Both sides want fight over Biden's faith
by Nicholas Rowan, Staff Writer
| August 09, 2020 06:43 AM
When President Trump and Joe Biden on Thursday dueled over the sincerity of the former vice president’s faith, they implicitly acknowledged the outsize role religion is playing in the 2020 election.
Trump started the feud, remarking at an Ohio event that Biden is “against God†and would “hurt God†if elected president. Trump’s words were a crude distillation of weeks of messaging from his campaign — that Biden’s stances on abortion and religious freedom make him a bad fit for religious voters — and they provoked a strongly worded response from Biden.
“We’re in the battle for the soul of our nation, and President Trump’s decision today to profane God and to smear my faith in a political attack is a stark reminder of what the stakes of this fight truly are,†Biden said in a Thursday night statement.
Political operators in both the Trump and Biden camps agree that when it comes to faith, and particularly Biden’s Catholicism, the stakes are high. Both are working to capture crucial votes in Michigan and Wisconsin, where Trump won in 2016 by only a few thousand votes. These states are disproportionately Catholic, a demographic that went for Trump — and Republicans and Democrats alike are scrambling to show off their candidates’ religious bona fides.
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