Could Catholics be the key to Trump’s opposition?

Donald Trump’s second administration has been a reckoning for America, and perhaps especially for America’s Christians. From the deployment of masked paramilitary thugs to enforce immigration policy to the full-throated assault on transgender Americans to an unrelenting campaign against the rights of women and girls , reactionary Christianity is riding high. This agenda pursued by the administration has been made possible through 50 years of campaigning by the religious right, a coalition of white evangelical Protestants, conservative Catholics, and conservative Eastern Orthodox Christians and Jews that formed the core of the late 20th- and early 21st-century Republican Party. Could Catholics be the key to Trump’s opposition? The wild card that could scramble America’s political alliances. Katherine Kelaidis is a research associate at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in the United Kingdom and the author of Holy Russia? Holy War?: Why the Russian Church Is Backing Putin Against Ukraine. But in this season of their triumph, a genuine faith-based opposition is finally beginning to break through. The evidence of religious resistance first emerged on Inauguration Day. During the National Prayer Service at the National Cathedral, Mariann Budde , the Episcopal bishop of Washington, DC, stared down from the pulpit at the new president and told him in a sturdy voice: Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. ... In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. These words, a public reminder that there is diversity within the Christian tradition with respect to political opinion, were only the beginning. The Episcopal Church has since ended its relationship with the US government’s refugee resettlement services over the administration’s controversial decision to admit Afrikaners as refugees . There appeared to be some coalition-building when a dozen or so religious organizations sued the administration over new policies that gave immigration officials more latitude in making arrests in and around houses of worship. And, in July, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Sean Rowe, penned an op-ed at Religion News Service with the headline: “ Once the church of presidents, the Episcopal Church must now be an engine of resistance .” Yet all of this is happening within some of the most liberal denominations in the country. These are also denominations that have been in demographic decline for decades , and only 11 percent of the American public identifies with the mainline Protestant traditions . This is hardly encouraging for the possibility of a mainstream political movement or resistance. Enter American Catholicism, a group that may redefine the role religion has played in politics and public life. The bargain The political power of the religious right depended in large part on religious conservatives agreeing to adopt the GOP’s positions on issues such as labor rights , immigration , environmental regulation, and even taxes. In exchange, the Republican Party embraced their reactionary consensus on certain social issues, largely related to gender and sexuality. First came opposition to abortion and the...

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