Despite how Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz presents the matter, there is no societal benefit to come from avoiding talk about religion.
In the debate with Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) earlier this week, Walz chose to quote the Bible in order to elucidate his immigration stance. “I don’t talk about my faith a lot,” he said, “but Matthew 25:40 talks about ‘to the least amongst us, you do unto me.’ I think that’s true of most Americans.”
Walz’s inaccuracy in remembering the exact quote really does not matter in this case. It is a fairly simple concept, and he relays the meaning well enough. Nor, interpretation-wise, is there any need to pick it apart. Good on Walz: The verse is applicable and thoughtful. It is of no use for the journalist to speculate how authentic or utilitarian is the governor’s relationship with the faith he invokes.
Still, when Walz said he does not “talk about his faith a lot,” he meant it, and he input a certain moral value to not doing so. He made an exception, this one time, and brought viewers into his mode of thinking. There is normally no place for it, but, hey, Walz needed to break himself down to the level of the common man. He evened out his tone and made the verse as unobtrusive as possible — he should not even have needed to bring it up in the first place!
So goes the private faith compatible with the Democratic Party. What results is a distortion of the place of religion in society. Religion — Christianity, mostly — is now considered a danger to the structure of freedom rather than a means of accessing it.
But one does not need to be a theocrat to promote religion in the public square. Hard data support the positive relationship between religiosity and well-being. People are more content, healthier, and probably friendlier. Happier individuals make for a better-functioning society, so why discourage the source?
Many might consider that the varying modes of such religiosity are incompatible enough to need smoothing out. Perhaps, yet “smoothing out” differs from plain omission, and the latter is what we see most often.
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Rather than being a constrictive force, religion today seems to be a bastion of freedom that politicians such as Vice President Kamala Harris want to suppress. Vance, on the other hand, presents the case that support for something like faith-based child care translates to greater parental choice. Even if unfettered choice is not the ultimate goal of religion, public faith is a pretty agreeable effect of religious freedom.
Did some leftists let out sighs of relief when they heard Walz mention the Bible? Probably, because it provides a common moral thread to which they can cling and justifies an otherwise tenuous connection to Christianity. It may also be that they truly want to proclaim it. But with the way figures like Walz represent religious influence, the impulse to conceal it will not change anytime soon.