Whenever Trump slimes Christianity, as is his wanton wont these days, I’m reminded of a line of dialogue delivered by a tempestuous artist in the film “Hannah and Her Sisters”:
“If Jesus came back, and saw what’s going on His name, He’d never stop throwing up.”
It’s no surprise a seriously disturbed individual afflicted with Narcissistic Personality Disorder would devolve to the point where he thinks of himself as God. Anyone who’s shocked he’d jealously target the Pope has clearly failed to track his mental deterioration.
What this means, however, is Trump and his toadies (like J.D. Vance, who has warned the Pope to “be careful”; like Pete Hegseth, who quoted a vengeful fake Bible passage written by Quentin Tarantino) have gifted the Democrats a golden opportunity to narrow the “god gap.”
The god gap is easily explained. People who worship a lot tend to vote Republican, while people who worship a little or not at all tend to vote Democratic. It’s been that way, almost without exception, since the 1970s – mostly to the GOP’s advantage, given the fact, documented by the Pew Research Center, that roughly 70 percent of Americans identify themselves as religious and 62 percent identity as Christian. And here’s a noteworthy stat from 2024: Trump won 64 percent of the voters who attend religious services at least once a month.
You might be asking yourself, “Why in the world would 64 percent of regular worshippers vote for a convicted criminal and serial defiler of every conceivable moral tenet?” No doubt there were many reasons. Trump would cure inflation, Trump would never go to war, Kamala was a stand-in for woeful Joe, etcetera. Plus one perennial factor: Fairly or not, the Democratic party is widely perceived as godless.
Dems do best with those who rarely or never worship. But if they want to reverse their decline, starting with the 2026 midterms, they need to convince some skeptical voters of faith the blue party hews to the traditional moral values that Trump’s crew has left in the dust. Stuff like compassion, empathy for the downtrodden, and loving thy neighbor.
James Talarico, the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas, has raised more money nationwide than any other Senate hopeful. He’s also a Presbyterian seminarian – few 2026 Democratic candidates have that credential – but anyone on a blue ticket this year would be wise to heed and echo his warnings about MAGA’s so-called “Christian nationalism.” Which he rightly condemns as extremism with a cross: “There is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism. It is the worship of power…It is a betrayal of Jesus of Nazareth….What you’ve got now are people baptizing their partisanship and calling it Christianity.”
Talarico is not alone. Four years ago, Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow (who’s currently running for the U.S. Senate) fought back after a Republican colleague claimed she wanted to “groom” schoolchildren for pedophiles. She did so by referencing her religious roots:
“My mom taught me at a very young age that Christianity and faith were being part of a community, about recognizing our privilege and blessings and doing what we can of service to others, especially people who are marginalized, targeted, and who had less – often unfairly,” McMorrow said. “I am a straight, white Christian suburban mom. We cannot let hateful people scapegoat and distract from the fact that they are not doing anything to fix the real issues that impact people’s lives.”
How hard is that? Link your faith to humanistic values and affirmatively state the obvious, that social-justice Christianity is a potent force for good. Why more Democrats don’t do that, instead of curling into a fetal position, is beyond me. For decades they’ve ceded invocations of faith to an opposition that has deftly filled the vacuum. The classic Democratic moment came early in the 2004 race when candidate Howard Dean, queried about his faith, said he switched from the Episcopal church to the Congregational church in the 1980s because the former wouldn’t give him land to build a bike path.
Granted, there’s no guarantee Democratic bids to narrow the god gap would pay off. Back in the day, Al Gore and John Kerry quoted the scriptures while on the stump against George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 – but they lost regular-worshippers anyway, by double digit margins. And today millions of devout voters will continue to spurn Democratic candidates at all levels, even Democrats of faith, because the party continues to support gay marriage and abortion rights.
But given the tight margins of so many elections, and the importance of the few competitive House races in this year’s midterms, any defections from Trump’s 2024 coalition – especially among white Catholics (potentially turned off by his blasphemies) and Hispanic Catholics (mindful of Jesus’ compassion for the needy) – could prove politically fatal to the MAGA cult.
The divinity of Donald is on November ballots in all but name. The Bible prohibits the worship of false gods, and no doubt he dismissed that as a speed bump, but Republicans fighting to keep the Congress may well be punished for his sacrilege.
Copyright 2026 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at [email protected]