Religion and the election in Pennsylvania

Ivey DeJesus of the Harrisburg Patriot-News and Peter Smith of the Associated Press are covering Christianity and the 2024 presidential election in Pennsylvania. I was happy to help them with their stories.

Here is a taste of DeJesus’s piece, “Some Pa. evangelicals, motivated by Christian teachings, voice support for Harris“:

In an election poised to be decided by narrow margins, faith voters could help tip the outcome. The question remains: which direction?

John Fea, a professor of American History at Messiah University, thinks there is a growing sector of white evangelicals who are frustrated with Trump but the alternative is unpalatable.

“I do think the Harris campaign is not giving evangelicals who don’t like Trump any kind of reason to vote for her,” he said. “She is culturally progressive. She’s leading with abortion. This is one of her main issues. She is pushing a lot of DEI culture that white evangelicals resist. I don’t see white evangelicals gravitating to her candidacy.”

Fea noted that some evangelical leaders have abandoned Trump out of their exhaustion from the litany of criminal convictions and sexual improprieties.

Still, they remain silent.

“Trump’s mocking of Harris’s intelligence. His outrageous statements. They know it’s immoral, but they are not willing to speak up,” Fea said. “They are not willing to speak with prophetic voices because they know that if they speak out or call out Trump for this behavior for which they know is wrong, they know it’s unbiblical, they will lose the larger war.”

Read the rest here.

And here is a taste of Smith’s piece, “Pennsylvania’s Catholics are divided over an election where their votes may be decisive“:

Nationally, Catholic voters have been a crucial swing constituency in recent presidential elections. This year, in the vital state of Pennsylvania, they’ll likely comprise at least a quarter of the electorate — and thus play a pivotal role in deciding the overall outcome.

There’s been a see-saw effect in the state. Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by about 44,000 votes in 2016; Joe Biden defeated Trump by 80,000 votes in 2020.

John Fea, a history professor at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, said he believed Biden — an Irish-American Catholic and regular Mass-goer — connected with some Catholics as being one of their own.

“I don’t think most working-class Catholics thought Biden was a perfect candidate, but he was one of them,” said Fea, who studies the interaction of religion and politics.

Now Trump, a nondenominational Christian, is back atop the Republican ticket, with JD Vance — a Catholic — as his running mate.

The Democrats have a ticket without a Catholic, headed by Kamala Harris, who is of Black and South Asian heritage and is from a Baptist tradition with a strong social-justice orientation, and running mate in Tim Walz, a white Lutheran.

Fea said some voters in the counties around Scranton, where Biden was born, may have voted for him in 2020 because of the Catholic connection but might not vote for Harris.

“You could make an argument that as goes those counties … so goes Pennsylvania, so goes the nation,” Fea said.

Read the entire piece here.