What do we know about the Christian vote and its ideology?

Long before Trump's first electoral victory, American political scientist William Connolly was already warning of the danger of the growing alliance between fundamentalist Christianity and the most ferocious neoliberalism, a marriage of convenience that shared goals through the Tea Party. From that ultraconservative movement, which emerged in 2009, its most successful—so far—and striking product would be born: Donald Trump. Connolly maintained that, to stand up to this project, the progressive alternative could not underestimate the Christian electorate, as if all believers were right-wing fundamentalists.

Connolly draws two contrasting narratives about what it means to be a Christian. On one hand, he defines the "Christianity of resentment," built upon a decontextualized and biased reading of the Apocalypse. For the followers of this narrative, life is an epic—and black-and-white—movie of good versus evil: they are the good ones, the chosen ones, and their mission consists of executing vengeance against the enemies of God, who are all those who think or live differently, or those who come from outside. On the other hand, Connolly speaks of the "Christianity of generosity," which springs from the program of the Beatitudes, from the words and personality of Jesus of Nazareth, an itinerant preacher, poor, and clearly outside the system. For the Christians of generosity, life is about giving of oneself and building a more just and egalitarian world, and they do not conceive of a faith without works of solidarity. Connolly is very critical of actually existing Christianity, but this does not prevent him from acknowledging that, in the same way that resentful Christians are a potent fuel for reactionary populisms, generous Christians can be a relevant pillar of progressive options.

Almost twenty years after the publication of Capitalism, Christianity, American Style, one of Connolly's seminal works, many analysts have returned to his theses to explain the Democratic victory in the November 3rd midterm elections. In 2024, the Latino voter, mostly Christian in any of its denominations, was decisive in bringing Trump to the White House, seduced by a discourse that appealed to their feelings and moral convictions. Two years later, however, this voter is disappointed, feels deceived, because nothing that was promised to them has been fulfilled, and instead has suffered, in their own flesh or in their environment, the repressive madness of the immigration police, much like a new Gestapo.

The Democrats have understood that if they wanted to win they needed to address this voter. And they have done so by fleeing from the culture war, where Trumpists always win. Democratic candidates have focused on the bread and butter of the material living conditions of middle-lower and working classes who have been the first victims of Trump's brutality. They have not distributed holy water nor have they given explicitly religious sermons, but they have managed to connect, discursively and emotionally, with normal, good-faith people who try to live by the evangelical commandments of loving one's neighbor, compassion, and caring for the most vulnerable. The paradox is that it has been with an egalitarian narrative of material basis, and not with the postmodern discourse of fluid diversity, that the Democrats have boosted candidates from the party's left wing, and have won the first openly gay senator, the first Muslim senator, and the first Black female governor in the history of the United States.

None of this is extrapolable to Europe, where societies are much more secularized than the North American one. But it makes sense to ask about the behavior of the Christian vote in our latitudes. Also on the old continent, the left is again placing more emphasis on social justice and the struggle for equality in material living conditions, ahead of identity battles. And because of this, it also makes sense in Europe for progressive options to appeal to a Christian voter with whom they share a good part of the social agenda.

Sociologist Mar Griera, from the UAB Institute of Sociology of Religion, provides data that breaks preconceived schemes: in Catalonia —there is no data for the Balearic Islands, a pity— the majority of the population that declares itself Catholic is ideologically located on the left. This piece of data dismantles, or at least nuances, an overly automatic association between Catholicism and the political right. However, at the same time, the vast majority of people who are located on the right identify as Catholic. How is this duality explained? Once again, because we encounter the two narratives alluded to by Connolly. There exists a Catholicism understood as a conservative and traditionalist political identity, but there is also a Catholicism, undoubtedly less noisy but surely more numerous, lived as an experience rooted in the Gospel. The Christians of this narrative —those of generosity, as Connolly says— have important connections with social movements, volunteering, and grassroots citizen networks, spaces where the extreme right has a hard time because people think and share.

The far-right uses religious symbology for a purely identity-based purpose. But if we scratch the surface, their display of the cross and Catholic imagery is not devotional but idolatrous; it does not appeal to faith but to sentimentalism, and in doctrinal terms, it borders on blasphemy against the second commandment, which orders not to take the name of God in vain, that is, not to manipulate it for one's own benefit or to legitimize a discourse. If we strip the religious folkloric paraphernalia from the far-right, what remains is the antithesis of the Social Doctrine of the Church: hate speech against those who are different, the rejection of hospitality and the criminalization of migrants, extreme individualism, the sacralization of private property, climate change denial, and all the other pearls secreted by their acute stomachache program.

There are Catholics who may succumb to the siren songs of political proposals that nominally defend Catholic identity. It is an understandable temptation in a time of crisis and insecurity and with a significant retreat of Christianity in public life. But beware. It is also required that they contrast the proposed options with the Gospel, and that they do not allow themselves to be seduced by those who noisily wave religious symbols to make them a banner of exclusion, while directly renouncing the program of the Beatitudes. In turn, the left cannot take for granted that the Christian voter is already lost and condemned to choose between the right and the far right, because, for sincere believers, the political battle is not fought between believers and atheists, but between a narrative that presents politics as a wall to protect one's own privileges, and another narrative that conceives it as the space where, lo and behold, freedom, equality, and fraternity are built.