reactions.

“The desperation is palpable and beyond embarrassing. This is Our Lady of Guadalupe,” commented one person. “The saddest part is that white American Catholics are going to fall for this.”

“His gesture shows respect for faith and unity,” commented another user.

According to Catholic tradition, the Virgin Mary has appeared in different places and is known by different titles relative to those places. Guadalupe is a name given to an indigenous manifestation of the Virgin Mary when she appeared in Mexico.

While Catholics celebrate the Virgin Mary’s birthday on Sept. 8, the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe is celebrated Dec. 12.

Could Evangelicals for Harris group sway the presidential election? Experts weigh in

Originally published August 22, 2024 for the Miami Herald

A new evangelical group with ties to high-profile evangelicals, including the late Rev. Billy Graham’s granddaughter, has come out in support of Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

Jerushah Duford, whose mother is Virginia Graham Tchividjian, Graham’s eldest daughter, was one of 19 speakers on a Zoom call Wednesday, Aug. 14, hosted by the group Evangelicals for Harris. The call included about 3,200 people, the Rev. Jim Ball, who founded the group, told McClatchy News.

“Voting Kamala, for me, is so much greater than policies. It’s a vote against another four years of faith leaders justifying the actions of a man who destroys the message Jesus came to spread,” Duford said in a pre-recorded video shown during the call.

According to Pew Research Center, Christians made up a majority of registered voters in 2020, with 18% of registered voters identifying as white evangelical Protestants — a group largely assumed by experts to more strongly support former President Donald Trump.

But Evangelicals for Harris’ believes it could change that and impact the overall election, said Ball, who identifies as a political independent.

Could the group sway the election?

David Campbell, political scientist and professor of American democracy at the University of Notre Dame, told McClatchy News that he’s skeptical about any group of evangelicals organizing for Harris having a major sway within the evangelical community in this election cycle. He noted that roughly 80% of white evangelicals are “squarely in the Republican camp.”

However, Campbell did say that 20% of white evangelicals who lean Democrat or who are open to voting Democrat make up a large number of voters generally and could have an impact on the overall election if mobilized.

Jacob Neiheisel, who holds a doctorate in political science and teaches at the University at Buffalo, said the opposite. While he doesn’t think the group will have a sway in the overall election, he think it’s possible the group could have an impact among evangelical voters.

He noted that evangelicals on both sides of the political spectrum have used similar scriptures and “similar influences” to “make very different kinds of pushes.”

“There’s enough wiggle room there in the scriptures that both sides are drawing on to come to diametrically opposed positions,” Neheisel told McClatchy News.

Political scientist and statistician Ryan Burge told McClatchy News that he sees the group potentially having an impact among evangelicals of color. He said there were “a lot of non-white speakers” at the Evangelicals for Harris event.

“I think that’s a really interesting turn on evangelicalism, because it’s perceived as a white phenomenon, at least that’s the common understanding of it. So I think if there’s any sort of long term implications from this, it might change the idea of what an evangelical is to the average person and make it a little more racially diverse,” Burge said.

What to know about Evangelicals for Harris

Balls said the group began in 2019 under the name Evangelicals for Biden and started back up this election cycle as he saw “even more of a threat to democracy.”

After president Biden ended his bid for reelection and endorsed vice president Harris on July 21, the group changed its name to Evangelicals for Harris within the hour, Ball said. The group hopes to target evangelicals who have voted for Democrats in the past, specifically in swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and North Carolina, he said.

On its website, the group describes itself as “a community of evangelicals upholding our values in the 2024 election.”

For Ball, being an evangelical simply means being a follower of Christ who wants to share God’s word with others, he said.

But Burge said the American public understands the term differently, instead taking it to mean a person having conservative values.

“Twenty-five years ago, most people never heard the word evangelical. It just wasn’t part of common vernacular, and the reason that most people have heard of it now is almost always in the context of politics,” Burge said, adding that he thinks a modifier is needed to distinguish religious evangelicals versus cultural evangelicals.