God came up in last night’s Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan. A woman named Denise asked, “Senator Sanders, do you believe that God is relevant? Why or Why not?” Sanders said:

The answer is yes and I think when we talk about God, whether it it is Christianity, or Judaism, or Islam, or Buddhism, what we are talking about is what all religions hold dear, and, that is, to do unto others as you would like them to do unto you. [applause] I am here tonight, and I’m running for president– I’m a United States Senator from my great state of Vermont– because I believe that. Because I believe morally and ethically we do not have the right to turn our backs on children in Flint, Michigan, who are being poisoned or veterans who are sleeping out on the street. What I believe as the father of seven beautiful grandchildren: I want you to worry about my grandchildren and I promise you I will worry about your family. We are in this together.

The answer reminded me of another revolutionary, the abolitionist John Brown, who said the Golden Rule was a Godly principle (and in the Declaration of Independence’s statement that all men are created equal). When he was sentenced to be hanged in Virginia in 1859 for trying to start a slave rebellion, Brown told the court:

The court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsover I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me, further, to ‘remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them.’ I endeavored to act up to that instruction…. I believe that to have interfered as I have done… in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right.

When he was in jail, someone called out to him, how did he justify his act? Brown said:

Upon the Golden Rule. I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help them: that is why I am here; not to gratify any personal animosity, revenge, or vindictive spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and the wronged, that are as good as you and as precious in the sight of God.

Brown was a violent megalomaniac; but his compassionate idea of God is similar to Sanders’s. And Brown wielded more power over the outcome of the slave era than anyone else.

Hillary Clinton had a very different answer on religion last night. Denise also questioned the former secretary of state. She noted that in her church they pray for people in authority and in uniform and for loved ones and enemies, then asked Clinton about whom she prays to and for. Clinton said that she had been in Denise’s church services and that she prayed for people “whom I know by name, people who either have gone through or are experiencing difficult times, illness, divorce, death, disappointment, all the life experiences… I pray for the will of God to be known, so that we can know it and to the best of our limited ability try to follow it and fulfill it.” She said that she had relied on prayer during her time as First Lady, when she faced great pressure, and so had fallen back on prayer and faith.

“So I do pray for people in authority. I try to think about what they’re going through. Even when I disagree with them. Trying to find some common ground, some understanding that will perhaps make me more empathetic.”

P.S. Anderson Cooper followed up Denise’s question by asking Sanders about Judaism. He said an article in the Detroit News said that Sanders keeps his Judaism “in the background and that’s disappointing some Jewish leaders. Is that intentional?” Sanders answered the question in historical and cultural terms:

No. I am very proud to be Jewish, and being Jewish is so much of what I am. Look, my father’s family was wiped out by Hitler in the Holocaust. I know about what crazy and radical, and extremist politics mean. I learned that lesson as a tiny, tiny child when my mother would take me shopping and we would see people working in stores who had numbers on their arms because they were in Hitler’s concentration camp. I am very proud of being Jewish, and that is an essential part of who I am as a human being.

Here is my take on Sanders’s universalist religious ideas resonating with young religious “nones.”