Kaine, as is well known, is a progressive Catholic whose focus on the church’s social gospel was sharpened during a year’s mission in Latin America. But while media coverage of Indiana Governor Mike Pence has tended to depict him as a standard right-wing conservative Christian, this label belies the complexity of his own spiritual journey. [...]
But Pence is also very much a creation of the last half century of American political-religious life. Born and raised Catholic, he became a Catholic youth minister and reportedly wanted to be a priest. But according to interviews Pence has given over the years (interestingly, he has more recently declined to talk specifically about his spiritual evolution), while in college from 1978-81, he began blending his Catholicism with Evangelical Protestantism. “I made a commitment to Christ,” Pence said. “I’m a born again, evangelical Catholic.” [...]
Indeed, much of the twentieth century’s supposedly liberal, Protestant-led campaigns for the separation of church and state were, in fact, bitterly anti-Catholic. In the first half of the twentieth century, Protestants railed against Catholic parochial schools, claiming that they taught not just superstition but sedition as well. The Protestant-led temperance movement associated Catholicism with alcohol abuse. [...]
Both sides adjusted their doctrines. Evangelicals swiftly adopted Catholic teaching on abortion, both as a matter of political expediency and as part of their anti-feminist “pro-family” agenda. Catholics stopped crusading against the death penalty. And both sides abandoned their earlier positions that religion should stay out of politics. (Jerry Falwell, another founder of the Christian Right, had said in 1964 that “preachers are not called to be politicians, but soul-winners.” Then times changed.)
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