Faith and FIFA: Religion at the World Cup

REV. PAUL BRANDEIS RAUSHENBUSH, HOST:

Jack Jenkins is a prolific national reporter at Religion News Service, the leading non-sectarian, nonpartisan, nonprofit journalistic enterprise focused on religion and faith. Jack's always great at contextualizing current events through the lens of diverse beliefs and motivations. He's the author of the book American Prophets: The Religious Roots of Progressive Politics and the Ongoing Fight for the Soul of the Country.

Madhiha Anis is a New York-based journalist who has graduated from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Her comprehensive Religion News Service overview of religion at the World Cup is headlined, From Christian Prayer To Sudrud: Religion Is All Over The 2026 World Cup. That inspired me to say, let's talk about religion in the World Cup since we're all obsessed with it. So Medhiha, Jack, welcome to The State of Belief.

MADHIHA ANIS, GUEST:

Thank you.

JACK JENKINS, GUEST:

Thanks for having me.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

We're recording the day after the Belgium-United States match. Lots of opinions about that. But I I want to back up a little bit, because one of the reasons I really wanted to have this show was to recognize again the kind of go-to religion reporter saying “Religion is everywhere.” Religion is part of every story, and indeed, at the World Cup, religion is part of the story.

Madhiha, maybe you can start us off with just when you thought, okay, I'm going to write a story about the World Cup, what prompted that? What was the moment where you saw and you were like, yeah, this is a religion story?

MADHIHA ANIS:

I'm a huge fan of soccer and I play soccer myself,  and I've been watching this World Cup. And when I was watching this World Cup, specifically, I noticed that a lot of players from the Moroccan team, they would have the sujood, which is a prostration to God in Islam. And that got me thinking and I was like, okay, there's a lot of, I'm seeing this and they're displaying it in the world stage in front of a huge crowd; and I'm like, okay, this is something to talk about.

And then I watched other matches and then I saw one of the teams have a Christian prayer circle, and that got me really inspired. And I was like, this should be talked about and this should be a story because I did see a lot of chatter on it on Twitter and on social media, specifically people talking about why it's so important to pray before a match or to have the sujood or just to involve religion in sports. And that got me inspired and I really wanted to write a story about this World Cup and seeing what we're seeing here, faith being displayed in the World Cup.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

There was a video of the the Mexican team on someone's TV and as they were panning across all of the players, the guy was doing like the Catholic prayer on each one of them to bless them. And I just think it's important to recognize that all of these teams and all of these places have religious traditions and they're not left on the sidelines. And we see this in America. And sometimes, frankly, it gets a little like, God wanted us to win today, which indicates that God wanted the other team to lose. And I think that becomes very reductionist as opposed to: we're bringing our full selves into the match, all that we are into this match.

Jack, what occurs to you as someone who follows religion, largely. As you're following the World Cup, how have you seen religion displayed?

JACK JENKINS:

Yeah, just to echo Medhiha, there's been a whole subtext here of athletes being very visible about their faith. Most prominently Lionel Messi, of course, one of the premier players of the sport all over the world, who I just watched miss a penalty kick as we've been talking. He actually has a tattoo of Jesus with a crown of thorns on him, right? And that is really not that uncommon. You see a lot of these athletes talk about their faith and be very visible about their faith, irrespective of what it is, on the field. And to your point, Paul, kind of bringing their full selves to the sport.

With the US national team, it's actually kind of an interesting emerging story. It's not that religion has never come up with the US men's national team - we've actually had players in the past who've been really vocal about it. But some of the key players, like Christian Pulisic, have kind of been posting Bible verses to their various social media accounts. We had Matt Freese, actually, the goalkeeper, who has been the starting goalkeeper for this World Cup. He apparently reportedly mentioned offhand to a reporter that he knew Christian Pulisic before he joined the team precisely because they had met at a Bible study. So there's this kind of undercurrent within American athletics in general that clearly comes up in the World Cup context, as well.

And I'll note that even in the last World Cup there were some elements of this. You may have noticed after the United United States went out in the last World Cup, the game that they lost, DeAndre Yedlin, who's a practicing Buddhist, actually kind of had these sort of gatherings out on the pitch where he would have post-match meditations that for them may have been inculcated into a different faith, but for him it was part of his Buddhist tradition. So just looking even specifically at the American context, Yunus Musah, who was actually a player in the last World Cup as well, who's Muslim, all of these folks have been very public about it, to a point where it's honestly hard to miss that religion is a part of the game.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

What hasn't seemed to be a through line, because of the the tension in the world and I haven't sensed that - even I think Egypt and Iran played, and you know, you have two different strands of Islam there. but I didn't hear anything about the kind of Sunni-Shia animosity, which can be very intense in parts of the world.

Medhiha, did you clock any of that? That's a way of getting into a broader question of, is this a way to actually show how religion can show up in the world without it tainting or leading people to negative things, but actually just inspiring people to the most positive.

MADHIHA ANIS:

I think I no, there was definitely not anything going on between the Sunni-Shia aspect, but I think what you pointed out is such a great thing. Yeah, a lot of them are in different strands of Islam, but this match, a lot of people were united and it shows that sports can bring different strands of religion together as well, because there's the Sunni-Shia, there's always a little bit of conflict there, but in this aspect you see that everyone was united and everyone was cheering on and I think that was beautiful.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

That was really a very positive moment. What other stories around religion came to mind? Were there opportunities missed for us, broadly, to kind of celebrate religious diversity in this World Cup? It really hasn't been a story aside from your story, Madhiha. What are other stories that you would want, from your article, that you'd want people to hear about, that this was religion on the world stage?

MADHIHA ANIS:

I think there's a lot on representation, as well. There was the first Sikh player in the New Zealand team. And I think there can be a lot of follow ups being like, okay, what does representation mean? What does religious representation mean on such a big world stage? And just, I think, more about diversity and different religions and how sport is included in that. I think that can be a good follow up way, from my story.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah, representation. And in some ways excellence is excellence, and seeing how it's demonstrated in so many different ways. In some ways you could call football - or soccer as we call it here - like its own religion. I mean, the way people engage - we're stretching the meaning, but people… It's all of them. You know what I mean? I'm a very fair weather follower and so I'm not like you two,  I love watching excellence in sports anyway, but I'm not in it the way people… I just think about the Mexico-England game and the Mexican crowd in that stadium. It felt like any Billy Graham thing; you can just see how people are so, like, it's their soul ripped out when they lose. How does football or soccer as a whole intersect with how we understand religion? Jack, maybe I'll give that to you and then Medhiha if you want to weigh in.

JACK JENKINS:

Yeah, I want to note that there's a little bit of fluidity here. Not to bring up Messi again, but you know, in Argentina in particular, both Messi and his great predecessors in that country, it is not uncommon to see them depicted almost in iconography - in the same religious symbolism of Catholicism. And that’s not necessarily seen as offensive. That is seen as, that is just part of the culture. and even when Messi will do well in a game, the chant “Messi!” usually is like people kind of jokingly bowing to him. And so there's this fluidity between those spaces where it's not that the sport itself is deified. It's not that, but in terms of the sense of reverence for the game, the beautiful game as it were, the idea that it builds community, something that religion often does as well, I would argue they're not even necessarily opposed to each other.

There's a lot of overlap in terms of religious communities participating in soccer, and we have a couple of popes in a row here actually who have talked about their interest in soccer. Pope Francis, obviously, but even Pope Leo was speaking about it recently, that apparently he played a little soccer in seminary as a defender. He did not speak well of his own talents, but that doesn't mean that he hasn't also understood the value and the cultural importance of the game.

So I think there are many people who have written about soccer as a religion. And I think what they really mean by that is the intense sense of identity and purpose that it gives to people. Like you were talking about that Mexico game. You know, football in Mexico is part of the national identity.  That is how people understand themselves, understand the country itself. It's not quite at that status yet in the United States, much as us soccerheads would prefer it to be. but I do think that that sense of identity, purpose and community all overlap for a pretty understandable comparison when it comes to fandom and religion.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

If these things, my team will win. You know, I remember a commercial, I don't know what it was for, but this guy goes down to the basement to get some supplies of whatever product and his team scores and then he realized, I have to stay in the basement for the rest of the game. This will be the key thing.

JACK JENKINS:

I do have to note, by the way, the US men's team coach, when he was previously coaching another team, actually went on a pilgrimage specifically to a religious site to implore that his team would avoid relegation. So I'm just saying the synthesis is very real here.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Well, in this case, I want to talk about what what happened in the Belgium-United States game. Because it was one of those things where when they were up against Bosnia, United States was up against Bosnia, and then there was the foul called, a lot of question marks around it, but the United States rallied, they kept on going, they proved themselves to be an excellent team that deserved to be where they were. And so we were going into the fight with Belgium with, we're an underdog, we have a chip on our shoulder, and we're scrappy, we're resilient, we can do this, and we can make our mark on on the international football stage or soccer.

 And then our president makes a call to the person who gave him a peace prize. Everyone knows what I'm talking about who's listening, if you haven't been under a rock. And it was just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't do that. Whatever you think you're doing, you're not doing that. I mean, he knew exactly what he was doing. And so when you heard that that happened, what was your initial… Madhiha, let me start with you. What was your initial, like, what does that mean?

MADHIHA ANIS:

I think the my first thought was, no, this is going to be so bad for the sport and such a bad look for the US team. Because if they had made it further, there would be an uproar. there would be an uproar from the Belgian national team, the Federation, the Football Federation, and I heard other coaches speak, too. The Norway coach spoke, the UK coach spoke, because they have a red card going on right now, as well. And they all said the same thing, it's bad for the sport - and that was my initial thought. This is going to be bad for the sport and the US national team because it's just a bad look, unfortunately.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah, it's a bad look. It also just felt like bad mojo. I live in New York City most of the time and when Trump showed up for a Knicks game, they lost. The only game. And everyone in New York was like, he did that. He did that. And again, you're getting into kind of cosmology, you know, these kind of effects - but the moment I heard it, I was like, That's a disaster.

Not just for all the reasons that, Madhiha, that you mentioned exactly right, but also because it's bad mojo. It's bad spiritual energy that is now covered our national team, United States national team, even though they did nothing. They didn't instigate this. It was the president who did it. So it drives me nuts. Anyway, Jack, where were you when you learned that the president ruined our national team?

JACK JENKINS:

Well, it's particularly interesting because irrespective of how you feel about the president and the president's politics, separate entirely from that, it was fascinating to watch sports reporters and soccer reporters that I know immediately react so negatively - just because the president doesn't have a good track record with what happens when he touches a sport, right? It often hurts the team that he's advocating for.

Irrespective of his politics, that was the reaction. Which ironically I do feel, to Medhiha’s point, the US men's team getting rocked by Belgium despite Balogun being willing to play, in some ways, probably is beneficial to the broader sport in terms of the perception of, could a politician tip the scales? It's an interesting question as to whether or not the president calling would have tipped the scales, or if the scales were already tipped for a number of other political reasons, divorced from the president. There's lots of folks who have lots of thoughts about FIFA and and the allegations of corruption and what have you that would have predated that phone call, if that makes any sense. But the reality is that it hung over that event regardless.

And I was reading some of the reactions of the players after their loss to Belgium, and it was really fascinating how dumbfounded they were. Usually you have players be like, yeah, this is clearly what went wrong. This is why we weren't 100%, this is why we didn't have the energy - but they really seemed to be having difficulty to articulate why it was they didn't have energy on the field, why they weren't able to do that.

And I will say, in some regards, the pressure that they seem to have had with regards to how to make good on the Americans that had flocked behind them. That the support that the US men's team had gotten that was arguably the best they'd ever had, both on the field and the support they had behind them. And the fact that they feel that they disappointed the American public… Maybe we're a proper football country now because we were talking about identity that soccer gives you, right? The fact that you feel absolutely crushed and like people are going to have a bad day tomorrow because the US men's team lost, you know, walking around in a daze…

JACK JENKINS:

You know, just because of the fandom. That's something that we are used to seeing in Europe or South America, but not in the United States. So that religious element, that religious dynamic of identity and what it gives you, it was interesting to kind of see how the players couldn't articulate why they messed up on the field, but they were very clear that the pressure had gotten to them. And I feel certain that the drama around Balogun and the president's involvement only augmented that pressure.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

The entire time I was watching the game, it was the lens through which I was looking, unfortunately, and how I was trying to explain to myself the team that had looked so powerful and skilled in leading up to this didn't seem that. And you could just argue Belgium was a better team and that's probably right, but I don't know. It just felt like a different kind of team on the field. And so now we actually are proving your point a little bit. We're debating the fine points of soccer.

One thing I did want to get to, Madhiha, is you actually are an athlete yourself, including a soccer player. You've spent some time on the field. Have you witnessed, or even yourself felt like how religion or or spirituality has flowed into your own playing?

MADHIHA ANIS:

I've played club soccer here in New York and before I go into a match I always pray. And I think there's an element of, okay, God will help me guide through this the best way possible and guide the match the best way possible, whatever the outcome is. And having that being integrated while you're playing, knowing that, okay, there is someone else about me and that can help me get what I want is the sort of spirituality that comes with this game. I feel so when I'm playing.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

So you could identify with what's going on on the field. And I do think, in both victory and defeat, there's an opportunity to feel like, okay, I'm being held, I'm being carried, there is another day. I think I'll speak for many religious folks and non-religious folks when people overindex on, God made us win. It's a little bit of a bummer because that can be the way you understand God, but it's a little rough on the people who lost.

You know, I remember there was a game, I think it was the Seahawks, and they beat the Packers. And I'm a diehard Packer fan, and they said something like, God was with me when I made that. And I was like, you're saying God's against the Packers? But anyway, I do think as we move through, one of the dynamics has been a really interesting…

JACK JENKINS:

I think some fans would say that. That's the thing, it gets pretty intense out there. It does.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

…kind of Europe versus the world, in a way. I think African teams have done very well this time and there has been a sense of, okay, maybe the future of the sport is going to begin to even out and hopefully not be dominated by any one part of the world. And we'll see what happens with this. But it is interesting how some of the most important and traditional legacy countries have already left. I mean, didn't Brazil already leave? Germany left early. That was crazy.

JACK JENKINS:

We did better than Germany!

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Well, Madhiha, thank you so much for both your article on Religion News Service. People can find it, Madhiha Anis, and look for Religion in the World Cup. And so thank you for joining us. I'm going to stick around with Jack for a little bit longer to talk about some other events.

MADHIHA ANIS:

Thank you so much. This was great.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

So Jack, I know that you do have a life outside of the World Cup, although you wouldn't know that from following you on social media. But you do have a world that you cover, which is religion, largely religion in the United States. I would love to get your kind of - I don't want to say post-mortem, but I do want to say, what was your take on the way religion has factored into America 250? Because it is that year, and it's been pretty major, as a discussion point on, what is religion in America? Who are we? It's an identity question.

JACK JENKINS:

I think what's been fascinating to observe over the course of the year - and I kind of place it starting back roughly a year ago - is this kind of skimming over of, I think, a reality, which is that it is absolutely the case, that there was a lot going on religiously around the time of the founding. There was a lot going on religiously among the founders. But the reality is that what was going on was actually very complex. There were very different sects of Christianity, for instance, that were very much not in concert with each other, that were actively sparring with each other throughout the founding period and beyond.

There were obviously deists, you know. One of the people kind of underplayed the impact of someone like Thomas Paine, who wrote Common Sense, the pamphlet that set the American Revolution ablaze in a lot of ways, who ultimately was a deep critic of American religion. And in fact, a lot of historians argue that's why we hear less about Thomas Paine these days, is because his criticism of religion later in his career played so poorly in the American public for a variety of reasons.

I bring that up because that complexity, the fact that you had different religious traditions represented, that there was debates even among the founders - I mean, Thomas Jefferson famously did not like Jesuits and Presbyterians, in particular. The fact that there were these kinds of conflicts, you wouldn't know that if you went to some of these events that were put on by the White House, for instance. I was down at the the Freedom 250 event on the National Mall that was focused on faith. And there were two Catholic bishops who were there via video and one in person, but the rest of the faith leaders that were represented on stage were all evangelical. And even when the one rabbi spoke, projected behind the rabbi was a Christian cross!

And there was a very specific theology and identity that was associated with the American founding that doesn't necessarily, historians argue, reflect the facts of what the American founding was actually like, the complexity of the different Christian traditions. Never mind that the entire denomination, this is the Progressive National Baptist Convention, which was the home denomination of Martin Luther King Jr., actually kind of protested that event and likened it to examples of Christian Nationalism.

And my closing point here, and I think this is important, is if you went to that event, an image that showed up more than once in the giant projected screens on the National Mall was this image of George Washington kneeling in the snow praying. That is an image that is drawn from a very specific story of George Washington praying in Valley Forge. It's a story that historians have long dismissed as almost certainly false - that was told to me by the head of the Washington Presidential Library, who is herself a presidential historian. She's like, we've long dismissed this as almost certainly a fabrication - but the Secretary of Defense has invoked that story often, as have other members of the Trump administration. Mike Johnson over the last year has both insisted that Thomas Jefferson told this prayer to himself every morning. Monticello, Jefferson's former home, has a section of their website dedicated to how that is not true, that that prayer is not something that he is ever known to have recited.

And even more recently, Mike Johnson, speaking at the Faith and Freedom Coalition, talked about John Quincy Adams having this very specific story where he says, “Duty is ours, results are God's.” It's this quote attributed to John Quincy Adams and even the founders that also Office of Management and Budgment director Russell Vogt invokes. I have asked the people who oversee the Adams Family papers, and they can find no instance of John Quincy or other members of the Adams family saying that.

All of that history has been invoked by members of the Trump administration and Republican officials to draw a very specific idea of what America was, this very specific understanding of Christianity that was more uniform than it ever was at the founding, which is in direct conflict to the kind of rich religious history we have in this country that did not get much play on the center stage, both figuratively and literally, over the last year.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

You've laid it out very well, just the kind of rewriting of history and bringing out these stories which have been dismissed by real historians, but that's neither here nor there. I mean, you have Hegseth quoting Pulp Fiction as Scripture, the veracity of history, of religion.

I don't want to overstate this, but I do think it's interesting that - tell me if I'm wrong - were there members of the LDS church at the Rededicate250 event?

JACK JENKINS:

No, not that I saw, which is fascinating. That the most reliably Republican religious group in the country, historically, was not on stage.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

When the Department of Defense or Department of War redefined which of religious groups are, you know, figure them out, they did not put LDS as part of a Christian denomination. They separated them out, which got the senators from Utah quite exercised because they were, like, why aren't we along with the Episcopalians and the rest of these folks? So I don't know what the implications are ultimately, politically, but I think that there is a sense among the Church of Latter day Saints that they are not part of a religious coalition. They may be a part of a political coalition, but they have been excluded from a religious coalition that is rooted in Christian Nationalism, that is ultimately rooted in in a Protestant Christian Nationalism.

JACK JENKINS:

I do think the the dynamic - and I should note that after the pushback from senators and others the Department of Defense did shift it so that they got rid of the rChristian subheading altogether and just named the traditions on their own. But there is an interesting kind of a running theme throughout both Trump administrations, is that administration kind of coming into conflict with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that represented anything from Mitt Romney to Jeff Flake as these prominent members of the tradition and political figures, to kind of like early on during his campaign, when there were all these Republican officials that refused to accept Syrian refugees, the exception was Utah, right?

And there's even some pushback, a very rare point of pushback from the Church issuing a statement that was a de facto rejoinder to Trump's then very explicitly proposed Muslim ban. And so there's a lot of fascinating tensions with regard to where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sits on the the political spectrum these days, because when it comes to policies, again, they're one of the most reliably Republican constituencies in the country. But there does seem to have been some distance between them and the aspect of Trump's base that often invokes Christian Nationalism, typically in ways that sometimes will exclude that religious tradition.

I won't go down the rabbit hole, although I'll note that the thing about Christian Nationalism is that there's actually a few different kinds of it and they don't always agree on who's in and who's out, and that seems to have been playing out.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

And that's kind of one of the defining characteristics of religion, in some ways, in general. But moving to another area, I'm curious how you read the current situation with the Pope, Pope Leo. There's a lot of interesting dynamics going on, both within the Catholic Church and this kind of…

JACK JENKINS:

the SSPX.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

And he was just like, you're gone. I mean, there was no like, well, let's keep talking, let's compromise. He was like, No, if you consecrate these bishops, you're out. and I think that that's pretty strong measures from a pope who probably, in some ways, wants to hold things together, but he's like, this is beyond the pale.

JACK JENKINS:

There was surprise even in Catholic circles that myself and other reporters are in conversation with for our reports of like, other popes have done - and to be fair, there's an argument within the Vatican that would say a lot of leeway has been given to this group over the years, and that at some point, if there was going to be this level of resistance to the Vatican, when the Pope was sending them a letter, reportedly, the night before saying, like, please don't do this, and they did it anyway. At some point, when are you going to call it?

But it is interesting in terms of this pope being the one to do that, to say, look, I'm not going to try to draw this out, that this ends now. And that the clarity with which the statement came down, that these are schismatics, right? That they're excommunicated, what have you, I think says a lot about the power he's bringing to this conversation.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

And especially in the in the context of an American pope, and given how it pains Catholics to say it, but there is a real divide within the Catholic community about how to engage society right now in politics.

I do want to  turn, as we finish up, into how you're understanding religion vis-à-vis the upcoming midterms and where you're seeing that show up, and how you can imagine it showing up over the next whatever, four months.

JACK JENKINS:

So few of them mentioned share, I want to acknowledge up front that there are - I'm going to talk about Christianity in a second, but I want to acknowledge there's also several dynamics involving Israel, Judaism, Islam, several different pieces of this that are kind of playing out in granular congressional level stories that you will also see reported out over the next few months that are also going to be very important. But I also want to talk about something I reported on recently: there's this debate in Congress over the correct interpretation of Matthew 25, with Mike Johnson and Rep. Michael Cloud kind of arguing - Mike Johnson in particular arguing that that Matthew 25, you know, how do you care for the least of these? You know, when I was hungry did you feed me, what have you, that that only really applies to individuals. That it's not incumbent on the government to hear that Scripture and then create a broader social safety net, for instance.

Whereas Raphael Warnock, when I spoke to him about it, he's like, you know, the text says “The nations are judged by this,” that this is why Democrats of faith, including Warnock, who is both a pastor and has a PhD in Systematic Theology, appeal to this passage so often. So that's happening in Congress. It is also happening in races such as Talarico's in Texas.

We are seeing Talarico, who's articulated his version of faith, if you ever attend a mainline seminary, he's really not that out there for the average mainline seminarian, which is what he is. He's a member of the Presbyterian Church USA and Austin Seminary. And the response that he has gotten, both from his political opponents and religious opponents, who have gone out of their way to attack his faith, to accuse him of apostasy or heresy, what I find fascinating about that is that it's been a while since we've seen it put so explicitly like this, in terms of evangelicalism in particular, kind of coming after more mainline Christian pastors and beliefs in such a direct way that we've seen both in the halls of Congress and now in this Texas Senate race.

I think that's partially because Talarico, I don't know whether or not he'll win, but his chances are higher than the average Democrat in Texas. And so that kind of calls the question. But his victory in the Democratic primary came alongside several other pastors across the country, including both Black Protestants but also White mainliners. In Iowa, for instance, two pastors won their Democratic primaries there. And that’s where the lens of religion has kind of shifted back..

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I think in Kansas, as well.

JACK JENKINS:

Yes, Kansas as well.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I think a senator who's a Methodist pastor.

JACK JENKINS:

Exactly. And I think part of that is that they've lost the narrative on religion at least a little bit during this administration.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I think that's exactly right. And I wrote a piece, actually, for Religion News Service, your employer, just saying something like Christian Nationalists are panicking because religious progressives are thriving. And it was sparked by something from James Dobson, who was sounding the alarm because these folks were invoking Jesus the wrong way. You know, I mean, not the way we do it. They were invoking Jesus for themselves, and saying, we have to be so careful now because they're talking about Jesus.

And people on the more progressive side, you know, you wrote the book on it, have been invoking Jesus for a long time, in support of progressive causes. And so it's very interesting to see, you have Basheer from Kentucky, you have it all over the place. And I think that one of the fascinating things has been the not backing down, not ceding space. And specifically, if you talk about trans issues, they say, you're in favor of trans and you're a pastor, that's impossible. It's like, well, no, it's not, and here's the reasons why.

And we had James Talarico on this show as a senator, as a state senator, alongside another state senator who was Muslim. And they were talking about the way they were showing up for one another and how important it was to recognize the religious diversity that was in Texas. And that in the Senate, there was almost a a way of denigrating other faiths aside from the Christian ones, and Talarico and a Jewish senator, they all kind of got together and decided, we're actually going to stand up for one another. So this is all part of a broader movement. And, full disclosure, Interfaith Alliance is very much a part of that, as listeners know.

But even with what we started talking about, Religion 250, we came out immediately and said, this is a country for everyone. It was always messy. At the founding, we had Muslims in this country, we had Indigenous religions, we had Jews, we had Christians of all different faith traditions. And the reason it actually was allowed to thrive in such a way was the non-establishment clause. So can we remember that when we talk about religion in our 250th anniversary? It's going to be interesting to see - I don't want to say the hangover, but the pullover from how the debates of of 250 and religion in the America 250 debates go into the midterm election.

JACK JENKINS:

And I'll just add the big subtext here is that the administration's immigration policies have really pulled them into a place where not only has it energized religious opponents who would have opposed the administration arguably anyway, it's also pulled some more, some would say, conservative religious groups into that same camp. And as, reportedly, detensions of immigrants have now started to go back up again under DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullen, I think that argument's just going to continue to be in the news. And after both the president and the vice president have had theological disagreements very publicly about immigration with two popes in a row, it changes the conversation around religion, even if you agree with the president's policies.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Completely. There still is a very fervent support base that is religious for this president, including those who continue to believe that he is divinely ordained to be president right now, which is, I think, one of the most, frankly, concerning and dangerous ideas because I think it leads to things like January 6th. But I do think you're right. And we've seen that with one demographic, which is the Latino evangelicals, are very concerned about the way their people are being targeted. And that's just one example of groups. I mean, when you have the Cooperative Baptists, which is not a a radical group at all, joining in lawsuits about sensitive spaces, there may be some sort of shifting in the way religion shows up. It'll be very interesting to look at exit polling and religion in the midterms 2026.

I will use this opportunity for all our listeners, look out for The Vote is Sacred tour, bus tour, that is coming across the country. We're going to be going for an entire month this year, all across the upper Midwest, down the eastern seaboard, across the south. So it's coming to a community near you, The Vote is Sacred with Interfaith Alliance and many of our friends.

Since 2018, Jack Jenkins is national reporter at Religion News Service. He's the author of the book American Prophets: The Religious Roots of Progressive Politics and the Ongoing Fight for the Soul of the Country.

Jack, thank you so much for all your wisdom and passion about the World Cup and also about the national religious landscape.

JACK JENKINS:

Always a pleasure, always a pleasure.

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