Bernie Sanders in God’s country

OPINION

Bernie Sanders in God’s country

by Timothy P. Carney
| February 28, 2020 10:18 PM


COLUMBIA, South Carolina — Bernie Sanders won the first three states over the primary cycle. But, this weekend, he’s arrived in unfriendly territory: a state where Democrats go to church every Sunday and most Wednesdays, to boot.

The socialist from Vermont, who promises a revolution right here on Earth, is the candidate of atheists, agnostics, and the unaffiliated. That’s a young, white demographic. South Carolina, where about half of the Democratic electorate is African American, is a state of black Baptists and Southern Baptists.

At Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in nearby Sumter, Joe Biden held a rally Saturday morning, the day before the state’s first-in-the-South primary.

Pastor James Blassingame spoke before the candidate, offering a prayer in Jesus’s name, asking for forgiveness and encouraging his flock to vote for Biden.

It was a bit different a few hours later at the Sanders rally at Finlay Park in Columbia.

Instead of Blassingame, Sanders was introduced by Killer Mike, the rapper-turned-activist who has founded his own religion, the “Church of Sleep.” The reality show episode about Killer Mike’s religion was titled “New Jesus.”

As Vice magazine puts it, “Killer Mike is frustrated that black Christian communities are taught to worship a white Jesus,” and Mike’s church includes "a sermon in his favorite strip club where women pole-dance while a gospel choir sings and his parishioners pass around joints.”



When the cameras aren’t rolling, Killer Mike worships “the Gods within me, and the Gods I see existing outside of me everyday,” as he told Vice.

Most of Sanders’s crowd in Columbia wasn’t pagan, but they also weren’t nearly as Christian as the average South Carolina Democrat.

Kyle and Lara Allan, two Sanders supporters in their early 30s, when asked if they were religious, said, “No, no.” Kyle Allan added: “I have a few Catholic friends. But the majority are secular.”

Rob Morrell, a multiracial gay man at the Sanders rally, called himself “Relig-ish” but added, “Religion is something for the family, but we need to leave it” out of the public. He said the older generation is religious, “but, if you think about it, things have changed.”

Morrell was a rare Sanders supporter of color at the Saturday rally. Sanders’s crowd at Finlay Park was overwhelmingly white and young, which is related to how secular it was, while older black Democrats in South Carolina are overwhelmingly Protestant. In fact, a majority (54%) of Democratic primary voters in 2016 attended church at least once a week, according to the exit polls. Only 11% said they never attended.

That’s not Sanders’s base.

When Morning Consult polled primary voters in 2019, Sanders’s strongest group was atheists (30% backing Sanders), followed by agnostics and then those who declared their religion as “nothing in particular.” His 30% of the atheist vote has probably grown since Kamala Harris dropped out and Elizabeth Warren dropped in the polls.

In New Hampshire, Sanders dominated among those who don’t go to church and bombed among those who do, according to exit polls. He got only 15% of those who attend religious services weekly and 31% of those who never attend, and this isn't just about Christians and non-Christians. Among Jewish voters, Sanders is in fourth place in the Democratic primary, with only 11%.

While Sanders is Jewish, he said he “is not actively involved with organized religion.” When Sanders spoke about how Judaism influenced his thought, his comments had nothing to do with Jewish teachings but instead with the Jewish experience during the Holocaust.

Biden, meanwhile, wears his religion on his sleeve — and his forehead. He arrived at his CNN South Carolina town hall on Ash Wednesday with his ashes still on his forehead and told the crowd that he had instructed CNN’s makeup crew not to wipe it off.

There may have been no fellow Catholics at Mt. Zion Friday morning, but Biden didn’t hesitate to talk about his faith. The crowd, mostly black and over 50, welcomed it.

“I'd definitely like to hear [the Democratic candidates] saying some word about God somewhere in there,” Perry Moten, who attends Mt. Zion with his wife every Sunday, said before the Biden rally. “You know, some about their religious upbringing.”

Other black Biden supporters or Biden-leaners at the event highlighted their Christianity in their critiques of President Trump.

Ramona Fletcher said Christianity is about "helping somebody who's down now,” but Trump is "all for the rich.”

"I don't think Trump knows what religion is all about,” Jean Wilton, a grandmother, said. “The Bible stresses love your neighbor, but not him. He wants to keep certain people out of the country and only let some types in.”

Bradley Tony, who attends a black Baptist church down the road, pegged his immigration views on his faith. "I believe that people of the world are children of Christ,” he told me before the Biden rally. “All people are created equal and should be treated equal. ... Those kids that were in those cages. I go back to that, and I think of that.”

Tony compared Trump unfavorably to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. “Bush: I know he's a man of faith. It's not that there wasn't some mistakes that he done. ... But, overall, he was good man. He was a genuine man.”

Tony didn’t say the same of Trump, pointing to Trump’s famously un-Christian declaration that he’s never asked God for forgiveness. "If you never ask God for forgiveness, what're you dealing with?”

So, why the difference? Is Biden’s base more religious because it’s older and more black? Or is the causality the other way around? Maybe Biden does better among the elderly and the black because he appeals to those who are more religious.

Put another way: Sanders’s revolution is a worldly one. South Carolina Democrats generally have their eyes on a higher prize.


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