President Biden has framed his presidency and reelection run as a battle for “the soul of America,” which his campaign defines as a fight for causes such as abortion and transgender rights.
Some Christian leaders are bristling.
“The Biden administration and the progressive left have a perverted, skewed understanding of the soul of America. They are ripping the country apart with this assault on our children that includes the so-called right to destroy an innocent life and to destroy a child’s innocence with the radical LGBTQ ideology,” said Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote.org, which advocates for Catholic principles.
As the president fights for the nation’s soul, the FBI is investigating Mr. Biden on suspicion of taking a $5 million bribe from a Ukrainian businessman while he was vice president in the Obama White House.
The Justice Department, meanwhile, has prosecuted the president’s chief political opponent, former President Donald Trump, on charges of obstructing justice and violating the Espionage Act by keeping classified documents after he left office.
Jeff Hunt, director of the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University — a nonpartisan think tank focused on faith — said Mr. Biden’s view of America’s soul is “warped.”
“If that’s the soul of America, it is not a lasting soul. It’s a warped soul not founded on natural law,” he said. “The real soul of America is the strong families and strong religious beliefs.”
Mr. Biden’s campaign explained how he sees the soul of America by pointing to his comments at a joint press conference Thursday with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Mr. Biden said state legislatures that have passed laws restricting transgender rights have caused rising hate crimes and attacks on LGBTQ people.
“Our fight is far, far from over because we have some hysterical and, I would argue, prejudiced people who are engaged in all of what you see going on around the country. It’s an appeal to fear, and it’s an appeal that is totally, thoroughly unjustified and ugly,” Mr. Biden said.
The Biden campaign said America can save its soul by rejecting abortion bans and restrictions on LGTBQ rights and by confronting an alarming rate of gun violence.
Indeed, in a three-minute video address to launch his reelection campaign, Mr. Biden vowed to fight Republican “extremists” who are “telling people who they can love [and] dictating what health care decisions women can make.”
Lewis Brogdon, director of the Baptist Seminary of Kentucky’s Institute for Black Church Studies, defended Mr. Biden’s use of soul imagery in his campaign. Mr. Brogdon said the soul of America should not be rooted explicitly in faith but rather in using public policy to create equitable outcomes for all Americans in areas such as poverty, racism and bigotry.
“We can have different religious beliefs, but we don’t need government to weed out who is getting the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” he said. “I like that Biden is fighting for a country where everyone’s rights can be respected.”
Mr. Biden’s definition of the soul of America has changed repeatedly.
In 2020, he described it as restoring morality after the tumultuous four years under Mr. Trump. Then it became staunchly more political and used to excoriate Republicans’ philosophy as “semi-fascism” and to label Republicans as extremists.
“MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refused to acknowledge a free election,” Mr. Biden said in a speech from Philadelphia ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
Since then, the fight to restore the soul of America has centered on cultural issues such as LGBTQ rights, abortion and education.
The White House has struggled to define what Mr. Biden means by America’s soul.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre could not provide a status update when asked earlier this year to assess Mr. Biden’s progress in his battle for America’s soul.
“He believes that our democracy is still under attack and we have to do everything we can to protect it,” she said.
Mr. Brogdon said the discussion about America’s soul is about the national character. He sees Mr. Biden working for a better America that restores the soul by addressing economic conditions that sometimes drive people into extremism or cause them to lose faith in the country. Poverty, Mr. Brogdon said, is leading some Americans down rabbit holes of conspiracy theories and tribalism.
“We are talking human decency and ensuring the country is not a country for the super-wealthy,” he said. “The way economics work does not work for all Americans in this country.”
Polls show voters are split on how to define America’s soul.
An NBC News poll released in April found that 50% of Americans said society’s goal should be to promote greater respect for traditional values and 42% said it was to encourage greater tolerance.
The same poll found that 48% of Americans believe society has gone too far in accepting transgender people, compared with 43% who say it hasn’t gone far enough. By party, 79% of Republicans say Americans have gone too far and 76% of Democrats say they haven’t gone far enough.
Mr. Burch said Mr. Biden’s policies are leading America away from its roots as a Christian nation and the Founding Fathers, who were influenced by the Bible.
“We need to rediscover and promote families, parents and the critical place of religion in society,” he said. “They are necessary to sustain Democracy against the threats of left-wing ideology.”
The debate about the nation’s soul frequently returns to the abortion issue.
Mr. Burch argued that America cannot restore its soul until “it restores the most precious right of every human person to live and breathe free, including the unborn.”
Mr. Brogdon countered that allowing women to decide what to do with their bodies is a moral issue.
“The very people who claim to care about the unborn are supporting policies that are destroying human life. It rings a little hollow that we care more about children who are unborn than the ones living in poverty. It’s past time to reframe how we talk about the issues that divide us. That is part of restoring our soul as a country,” he said.
The Biden campaign is confident that cultural wars will motivate his supporters.
Campaign officials pointed to the 2022 congressional elections in which Democrats fought off an expected Republican landslide. Democrats campaigned on abortion access, which proved to be a powerful force that helped them retain the Senate, though they did lose control of the House.
Some political analysts say the message has limited appeal. Robert Rowland, who teaches political rhetoric at the University of Kansas, said talk about the nation’s soul might not bring any new voters to Mr. Biden’s side.
“It’s a pretty potent message for a limited audience that would already be Biden supporters,” he said. “He’s preaching to the choir.”
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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