This question came upon me yesterday. I realized I couldn't think of a single Democrat who was religious. I'm not talking about the foo-foo "new age" type of faith in earth spirits. I'm asking about a clearly authentic spiritual life - with church, social good deeds, etc. and some concept of an afterlife and a purpose for THIS life. Many branches of Christianity have this, but so does Judaism, Hinduism, and - I think - even Islam and Buddhism.
My hypothesis: you cannot be a fervid Democrat AND a fervid Theist. Indeed, I doubt one can be deeply a "believer" in any faith where "goodness" and ethics are penultimate, and still be deeply a Democrat. A socialist? Or am I simply incorrect because I haven't sampled the waters enough?
Today I was reading something from Naomi Wolf, about her experience—as a deep “classic liberal” and an atheistic Democrat of Jewish heritage—of what happened to her during Covid lockdowns. And how it has changed her.
"I told the group that I was now willing to speak about God publicly, because I had looked at what had descended on us from every angle, using my normal critical training and faculties; and that it was so elaborate in its construction, so comprehensive, and so cruel, with an almost superhuman, flamboyant, baroque imagination made out of the essence of cruelty itself — that I could not see that it had been accomplished by mere humans working on the bumbling human level in the dumb political space.
I felt around us, in the majestic nature of the awfulness of the evil around us, the presence of “principalities and powers” — almost awe-inspiring levels of darkness and of inhuman, anti-human forces. In the policies unfolding around us I saw again and again anti-human outcomes being generated: policies aimed at killing children’s joy; at literally suffocating children, restricting their breath, speech and laughter; at killing school; at killing ties between families and extended families; at killing churches and synagogues and mosques; and, from the highest levels, from the President’s own bully pulpit, demands for people to collude in excluding, rejecting, dismissing, shunning, hating their neighbors and loved ones and friends.
I have seen bad politics all of my life and this drama unfolding around us goes beyond bad politics, which is silly and manageable and not that scary. This — this is scary, metaphysically scary. In contrast to hapless human mismanagement, this darkness has the tinge of the pure, elemental evil that underlay and gave such hideous beauty to the theatrics of Nazism; it is the same nasty glamour that surrounds Leni Riefenstahl films.
In short, I don’t think humans are smart or powerful enough to have come up with this horror all alone.
So I told the group in the woods, that the very impressiveness of evil all around us in all of its new majesty, was leading me to believe in a newly literal and immediate way in the presence, the possibility, the necessity of a countervailing force — that of a God. It was almost a negative proof: an evil this large must mean that there is a God at which it is aiming its malevolence.
It's a pretty good read, especially given that it comes from someone who was pretty "progressive" (I think it fair to say) before all the totalitarian group-think came together with "must Vax early and often" and revile and shun, those who don't:
http://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/is-it-time-for-intellectuals-to-talk
I'm particularly disturbed that vaccine "mandates" don't now appear to be going away. I thought they would once the vaccines proved they didn't work too well and contrary evidence became ever more clear.
And then the midterms didn't help me too much, either, in settling back into my old life.
I've remarked for a long time that this feels like I'm forced into the script of a REALLY BADLY WRITTEN "dystopian novel". Really bad, because it lacks even the semblance of intrinsic integrity which even a half-decent, but clearly completely fictional dystopic novel would have before it could get published by a quality publisher.
And I confess, I am beginning to re-evaluate whether their might not be something more LITERAL to the Bible's "Revelations" than I ever would have imagined.
I don't think we understand what is going on, yet. And I increasingly think this is - literally - a great "spritual battle" and, therefore, that "end of days" may, in fact, be not so out of reach.
Anyway, let me get back to my question. Do you know any authentic theists, of any stripe, who are also authentic Democrats? I'm not asking if any Democrats seem like good people. I'm also not asking if all conservatives are Christians (or even more than agnostic). I am wondering if Christian values immunize you against going along with current Democratic Party / Woke ideology.
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