Last night, Bernie Sanders was asked about his religious practice, and he told a town hall in Derry, N.H., that he is a very religious person.
Everybody practices religion in a different way. To me I would not be here tonight, I would not be running for president of the United States if I did not have very strong religious and spiritual feelings. I believe as a human being that the pain one person feels– if we have children who are hungry in America, if we have elderly people who can’t afford their prescription drugs– you know what, that impacts you, that impacts me, and I worry very much about a society where some people spiritually say, It doesnt matter to me, I got it, I don’t care about other people. So my spirituality is that we are all in this together. And that when children go hungry, when veterans sleep out on the street, that impacts me. That’s my very strong spiritual feeling.
It was a sincere humanist answer that got big applause. Sanders did not reference organized religion: not his own Jewish background, or his respect for Pope Francis, which surely stems in part from his wife Jane’s Catholic faith. By contrast, Hillary Clinton later spoke of a minister and rabbis from whom she draws inspiration.
Sanders’s unaffiliated-but-spiritual answer also reflects a key part of his appeal. He is winning young people by an overwhelming margin (84 percent of those under 30). And young people are the ones driving the fastest-growing religious group in America: religious “nones.” People who may well be religious but don’t go in for traditional religious organizations. Last year the Pew Research Center came out with the stunning news that while mainline religious identification was dropping, people who said they were Unaffiliated– religious “nones”– made up nearly a quarter of the population, up from one in six in 2007.
And the trend was most pronounced among the young:
Fully 36% of young Millennials (those between the ages of 18 and 24) are religiously unaffiliated, as are 34% of older Millennials (ages 25-33).
Last week Pew came out with another study saying that Religious Nones are playing a surprising role in the election campaign. They are helping to drive the Trump phenomenon, inasmuch as Republicans don’t see his lack of religion as a bar, and they are also helping out Bernie Sanders. Look at this:
The fact that Sanders is Jewish wouldn’t be a hindrance, according to that survey. This question shows that 10 percent of people would be less likely to vote for a candidate who is Jewish; far more would be concerned about an evangelical Christian candidate (20 percent) or a Muslim (42 percent).
Other survey results suggest that religious None’s have more and more influence on American political life. If you look at that chart above, religious None’s are not nearly as concerned about a Muslim candidate as American Christians are. And the number of Americans who would object to an atheist being president is crashing.
My point is simple: Bernie Sanders is winning adherents among the young because he shares their religious values. He doesn’t talk about priests and rabbis. He talks about spiritual moral questions in a language that anybody can understand. Just because they’re religiously unaffiliated doesn’t mean that the None’s aren’t spiritual. A lot of us are like Sanders himself, trying to find moral guides to navigate a complex and unfair American landscape.
Sander is also intermarried; and Pew says that the young are intermarrying like crazy:
Religious intermarriage also appears to be on the rise: Among Americans who have gotten married since 2010, nearly four-in-ten (39%) report that they are in religiously mixed marriages, compared with 19% among those who got married before 1960.
There are two lessons to me from this data.
One is parochial and Jewish. The most plausible Jewish presidential candidate in history — according to Chris Hayes, the first Jew to win delegates to a national convention — is an assimilated Jew who speaks in universalist terms. (I pray to the great spirit that Sanders gets rid of his vestigial Zionism, but in the meantime he is a rebuke to the Jewish community’s effort to stop intermarriage and assimilation by raising the walls on their community.)
The second lesson is that the mainstream media should stop trashing Sanders as an oddball and just watch the deep connection he is making with a little more respect. Chris Matthews keeps putting Sanders down as a 60s relic who’s pie-in-the-sky (as opposed to a disciplined principled man). A young writer (impersonating an old person) in the New Yorker the other day said he’s intemperate and nutty.
A fist-shaker and haranguer who makes the “Yakety Yak” dad look chill, the nutty great-uncle at the Seder table who insists on debating the morality of the Ten Plagues while everyone else is dying to just eat already.
This is just a smear, a portrayal of Sanders as a “nudnik,” Yiddish for a tedious pest. The man we saw on the stage in Derry last night is a solemn and serious person who is politically astute: he knows how to listen to ordinary people. Young people see their values reflected by him for good reason. And many are making a spiritual connection to him.
“in the meantime he is a rebuke to the Jewish community’s effort to stop intermarriage and assimilation by raising the walls on their community”
What walls are you talking about? Intermarried couples are welcomed in most shuls these days. There are quite a number of Jewish organizations dedicated to bringing intermarried couples closer to the faith.
Can you just for one second acknowledge that assimilation is a completely different issue for a faith community of a few million people than it is for a faith community of a billion people? I don’t understand why you have so much trouble simply acknowledging that point.
Of course I acknowledge that. PS My wife doesnt care if Protestantism comes to an end, assuming better norms emerge. Why shouldnt all communities adopt such a view?
I believe as a human being that the pain one person feels– if we have children who are hungry in America, if we have elderly people who can’t afford their prescription drugs– you know what, that impacts you, that impacts me, and I worry very much about a society where some people spiritually say, It doesnt matter to me, I got it, I don’t care about other people.
I wrote a comment after the town hall yesterday where I summarized his statement on empathic spirituality and it’s good you brought it up although I question the context. Is there some a hidden meaning here that I’m just not getting?
Spirituality is everything to me and really I don’t care if it comes from a Buddhist, Muslim, Jew, Evangelical or None of these. What matters is that if someone is going to preach to me their spirituality, then they had better demonstrate integrity when they do so. If their spirituality is flawed by tribal entitlement, even by tribal fear, then whether they’re None or whatever denomination they are I’m going to expose them for what they’re not: someone whose empathy extends to the suffering of all humanity.
So it matters little to who Bernie Sanders resonates with if the message he’s delivering is not authentic, if his empathy is inclusive with some and excludes a group that are being persecuted by the tribe he associates himself with whether in his mind it’s Zionist or Jewish. But maybe he prefers to deny that this is an obstacle to the spirituality he professed yesterday; empathic spirituality for political interest. Whatever his reasoning: it’s spineless, extremely flawed, hypocritical and not worthy of admiration. He deserves no pass.
And because we’re here on a site where everyday we’re exposed to the unbelievable hardship and suffering that Palestinians are experiencing in perpetuity, I would have liked, hoped that you would somehow demonstrate in your opinion how this man whom you obviously admire by your comments here would advance the cause that is near and dear to your heart: justice for Palestinians. I would have like to see you incorporate this important point: empathic spirituality that Sanders brought up yesterday into the cause here. But how could you? And really it’s this nagging uestion that lingers after reading this piece.
Because if he is in fact in denial of what Zionists, and he is definitely a Zionist, are doing to Palestinians, then I really don’t get why it’s important to make a fuss over him and how he resonates spiritually. He is part of the problem not the solution, and I wonder if this is not pandering to what’s wrong with him instead of challenging him to make that wrong, right, just as he’s been challenging Hillary to do likewise: right the wrong in her progressiveness challenging her to reject special interest funding.
And he’s challenging her now; he’s not waiting and hoping that maybe she’ll change because he knows that if he doesn’t do so at this time; she’ll go on to win and nothing will change. Therefore why should we wait and give him a pass knowing that he has this gaping flaw that will only contribute to the status quo prolonging the injustice inflicted on Palestinians? Why can’t we demand of him what he’s demanding of Hillary at this time, by exposing this flaw as he exposed hers with the intent of promoting change to benefit all by challenging and promoting integrity and honesty?
My edited version here was zapped away when I pressed Post; could you please post this version instead.
I believe as a human being that the pain one person feels– if we have children who are hungry in America, if we have elderly people who can’t afford their prescription drugs– you know what, that impacts you, that impacts me, and I worry very much about a society where some people spiritually say, It doesnt matter to me, I got it, I don’t care about other people.
I wrote a comment after the town hall yesterday where I summarized his statement on empathic spirituality and it’s good you brought it up although I question the context. Is there some hidden meaning here that I’m just not getting?
Spirituality is everything to me and really I don’t care if it comes from a Buddhist, Muslim, Jew, Evangelical or None of these. What matters is that if someone is going to preach to me their spirituality, then they had better demonstrate integrity when they do so. If their spirituality is flawed by tribal entitlement, even by tribal fear, then whether they’re None or whatever denomination they are I’m going to expose them for what they’re not: someone whose empathy extends to the suffering of all humanity.
So it matters little with whom Bernie Sanders resonates if the message he’s delivering is not authentic, if his empathy is inclusive with some and excludes others that are being persecuted by the tribe he associates himself with whether in his mind it’s Zionist or Jewish. But maybe he prefers to deny that this is an obstacle to the spirituality he professed yesterday; empathic spirituality, for political interest and gain. Whatever his reasoning: it’s spineless, extremely flawed, hypocritical and not worthy of admiration. He deserves no pass.
And because we’re here on a site where everyday we’re exposed to the unbelievable hardship and suffering that Palestinians are experiencing in perpetuity, I would have liked, hoped that you would somehow demonstrate in your opinion how this man whom you obviously admire by your comments here would advance the cause that is near and dear to your heart: justice for Palestinians. I would have liked to see you incorporate this important point: empathic spirituality, that Sanders brought up yesterday, into the cause here. But how could you? And really it’s this nagging question that lingers after reading this piece.
Because if he is in fact in denial of what Zionists, and he is definitely a Zionist, are doing to Palestinians, then I really don’t get why it’s important to make a fuss over him and how he resonates spiritually. He is part of the problem not the solution, and I wonder if this is not pandering to what’s wrong with him instead of challenging him to make that wrong, right, just as he’s been challenging Hillary to do likewise: right the wrong in her progressiveness challenging her to reject special interest funding.
And he’s challenging her now; he’s not waiting and hoping that maybe she’ll change because he knows that if he doesn’t do so at this time; she’ll go on to win and nothing will change. Therefore why should we wait and give him a pass knowing that he has this gaping flaw that will only contribute to the status quo prolonging the injustice inflicted on Palestinians? Why can’t we demand of him what he’s demanding of Hillary at this time, by exposing this flaw as he exposed hers with the intent of promoting change to benefit all by challenging and promoting integrity and honesty?
“So my spirituality is that we are all in this together. ”
Unless of course you are a Palestinian, or a Yemeni who is being bombed by our drones or U.S. supported Saudi air strikes, or any of the other innocent victims of Empire. Then, not so much. In that case, it’s all us Americans in it together at the expense of everyone else.
We need to call this guy out on his hypocrisy. You can’t be a humanist and a Zionist. You can’t be a humanist and an imperialist. You can’t be a humanist and a militarist.