Â鶹ÒùÔº

On March 17, Joe Biden took firm control of the Democratic nomination process, winning primaries Florida, Illinois and Arizona by significant margins. The ongoing coronavirus epidemic is in part responsible, having , but the role played by religion in Biden's resurrection should not be overlooked.

Indeed, Biden's comeback began in South Carolina, where his win gave much-needed momentum for Super Tuesday. In that state, black voters make up a . So it is no surprise that all the , including , before the primary.

Black Americans, who are and , are the most religious group: (compared with 61%of whites). They are also more likely to attend church and pray.

Greater presense of religion in American life

Even outside the African American community, the American people as a whole continue to :

• (compared to about 10% in France and 6% in the UK).
• .
• 56% say they believe in God

In other words, Americans are still far .

A match between a secular socialist and a centrist Catholic

Of all of the presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders is probably the . He identifies himself as both , does not participate in any and defends the .

Sanders has a political vision of religion. He connects religious beliefs in general, and his Jewish heritage in particular, to . He often , and .

But the suggests that than economic justice.

Sharing faith, making connections

Joe Biden's may be great, but he was vice president to the first black president, Barack Obama. Contrary to Sanders, he has not been talking about religion but rather about his faith. And he has done so not in political terms but in emotional and personal terms. For instance in a , he was able to connect with an African American pastor whose wife was killed by a white supremacist by sharing personal tragedy: the loss of his own wife and daughter in 1972 and his son in 2015.

By building an empathetic bond with voters, he also avoids taking pointed positions on controversial issues such as and . This seems to be working: he is the only Democratic candidate considered "rather religious" by more than half of American adults ().

While expressing genuine grief, he has turned his sorrow and pain into political assets, having no qualms about using them in this campaign ad, for example, where he says almost word for word what he expressed in the CNN town hall interview with the pastor.

He won in South Carolina as well as a good size of the religious white voters ().

Religion in Congress

If you have doubts about the relevance of religion in politics in the United States, just look at the US governing bodies. The 116th American Congress is more diversified on the religious level, but remains overwhelmingly Christian ().

Only one elected representative, (Democrat of Arizona), claims to be nonreligious and no member describes themselves as an . Even someone as as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mentions and even .

Religion in the White House

Religiosity is even more . US presidents have been invoking faith and God ever since George Washington expressed his "fervent pleas to this Almighty Being who rules the universe" in his . Moreover, that the use of religious language and even explicit references to God have increased in presidential rhetoric since the 1980s. For example, that iterations of the phrase "God bless America," the most explicit statement linking God and country, are now expected in all major speeches, although they were almost entirely absent prior to Ronald Reagan.

According to a , this trend seems to be even more pronounced with Donald Trump.

Although he , there is ample evidence, as , to suggest that the current tenant of the White House is the least religious president of the modern era. Yet he invokes religion the most, and the political strategy is obvious: after all, in 2016, . His promise: to defend them in , especially on the subjects of , and .

Beyond the particular case of Donald Trump, all presidents of the modern era have , with the notable exception of John Kennedy whose Catholicism proved . No person of the Jewish faith has received a presidential nomination from a major party (Joseph Lieberman received only the Democratic vice presidential nomination in 2000), and the Mormon affiliation of Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate in 2008, was .

A changing religious landscape

The ever-increasing presence of religious rhetoric in political discourse is both the reason for and the consequence of , particularly of white Evangelicals, since the 1970s. This politicization has highlighted the racial divide that exists in the United States. According to (Public Religion Research Institute), a non-profit, non-partisan organization, "no religious group is more closely linked to the Republican Party than white Evangelical Protestants."

The label "evangelical," however, is . It is a trans-denominational movement mostly within Protestant Christianity based on a :

• The Bible at the center of faith
• The atonement for sins through Jesus' death on the cross.
• Personal conversion and salvation.
• The sharing of the gospel, from which this movement takes its name.

But not all evangelicals are white and conservative. There is a small proportion of non-white Evangelicals () as well as some white Evangelicals who are progressive () and tend to vote for Democrats.

Nevertheless, statistics show a slow __ since the 1990s, particularly in the younger generations. Similarly, the number of Catholics has slowly declined, while the number of historic .

• 

• 

See this by political scientist (based on ) :

The trend most discussed by academics (, , or ) is the increase in the number of Americans who do not identify with any religion, namely the nones (not affiliated with a religion). They are now at least as numerous as evangelicals, if not more. But as researcher , nones have in common only that they do not want to be counted as belonging to a religious group or established traditions. It says nothing about their actual beliefs.

A shows that atheists and agnostics are on the rise, but still account for less than a third of nones, with the rest identifying themselves as "nothing special." Unsurprisingly, Bernie Sanders is .

Religion and younger voters

Younger generations are increasingly , but they are also the generations which reduces their impact on the elections. Even if they voted more, as , America's institutional political structure .

Religion is thus likely to continue to play a major role in US elections for years to come. And with the help of what the "Christian nationalist machine," Donald Trump will certainly make religious identity a central element of his campaign.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .