E.J. Dionne: The Vice-Presidential Candidates and Religion

REV. PAUL BRANDEIS RAUSHENBUSH, HOST:

E.J. Dionne is a longtime Washington Post political columnist. He's also a distinguished university professor in the foundations of democracy and culture at Georgetown's McCort School of Public Policy, as well as a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. E.J. is the author of a long list of influential books, including Our Divided Political Heart; Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith in Politics After the Religious Right, and most recently, co-authored with Miles Rapoport, 100% Democracy The Case for Universal Voting.

E.J. so often sounds like the better heart of our country, recognizing our differences and the challenges that come with that, but always sounding a realistic note of hope and possibility. My predecessor, the late Rev. Welton Gaddy, once called him a peacemaker when E.J. was on the show to unveil his book Our Divided Political Heart, and that still makes sense today. Which is not to say E.J. Dionne is short on strong opinions, and I know we'll hear some of those today.

With all that said, E.J. Dionne, welcome back to The State of Belief.

E.J. DIONNE, GUEST:

Well, bless you for that introduction. And can I return it by saying that I think a lot of listeners know that your name, Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, includes in it two of the most important small-d democratic voices in our history, Louis Brandeis, foe of monopoly, friend of democracy; and, of course, Walter Rauschenbusch, the founder of the Social Gospel. And the Social Gospel has had periods where people have not paid as much attention to it as they should. I think this is the moment where people have to start paying more attention to it than they do. And you carry this tradition proudly and I honor you for it. So it's great to be here.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Oh my goodness. Well, I'm such a, really, a fan boy, I remember seeing you at Princeton when you came out with your book, Souled Out. It was a packed crowd. And you speak so much sense in this moment, and we are in a moment, I have to say, of nonsense and so anyone speaking sense or common sense in this moment just feels like a breath of fresh air.  And I just so appreciate all that you have done over the last decades and continue to do. And it's just really important.

We're speaking in a kind of a historic moment. I mean, I we haven't seen anything like it before where, you know, President Biden, steps aside, Vice President Kamala Harris is the presumptive nominee, almost assuredly. And we're in just a kind of an amazing moment. As we speak, we're not sure who the vice presidential person will be. There's a lot of, really, I would say, pretty good candidates. And I'm just curious if you want to go on the record with a prediction about any one of those candidates, and who you think should or will be in that position, not by the time this airs, but pretty shortly afterwards.

E.J. DIONNE:

Well, I'm going to pass on that question for reasons I'll explain, but I'm glad you underscored the moment we're speaking, because: imagine if we had had this conversation about a week and a half ago, in that period when, after President Biden's debate performance, where as somebody who has really respected and admired President Biden for a long time - I've joked that I'm so old that I covered Joe Biden when he was the new generation candidate back in 1987 - and, you know, I grew up in a mill town called Fall River, and Scranton Joe's politics are pretty much like the politics that I sort of adhere to, a kind of labor progressivism or labor liberalism. And so I had a lot of respect for him.

I felt that after that debate performance, it was not tenable for him to carry forward. And I think in the enthusiasm you're seeing in the party for Kamala Harris, a couple of things are there. One is just enormous relief that Democrats were really given a very unusual opportunity to start the campaign all over again. it was a little over 100 days before the election. Now it's less than 100 days as we, speak. And, you know, a lot of the people in the party really liked Biden's record, but just didn't think, especially after that debate, that he could carry this forward.

But I also think there is enormous enthusiasm, that surprised a lot of people - I'm not entirely surprised by it, but others are - for Harris, and, you know, it is obviously a part of it is the way she carries herself and the energy and enthusiasm. And I thought from the beginning, Republicans made a terrible mistake in attacking the way she laughed. Because I think in this moment of such division and rancor, a little laughter is actually quite attractive to an awful lot of voters, not just people supporting her. But obviously there is a special appeal to Kamala Harris, who is of Black and South Asian descent and a woman. And you saw the outpouring in a lot of different communities.

And lastly, young people, many of them agreed with Biden on a lot of stuff, but there was clearly a lack of enthusiasm for his candidacy. And you saw the Democratic vote shoot up among people under 35, under 30. As soon as Harris became the nominee. So that's extraordinary.

The reason why I don't want to make a prediction on or really take a strong stance on any of the veeps, is that I have a lot of good things to say about all of them. And I have theories about how Vice President Harris is thinking, but no hard facts. And I think it's a close call for her as it is, I am learning in my conversations with a lot of people on the Democratic side.

I will say a couple of things. I think that in this run-up to the choice in this, if you will, competition for the VP spot - it's not a divisive competition - I think the guy who probably has emerged most strongly is Tim Waltz, the governor of Minnesota, partly because a lot of people had not paid enough attention to him. I interviewed him last year after what people referred to as the Minnesota miracle, which is an extraordinary outpouring of progressive legislation in a state legislature that's very closely divided. And I think Waltz has made a mark already as a contributor to Democratic messaging. His declaration that the Democrats’ opponents, Vance and Trump, are weird took off because I think it speaks more to people than more highfalutin’ or philosophical words.

And his defense, you know, when you throw “big government liberal” at him, he says, well, wait a minute: is there something wrong with kids going to school on full bellies? You know, their feeding program. Is it wrong to establish universal child care, and so on. So I think he's had a good run.

I think Pete Buttigieg, who's an amazing messenger, always, has had a good run. And it's worth giving him credit, because Kamala Harris has done very good work, substantively and rhetorically with the word “freedom.” Pete made that a centerpiece of his 2020 campaign. The campaign was not successful in the end, but he won a lot of support.

And then you have Mark Kelly, who's an extraordinarily fascinating figure. There was a great piece in the Financial Times that said that Wall Street donors are partial to Governor Cooper of North Carolina, who's taken himself out. Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania. Hollywood donors are partial to Kelly, and I think they love the storyline of an astronaut on the ticket. And also, obviously the tragic but ultimately heroic story of the assassination attempt against his wife, Gabby Giffords, and the way he has stepped in the breach on gun issues.

And then you have, you know, as well, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who has indicated she doesn't really want it but is an extraordinary voice in Michigan.

And lastly, Governor Shapiro, I first really, you know, he got on a lot of our radars by being on TV and doing very good interviews. He really got on my radar at a 2022 rally at the end of the campaign. It was for Shapiro and Fetterman, and Joe Biden and Barack Obama spoke. And you could make a case that Shapiro was so powerful that that particular day, he might have even outshone Barack Obama, which is not something you usually see. So this is, to me, an exceptional group of people.

And I think a lot of the veep choice is based on two calculations. One is intensely personal. Whom do you want to work with? Whom do you want in the room with you when you have a tough decision to make and can say, what do you think, and really trust them? And that's totally personal to her.

And the other is the political calculation. And I think that's very complicated in this case. I interviewed all five of these folks last year for columns. Oh, Andy Beshear, I forgot to mention, the governor of Kentucky, whom we should talk about, because he has spoken very openly about his faith, and it's very important to him.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

As has Shapiro and Pete Buttigieg. It's been refreshing.

E.J. DIONNE:

I love Pete because he said he may be politically liberal, but he is a liturgical conservative, he once said. I think he’s the only Democrat ever running for president who described himself as a liturgical conservative. You're right. Governor Shapiro is a deeply religious person. He’s Jewish, and Shabbat is very important to his family. And he tends to turn down invitations on Friday nights because he wants to honor the Sabbath. And I think it's very important, as you and I both agree, that Democrats and progressives speak to religious people. And I think that in this list, you've got a lot of people who can do that.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

And let's not forget the vice president herself, who comes from this very interesting background where, you know, one parent is South Asian Hindu, and another parent is from a Christian background. She goes to a historic Black college, and then, ultimately, marries a Jewish man. And so part of my fascination with her dating back to, you know, something I was saying in 2020 was like, someone who's been in that many different spaces, religiously, is actually a pretty important person for this moment in our country, when we are so religiously diverse; that people who can navigate different religious spaces, but also celebrate the difference and recognize that, together, those things are actually a powerful offering for our country. And actually, our religious diversity is a strength, not a weakness.

And so I think it's a really it's an interesting moment for the country when you have, you know, certainly, Vice President Harris; but then on the other side, you have this very interesting, very conservative… I think JD Vance is a really interesting person. I think, as a Catholic, I think he had a conversion experience that made him very conservative, and you know, he hasn't helped himself by saying some things that are really, I think, offensive to the majority of women in America. And I'm just curious how you how you understand that kind of religious matchup between these two. But he married a Hindu woman. And the religious element of this election, I think it's fascinating.

E.J. DIONNE:

Yeah. I’ve got to say that J.D. Vance’s wife was one of the speakers at the Republican convention whom I watched and said, this is an interesting person, and, I'd love to get to know her more than I do. I just think - before I forget it, I want to shout out Bashir, something Bashir told me when I went down there last November, right before the election, when he got reelected in Kentucky, one of the most Republican states in the Union. And I noted that he had been very open about his religious faith.

And, you know, this is something people could put up on their wall if they wanted. He replied to me, he said: for me, faith is about uniting all people. It says all children are children of God. And if you're truly living out your faith, you're not playing into these anger and hatred games. And it would be very nice to have somebody preaching like that, around the country on a regular basis, which, of course, many people do. But I was just really struck that that was the way in which he chose to talk about it.

And I think in this election, you know, on issues related to religion, one of the fundamental divides is between people who are, directly or indirectly - sometimes they're called Christian nationalists, you know, but they don't all have to be called Christian nationalists - but who really do seem to want to argue that the Christian faith is foundational to everything in the American republic, and they have the idea that we are, in some deep sense, a Christian nation. It's obviously true that Christianity was central to the thinking of many of the founders, but the founders were very conscious of not creating a religiously-based republic. The First Amendment is a pretty radical idea for its time, and it's still a powerful idea in the world.

And what you have on the other side, and what I think you should have on the other side, are not people who disrespect religion or religious people, but who respect religion so much that they don't want to have the state interfering in people's religious lives. And, you know, on J.D. Vance’s faith, Paul Elie, my Georgetown colleague and great writer for The New Yorker, had a really good piece I commend to people on J.D. Vance’s conversion to Catholicism.

And I think what you're seeing in the Catholic Church… You know, my mom was a librarian, so I have this bad habit of suggesting readings to people like my mom used to suggest books to people. National Catholic Reporter had a very good editorial on the bishops and the deal that some of them have made with the Republican Party. you do have a real argument going on, I'll put it gently, within my tradition, the Catholic tradition, between an emphasis on social justice, and on all those parts of the scripture that lift up the poor - which is, on the whole, exactly where Pope Francis is coming from; and a rather radically conservative wing of the Church, some of whom are skeptical about democracy itself and are quite open about that. And so that argument is being carried out in a lot of our traditions. It's certainly been carried out within the Catholic tradition. And I think that that argument will underlie this campaign. I don't think it will be the centerpiece of the campaign, because I think the voters who will decide the election care more about jobs and prices and some other issues, but I think it will be very, very important. And obviously the abortion issue will be important, which touches on these debates about religion.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Right. I think it's one of the interesting phenomena of the past 30 years that I know you've commented on a lot, but you know, you and I represent a kind of a tradition in religion that is equally legitimate as the more conservative religious traditions, and yet even in conversations on the Hill, people tend to say, okay, it's the religion versus the, you know, secular progressives. And that's actually just like the false dichotomy. I mean, if you look at many of the issues, even the culture war issues, so to speak, you know, religion is on the side of, you know, marriage equality and LGBTQ equality. I mean, almost 70% of religious people do support some kind of marriage equality for LGBT people. It's also with abortion and with a lot of the social issues that come up. It's not like the religious folks are uniformly against these things. They're not. And yet there's a kind of a narrative that we're still fighting against is like, you know, that that there's religion versus progressive. And that's just it's not the way that it carries out.

But I think the Democratic Party is always, a little bit, trying to figure out how to do it. But there are a lot of people - you've mentioned a few of them, like, I think, Josh Shapiro, the way he talked about religion in his campaign against Mastriano was super interesting. I mean, he really represented a different way forward. And, Mastriano was really one of the most openly kind of Christian nationalist candidates we've had in recent years. And Josh Shapiro really pummeled him. And that was an example.

I'm curious how you look back at your understanding of the religious right. You wrote a book about Souled Out, and, you know, it has the language after the religious right. How have you understood the religious right - you know, as its inception, but then how is it morphed? Like, what is the language that you use to describe what's happened to those on the right who have really rallied using religion as a rallying point over the last 20 years, but specifically in conjunction with the candidacy and presidency of Donald Trump?

E.J. DIONNE:

Well, I mean we all have things we like in books we've written. And I enjoyed writing that book. And I stand by almost everything I said in that book. But I think in retrospect, it can be said that I underestimated the staying power of the religious right. We should all acknowledge error. And I think, and I'd be happy to talk about that…

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I‘m not trying to, it's not a gotcha moment.

E.J. DIONNE:

No, no, no, I'm saying that, you were not “gotcha,” Paul. You know, I'm Catholic. We confess sin. That's what we do.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Okay. I'm not Catholic, but I’ll still absolve you.

E.J. DIONNE:

Yes. please. Let me tell a story. I may have said this years ago when I was on with Welton, God bless his soul. I have always been taken by the following story that, when Tim Kaine ran for governor - Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia ran for governor of Virginia, he was opposed to the death penalty. And his campaign knew that he was going to be attacked for that at some point. And they had an ad in the can. And Tim Kaine is a very religious person. Religion is deeply important to him, and he's acted on his faith in his own life.

And the ad they put out began with Tim Kaine speaking, saying: I'm against the death penalty because my faith teaches me that all life is sacred. And he went on to say he’d enforce the law of Virginia, but he didn't shy away from saying, on religious grounds, he was opposed to the death penalty. And when his campaign did focus groups of that ad, one of the reactions from people was not about the death penalty. It was: Tim Kaine can't possibly be a liberal because he's religious. And that's kind of what's happened to religion in our country.

And I think it goes all the way back to the rise of the religious right in the late 70s and early 80s when President Reagan, you know, won the election and took office, where so much attention was given to the religious right. 20, 30 years earlier, people like Reinhold Niebuhr or Paul Tillich were on the cover of Time Magazine; but for a very long time, because of the political power of the religious right, religion was spoken of in this way. I think there's a particular challenge both to, if you will, to use a debated term, mainline traditions, because they tend to be much more politically diverse than White evangelical churches are.

And secondly, the Democratic Party has a very complicated coalition problem on religion that they're constantly thinking about, and it's why they keep looking over their shoulders about religion. Because you could argue, just from the polls, that the Democrats include the most religious people in the country by virtue of how often they go to houses of worship, what they say about their faith, which would be African Americans, Black Americans. And on the other hand, the least religious people in the country, who are secular, who are known as the religious Nones, who don't identify with any religious traditions. And then all kinds of people in the middle: you know, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, and people who adhere to all kinds of other faiths. And then, of course, Catholics and Protestants. So that Democrats are often reluctant to enter this terrain because they don't want to blow up their coalition.

And lastly, I think it's because, you know, the mainstream media have tended to be much more focused on, as I mentioned at the beginning, the conservative part of the religious world than they used to be back before the rise of the religious right.

So I think all of this has had an effect on how we talk about religion. And I say this sometimes to my conservative Christian friends that, you know, you are sending a message to a lot of young people who don't agree with you on some of these issues - particularly, I would say, LGBTQ rights. And you're saying that being a good Christian means that you have to oppose these rights. And a lot of young people are walking away from religion as a result. Some day when our politics is a little less divisive, it'd be nice if we could have a quieter conversation within our traditions and say: let's look at where young people are on religion right now, and what people in our traditions might be doing not to bring them in, but to push them away.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah. Well, you'll appreciate this story: I was offered the opportunity to give the commencement address several years ago at Colgate Rochester Crozier Divinity School, which is where my great-grandfather taught, and Martin Luther King, Jr. attended. And it was right after one of these big surveys talking about how many young people had left the Church. And what I just said is like, I'm not like a traditional evangelical where everybody has to be a Christian for me to love them or anything like that. What I am sad about is that I feel like people are getting a misrepresentation of Jesus, and they're leaving the Church because of that. And so that felt along the lines of what you had just offered.

I do think it's sad for those of us who remain within the tradition - I'm raising my kids within the tradition - but it is sad that so many people, sometimes with the loudest mic, might be turning folks off.

I wanted to turn to your latest book, about 100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting. Tell me about why you decided to write that, and what does that really mean - especially in light of all the efforts which seem to be continuing to purge people from rolls and get people who are legitimately able to vote off the ability, like, voter suppression. What was the prompt to write this book, and what does it really mean?

E.J. DIONNE:

Well, I've been interested in this idea for quite a while, partly because I happen to have spent, for various reasons, quite a bit of time in Australia, which has had a version of this system for 100 years, almost 100 years. They call it compulsory attendance at the polls. And in Australia, all citizens are required to cast ballots. Now, the penalties are very low, they're like, I think, 15 bucks American right now at the exchange rate, something like that. Most people don't actually have to pay the fine if they have a reasonable excuse for why they didn't vote.

But what they've done in Australia is two things. One, the government helps register people and makes it very easy to register to vote, so that 96% of Australians are registered to vote. And they make it easy to cast ballots. And 90% of them vote in every election. And so what they've done with this is they've created a culture of participation across the country. And Election Day is like a party. They hold elections on Saturdays. A lot of the polling places are at schools. Over the years, civic groups - and now it's true at every polling place - use the election to raise money for various school causes, civic causes. So they sell food at every polling place. It's become so common that there are websites, now, that grade the food at each polling place. And you can vote anywhere in your state, so you can pick your polling place by what food you want to eat.

And, just one quick thing, virtually all the polling places, they're grilling sausages and they're known as democracy sausages. And in deference to the views of many of our friends, we urged that there be vegan alternatives to democracy sausages. And a friend of mine in Australia told me, we got those too.

So I got interested in this idea. My friend Bill Galston, a colleague at the Brookings Institution, and I wrote a paper ten years ago just saying why the US should think about adopting this system, which has been in effect in about two dozen countries over the years. A lot of countries in Latin America, actually, but the Australian system has been around one of the longest and continuous.

And my friend Miles Rapoport, the former Secretary of the State of Connecticut, as they call the Secretary of State there, and a voting rights activist all his life, read the piece and came up to me and said, you know, I've been involved in all kinds of reforms to make voting easier, to tear down barriers to stop discrimination. I'd never run across this idea before. Let's put together a working group where we bring together people who have worked on voting issues in the US, lawyers and activists and academics and politicians, in some cases, and talk about this idea to see what it would look like here.

So we put out a report through Brookings and the Kennedy School up at Harvard. And the New Press was interested in the report and asked if we wanted to do a book on it. So Miles set up an organization off the book called 100% Democracy, and he's trying to get states and localities to experiment with this, and he's had some success there. You know, it's been introduced now in a number of states: Connecticut, in Washington state, I know. And we think that this is the ultimate barrier against voter suppression, because it becomes the obligation of the people who run elections not to build barriers against voting, but to make it as easy as possible for everyone to do their civic duty.

And we keep the penalties low and make sure they're not criminals, so we don't inveigle people in a mess of penalties or fines. It's much more a nudge than a shove. But it works really well in Australia. It's worked well elsewhere, and we'd like to see it adopted here.

And the last point I want to make: some progressives get on us for this. There's no guarantee this helps the progressive side, because there are some groups who would be brought into the electorate in larger numbers: young people, especially if you had a system like this, who tend to vote Democratic; but there are other groups like White working class voters, some White Latino voters, who would also be brought in in larger numbers, who don't vote Democratic. Many of them vote Republican. So we're not interested in it for partisan reasons. We just think democracy should mean democracy, and that means everybody should be invited in, and that voting really is a civic obligation.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I think this is a very interesting idea. I hadn't heard about the Australian method. It does bring to mind, like, there are some states that have passed laws… You mentioned, like, they're providing sausages or vegan food. There are some places where they've said, you can't even bring food to people who are waiting in line…

E.J. DIONNE:

You can’t bring water! I think it was water, in Georgia.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

You know, I mean, this is like polar opposite. And I will say, I think some on the more conservative side have actually stated, like, it doesn't help us to have more people voting. I think you probably are right. Like, we don't know what would happen if we actually had 100% voting in this country. We'd have no idea who that would actually help. But there is at least a language out there that some conservatives have openly used, which always seems to me to be like shooting your own, why would you go ahead and say that? But they do say, it doesn't help us to have more people voting, which feels to me like the most undemocratic thing in the world.

I think it would be interesting to get some states, starting with something like maybe even a small state like Connecticut or Washington to see what would happen and what would be the results.1

E.J. DIONNE:

I've had the idea that I would love, you know, Utah and Vermont and D.C. trying this idea. Utah and Vermont because, you know, Utah is a Republican state, but it's been open to political reform. Vermont or Maine have also been open to political reform. I want D.C. in there because there's not as much diversity in those states. And so you would have a test in three sort of different kinds of places. There are a lot of other places you could do it. That's just one idea I have. And, you know, you could also test it in cities, in local elections. You know, a lot of our reforms over the years have bubbled up from states and cities, you know, laboratories of democracy. I think there is a famous Brandeis, and we talk about that a lot when we are plugging our idea, that this is a real case where you could have laboratories of democracy.

The other thing - and I'll be happy to move back to where we started, but I've talked about this a lot as thinking about our elections having become like fancy dinner parties. You know, at fancy dinner parties, people have A-lists and B-lists and C-lists. And if you don't get all the A-list people to say yes, you moved to the B-list. Election shouldn't be fancy dinner parties. And yet they are, because people who not only are registered but vote regularly are on an A-list and get all kinds of communication from political campaigns; registered voters who don't necessarily vote often are on the B-list; and unregistered voters are on the C-list. Democracy shouldn't be like that. And the beauty of this system is every politician knows they have to talk to everybody, because the turnout will be closer to 90% plus than it is to 60, or on a good day, 60% plus. And we think that could have some positive effects.

A lot of voters who don't come in are not particularly ideological. So you might - I wouldn't guarantee this, but you might have somewhat less polarized politics as well, that politicians would have to speak to people who aren't necessarily all that political but care about their country.

And, final thing I'll say about this, one of my favorite photos of voting in Australia are three people in wetsuits near Bondi Beach in Sydney. And they all know they have an obligation to vote, so they get out of the water, their surfboards are leaning up against the voting booths, and they are carrying out their civic duty. And then they are jumping back in the surf. And it just shows, I think, how deeply embedded the idea that voting is a civic obligation has become in Australia.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah, well, you know, it made me think, when you were talking about the A-list, the B-list, the C-list, you know, the Poor People's Campaign, Bishop Barber and Rev. Theoharis, you know, they're really like, there's  huge amounts of very poor voters who are just ignored during the election. The politicians have figured they don't have to speak to them and they don't have to speak to their issues. And part of their, you know, thought is, well, actually, you know, we should get those voters motivated. But when you were talking about more people coming and there not being an A-, B-, C-list, it occurs to me that it would force politicians to be a little more universal in their understanding of what their priorities were and ways to get their message out that actually really invited a more universal understanding of how we can build a civic society together that benefits everyone.

E.J. DIONNE:

Yeah, a lot of civil rights groups have endorsed this idea, and I’ve got to send my book to Rev. Barber, somebody I admire very much. Because, you know, if you look at the kind of economics of campaigning, people say, even progressives say, you know, if we spend a lot of money trying to turn out voters who aren't going to vote, we're going to waste money that we should be spending on voters who we know will vote. Well, yeah, I get that. But that's a real problem because it creates a vicious cycle. If people don't ask you to participate, don't invite you in, you are less likely to participate. If you feel ignored, you are less likely to participate.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

And you're more likely to just decide that democracy is never going to work for you, that these elections will never work for you. And you tune out and say, you know, same as it ever was.

E.J. DIONNE:

Yeah. So, by the way, I mentioned my editor, Diane Wachtell, I should have mentioned her name, at the New Press, who has actually published an extraordinary number of books about civil rights and fairness and equality. And she's a great editor, and we are very grateful to her. If I might shout out, Diane.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Good, good, good. You know, one of the things that I've noticed about you is your willingness and ability to talk to people across the aisle. I mean, you had your favorite famous conversations with David Brooks, and in this moment of just really radical polarization, which I have to say, like I'm trying to figure out, like, what are what are what are some spiritual tools that you feel - I'm going to put you in the, you know, the priest, E.J. Dionne - but what are some… I think we're sucked into this vortex of really beginning to demonize others. And what are ways that you keep yourself kind of sane? An ability to imagine a way forward with people who you disagree with.

E.J. DIONNE:

Well, first of all, I very much worry about myself as much as anyone else on this these days, because I think the degree of polarization has made political conversation much harder.

I had a very dear uncle who was very, very conservative, and we spent 35 years arguing about politics, and we loved arguing about politics. And you could almost tell how polarized we were at a given moment by how high we raised our voices. But I never stopped loving him. And his kids kindly asked me to give the eulogy at his funeral. And I made a point of quoting Richard Nixon, and I said, you know, I quoted Nixon because I think uncle Ray would like that. But I thought if he heard me quoting Nixon, he might rise up out of that casket just to tell me I knew he'd be quoting Nixon someday!

And I worry that if my uncle Ray were around, he might be a Trumpist, and that I don't know if we could have… You know, we loyally argued with each other for 35 years. We loved each other for 35 years. And I wonder if those conversations would be possible. And you're seeing this. You and I have both, I'm sure, heard from people and families where they used to have robust political arguments. They didn't stop loving each other. And those are much, much harder now.

And I really do ascribe that, in particular, to the rise of Donald Trump. I think that, you know, we became more polarized over time. But I think it got a particular jolt when Trump came along. And so I think it's very difficult. I'd like to think that our religious institutions might try to do something about this after this election is over. The next three months are just going to be hard, and we'll have to live with that. But couldn't traditions where you have predominantly progressive congregations getting together with predominantly conservative congregations doing stuff in their communities so that they can all agree?

The gospel teaches about helping poor people, helping moms, helping kids, you know, with school work, you could get together and do that. And in the course of doing that work together, create an opening for dialogue, because one of the biggest problems in the country, which is not political, is something that Senator Chris Murphy, Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican in Utah, the Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, have talked about, is the increasing isolation of people in our country. And, you know, I think our religious institutions could try to bring people together.

Now, as soon as I say that, you look at many of our traditions and they have been split by politics. And you're seeing that in the Episcopal Church, you're seeing that in the Methodist Church, and a lot of other churches. You know, Catholics, there's not a schism, but there is clearly a split. So I offer that idea and wonder, can we do it? But I think it's worth trying, through our religious traditions. Because I do think, at least in principle, deep down, whether you are a progressive Christian or a moderate Christian or a conservative Christian, you do understand what the gospel says about the poor, the left out in the excluded. And you can't write those words out of the Gospels. And some people, I guess, might try, but you can't do that.

And, you know, I've always thought a lot of conservative Christians actually do do some of that stuff. They just don't want the government doing it. And that's the argument they make. Maybe we should try together to do some of these things, because it is very difficult.

The other problem is that, you know, we are increasingly separated geographically from each other; that people tend to live in places that are overwhelmingly conservative or overwhelmingly progressive or Democratic or Republican. There's always been some of that, but there's more and more evidence that that has grown. In our very liberal neighborhood in Bethesda, Maryland, I used to tell my kids that I always respected people who put up Republican signs because they had guts to do it in our very Democratic neighborhood. And so it's become tougher.

But we’ve got to try and, you know, one of the biggest questions facing us is if Donald Trump loses this election, will we have an opening, afterward, to try to rebuild some connection across some of these lines?

I'd like to believe that's true, but I'd like at least to have a chance to test it out.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Well, that, you know, the big part of that is, like, if he loses; it'll be another question entirely if he wins. But, you know, I think the point still stands. And it is a really important question for, like, what does the future look like in this country? But I'll segue into the final question, which is what we ask everyone who comes on this show is, E.J. Dionne, what gives you hope in this moment?

E.J. DIONNE:

Well, my answer to that hasn't changed much for about 15 or 20 years. I always say that I am incredibly blessed that I get to teach students year after year after year. And I always say one thing you do not want to become, if you're a male, as you grow older, is a grumpy old man - and my students keep me from becoming a grumpy old man. You know, time will take its toll, but I hope not on the spirit.

And this, by the way, includes, you know, students who don't agree with my politics. I had a very conservative student who was a great student, and she was looking for a job on the Hill. And I told her, I will recommend you or denounce you, whichever will help you get the job. But, you know, these students gave me a lot of hope. And a lot of them, obviously, these days, young people are, you know, people under 30, under 35 are a more diverse group. They are a more progressive group. I think they are leading forces on behalf of progressive ideas, in the country. So in a political sense, that gives me hope. But the whole generation, including students who might disagree with my politics, give me a lot of hope. And obviously, we all like to see it in our own kids, and I do see it in our own kids. And so that sort of gives me hope.

The other thing that's giving me hope in the last couple of weeks is how much people have come alive; that it took just one spark to create a different mood in American politics. And it doesn't mean the campaign won't be rough, that there won't be a lot of attacks, that we might well be at each other's throats in October and maybe it won't feel quite as good then, although I don't know. But to see that people were looking for some opportunity to be engaged again, and are taking it, that gives me hope, as well.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

E.J. Dionne is a political columnist for The Washington Post, a best selling author and popular television commentator. He's distinguished University professor in the foundations of democracy and culture at Georgetown's McCourt. He's distinguished university professor in the foundations of democracy and culture at Georgetown's McCort School of Public Policy and author of numerous important books, most recently 100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting.

E.J., it has been great having you back on The State of Belief.

E.J. DIONNE:

A real joy to be with you. Bless you.