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On Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris posted on X, “One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree: The government, and certainly Donald Trump, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.”
In response, Tony Dungy, the NFL Hall of Fame former coach, responded:
“I hear you make this statement all the time. Exactly what ‘faith’ are you talking about when you say you don’t have to abandon it to support abortion? Are you talking about the Christian faith that says all babies are made in the image of God (Gen 1:26), that God places them in the womb (Jer 1:5) and that we should not take any life unjustly (Luke 18:20)? Are you talking about that faith or some nebulous, general ‘faith’ that says we’re good enough, and smart enough to make our own decisions? What ‘faith’ are you talking about?”
The response underscores the difficulty Harris has with the faithful in this year’s election between her and former President Donald Trump. It also underscores another matter that she has not addressed directly with voters, nor has she been asked by reporters about it.
The latest Pew Research Center survey last week showed that religious groups that traditionally have leaned Republican are backing Trump by wide margins. Among white evangelical Protestants, Trump holds 82% of their support, along with 61% of white Catholics and 58% of nonevangelical white Protestants.
The Pew survey, conversely, showed Harris holding the backing of roughly two-thirds or more of registered black Protestants, Hispanic Catholics, and Jewish voters. She also holds the support of 85% of atheists and 78% of agnostics.
Outside of her getting a little more support from black Protestants and Hispanic Catholics than Biden did, Pew noted that the religious dynamics of the presidential campaign look about the same.
Trump initially planned to attend an event with Polish President Andrzej Duda at a Catholic Marian shrine in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, this Sunday, but earlier on Friday, his scheduled stop at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown was canceled.
There has been no word yet as to the reason for the change in the former president’s schedule.
The event on Sunday will be the unveiling of a monument at the shrine’s cemetery to honor the Polish solidarity movement against the Soviet communist takeover from after World War II until the 1980s.
A spokesperson for the shrine could not be reached for comment.
The shrine is a tribute to the historic Black Madonna of Czestochowa icon. According to details on the shrine’s website, the original icon was painted by St. Luke the Evangelist on a table built by Jesus when he was a carpenter with his father Joseph.
It is located in Bucks County, a mix of suburbs and working-class residents and considered a swing county in this year’s election. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden won here against Trump. However, in the last few weeks, the voter registration has flipped from Democrats holding the majority to Republicans with a slim lead.
The white evangelical and conservative Catholic vote hasn’t always been so overwhelmingly supportive of Republican candidates. In 2008, Barack Obama won them, largely because he courted them, met them where they were, and asked for their vote.
Clinton failed in that task, and despite Trump not possessing much religiosity, he won them overwhelmingly because he said he would fight for religious freedom, as well as offering a comprehensive list of possible Supreme Court nominees. It was a win that confounded both Republicans and Democrats.
Biden, however, was able to make just enough of an uptick with Catholic voters in 2020, a number that could have been the small amount he needed to win that year.
The Edison Research exit polls estimated that 52% of all Catholic voters, white and Hispanic, went for Biden that year and 47% for Trump.
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Those same Edison exit polls in 2016 showed a 46% (all) Catholic vote for Clinton and 50% for Trump — estimates that show a 3-point downturn for Trump among Catholics and a 6-point uptick for Biden, who is Catholic, over Clinton, who rarely mentioned faith in that year’s cycle.
This means the faithful likely affected all three cycles and could, once again, be the determining factor in this year’s election.
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