When Joe Biden became the 46th President of the United States much was made in the media of his Catholic faith. CNN even called him “the first churchgoing President in decades”. It seemed that Biden’s status as only the second Catholic American President ever was of particular interest to headline writers.
"Joe Biden" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Catholicism for the Chief clearly is not a path well trodden. Prior to JFK there had only ever been one Catholic Presidential nominee from the major parties, Alfred E. Smith. Smith was Governor of New York and in 1928 had to fight allegations of planning to construct communications tunnels between the White House and the Vatican. Political discourse hasn’t always moved on since Smith’s detractors alleged that “of all countries the Pope wants to control this country”.
We might think of this kind of prejudice as being in the distant past, but it was as recently as 1988 when Ian Paisley, that most vociferous of Northern Irish Protestants held his posters aloft in the European Parliament declaring “John Paul the Second, Anti Christ”, while the target of the Ulsterman’s bellowing, the Pontiff, stood at the lectern.
Watching that diatribe back, it can be easy to see it as an abstract form of anger – Dr Paisley getting the opportunity he had waited his whole life for – to tell the Pope to get stuffed. But of course, when he called forth the spirit of Thomas Cranmer in his declaration, he put Catholicism as the enemy of Christ and reminded the world of all the horror that Church fighting against Church had caused throughout history.
Mercifully (in many parts of the world), anti-denominational feeling has lapsed and grown into a positive relationship that hasn’t always been the case.
So, why is this important now, and what does it have to do with the current incumbent of the White House?
It seems clear that the media is inclined to see Biden’s Catholic Christian faith as a positive thing, and there can be at least three possible reasons for this approach.
Firstly, many were genuinely appalled by the attitudes and behaviours of President Trump the person, both before and during his four year stint. His open mocking of disability and boastfulness at how and where he grabs women were two examples of a litany of offences. President Biden’s acceptance speech attempted to highlight a different approach, proclaiming “We must make the promise of the country real for everybody, no matter their race, their ethnicity, their faith, their identity or their disability”. Biden, like Trump, has been accused of sexual assault. His approach while on the campaign trail was to express the rights of his accusers to “tell their story”, instead of the defence of sorts by Trump, on one occasion claiming “she’s not my type”.
Secondly, in the light of the murder of George Floyd and the huge response to the Black Lives Matter movement, there has been an awakening by many of us to our years, maybe lifetimes of prejudice. Basic explanations of privilege have been shared (once again), and it seems clear that for large parts of humanity, these words have had some effect. There is a long way to go before we reach a place of racial equality, but perhaps we can hope that this embrace of Catholicism can be part of a greater story of changing mindsets by those campaigns for justice.
"Black Lives Matter Zoom Background" by szeke is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Thirdly, the people of the world are worn out. 2020, and the early parts of 2021 have not been easy for anyone. If you have any inclination towards care for the world and for humanity, the news and the challenges we face may well have felt overwhelming not helped by a former President who ultimately managed to cause a riot in his colleagues place of business. There has been a sense in some quarters that our lives are easier now that Amtrak Joe has arrived. The Washington Post told us to “relax”, while The Telegraph talked of “a sigh of relief”.
So, a happy ending then for America, not just its residents, but for all around the globe whose lives are impacted by American politics. Except of course, that there is much challenge ahead.
One way that we understand the life of Jesus is as a person who brings about real and sustained change to our situation. Messiah is perhaps one of the most overused and overstated descriptions in use in English, certainly in the sports pages. Jesus as Messiah finds a different kind of weight in the words of the New Testament because of the expectations of the Jewish people who were largely Jesus’ earliest followers. The Messiah, destined to be descended from King David according to the prophetic predictions, would unite Israel, and would bring about global peace. When Jesus arrives, he sits within that description, and of course extends it beyond the expectations of some of the people he encountered. His insistence on teachings about the “Kingdom of Heaven” are how so many of us have come to understand God’s hopes for the world, and our own ambitions for progress.
The Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God is a significant theme in the teachings of Jesus. He describes this Kingdom as both a place and a mindset and gives numerous examples of what it will be like. These cases give us images of this Kingdom. In Jesus’ story of the Pearl of Great Price, the pearl representing the Kingdom is worth so much that the person who finds it will sell everything they have to get it. In Jesus’ Parable of the Mustard Seed, the Kingdom is likened to the tiniest thing with seemingly the least potential that becomes transformative to the place in which it dwells.
Since it is clear that the Kingdom of God came into being through the life and work of Jesus, we can believe that something similar can still happen today. It seems valid to suggest that Jesus’ teachings can be the basis for our hopes for the potential of the world. When Joe Biden talks about renewal, we can see the hope of the world restored.
But Jesus’ wider teachings have to be seen against the backdrop of the Roman Empire, the machine that lacked such little space for empathy and understanding. Jesus himself was executed. And Jesus’ explanations of the Kingdom were, of course, in direct opposition to the Empire within which he lived.
It’s not that we don’t believe world leaders can’t be true Christians. Or that a follower of Jesus must have sold out or cashed in if they become politicians. And we certainly don’t believe that Catholic people are to be ostracised because of their high opinion of the Pope. But the standards of the Kingdom of Heaven are so high, there is so much to do, particularly for the leader of an Empire, with an extensive war machine, running a society built on segregation. Joe Biden’s voting record on war and invasion aren’t a good look to my mind, and neither is his voting on social issues.
Throughout his lengthy political career, Joe Biden has clung to his Catholic faith in what has been a life punctuated by tragedy and difficulty. Catholicism like the newest President (and like most denominations) has a difficult ethical history, but it also has many gifts for making progress in the world. One of its most significant figures, Francis of Assisi said this… “a single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows”, and “start by doing what’s necessary, then do what’s possible and suddenly you are doing what’s impossible”.
Joe Biden’s gift to the world probably won’t be the regularity of his church going, instead, it could well be his belief in true world changing possibilities.
I should have also said thanks for the first post Jon. A great read!
Joe is certainly a relief from the age of Trump. I hope he believes in world changing possibilities, but things seem so divided in the US, can he make progress? And will he allow his faith to challenge the neo-Liberal capitalist imperial project, built on the back in inequality, that we seem so locked in to.