Pete Buttigieg’s Very Public Faith Is Challenging Assumptions
What makes Pete Buttigieg an intriguing figure isn’t his political experience, which is minimal (he became mayor of South Bend in 2012, at age of 29); or his political philosophy, with which I disagree. (He’s a progressive, while I’m a conservative who is a critic of Donald Trump and of progressivism.) It’s that Buttigieg speaks openly and easily about his Christian faith in a party that is becoming increasingly secular and religiously unaffiliated, and he does so in a manner that stands in marked contrast with the evangelical leaders who support Donald Trump.
Buttigieg is challenging the assumptions of a lot of people.
Start with those in the Democratic Party. Buttigieg, an Episcopalian who studied under Sacvan Bercovitch, the renowned scholar of Puritan America, is willing to speak about God before nonreligious audiences in a way that is natural. I don’t sense that his faith is being used...
