One new book about the VP is a hagiography, one a hatchet job – neither appreciates what the rise of the former Indiana governor says about faith and the nation

America’s semi-civil civil war continues, with religion a proxy for the political divide. In 2016, white evangelicals gave more than 80% of their vote to Donald Trump, a share even greater than among white working-class voters. On the other end of the spectrum, religious “nones” went for Hillary Clinton by better than 40 points.

Impeach Trump: why Republicans, not Democrats are talking up the prospect Read more

Despite Trump’s priapic escapades, the white evangelical community continues to stand squarely behind him. Franklin Graham, the late Billy Graham’s son, threatened Americans with God’s wrath if they had the temerity to criticize the president. At the same time, Jerry Falwell Jr, head of Liberty University, the evangelical powerhouse, has torn into Clinton, Jeff Sessions, Trump’s attorney general, and Rod Rosenstein, Sessions’ deputy. According to Falwell, they all deserve to “rot” in jail.

Yet even as Trump acts as the battering ram of choice for white America at worship, it is Mike Pence, the vice-president, who is the leading evangelical in the administration. Indeed, it was Pence’s standing within the evangelical community that helped boost him on to the ticket.

Like his boss, Pence both infuriates and elates. Pence: The Path to Power, written by Andrea Neal – whom Pence as Indiana governor appointed to the state board of education in 2013 – reads like a hagiography. Neal even compares Pence to the Bible’s Queen Esther. The Shadow President, subtitled The Truth About Mike Pence and jointly authored by Michael D’Antonio, a Pulitzer prize winner, and another veteran reporter, Peter Eisner, tells the story of a pol on the make.

Both books, however, make Pence’s religion central to their narrative. Quoting Pence, Neal writes that the vice-president “has staked out three positions that have defined his core beliefs: Christian, conservative and Republican, in that order.” As for The Shadow President, its first chapter is titled “The Sycophant” and it begins with a quote from I Corinthians 15:51: “Behold, I tell you a mystery.”

Pence’s story starts in Indiana. There, he journeys from Catholic to evangelical Protestant, and from two-time losing congressional candidate and radio talkshow host to congressman, governor and ultimately a heartbeat away from the Oval Office.

As a congressman, Pence was a conviction politician who once wrote that global warming was a “myth” and that “greenhouse gases … are real but are mostly the result of volcanoes, hurricanes and underwater geologic displacements”. He backed the war in Iraq and opposed George W Bush’s expansion of Medicare to cover prescription drugs. Pence also successfully pushed for a presidential ban on the use of embryonic stem cells in research, and lost to John Boehner in a bid to be House minority leader.

When Pence ran for Congress, he eschewed big money. But by the time he left, he was a magnet for the likes of the Kochs

When Pence first ran for Congress, he eschewed big money. But by the time he left for the Indiana governor’s mansion, he was a magnet for the likes of the Kochs, the DeVos family and the Republican donor class. Trump now inveighs against the Kochs; it was Pence who was their pipeline to the administration. Yes, Mammon speaks.

As a governor Pence was almost forgettable but not quite, a proposition upon which both books concur. The Shadow President reports that “in private, many Republicans said that Pence had been a middling governor who accomplished little”. Neal quotes Jim Atterholt, former chief of staff: “He was overscheduled, making too many small decisions, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.”

One thing was certain: Pence was no Mitch Daniels, his predecessor who straightened out Indiana’s budget, served in the Reagan and Bush 43 White Houses, and is now president of Purdue University. A pro-life conservative and former executive at Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical giant, Daniels also understood where not to tread when it came to hot-button social issues.

Pence, not so much. He signed Indiana Senate Bill 101, the Religious Freedoms Restoration Act, which would have generally prohibited a “governmental entity from substantially burdening a person’s exercise of religion, even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability”.

The act was viewed as a greenlight to discrimination against gays and lesbians and Pence didn’t just sign it, he “autographed several copies of it”, according to Neal. In short, Pence spiked the football.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mike Pence watches Donald Trump at work in the Oval Office. Photograph: Olivier Douliery / Pool/EPA

All hell broke loose. Indiana-based employers threatened to leave, the NCAA signaled it would boycott the basketball-crazed state, and three Indiana-based Fortune 500 companies, including Eli Lilly, urged “immediate action to ensure” that RFRA would “not sanction or encourage discrimination”.

How heartening to see a still robust US constitution as the net closes on Trump | Michael Goldfarb Read more

Pence caved to the demands of reality and signed legislation that barred RFRA from being used as a cudgel for religiously driven discrimination, but only after being interviewed by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and emerging worse for wear.

Almost predictably, D’Antonio and Eisner manifest their displeasure with Pence from the outset. They rightly tag him for his tropism toward other people’s money and his discomfort with modernity. All of which is understandable, to a point.

What is disappointingly left unaddressed is that the US is the world’s most religious wealthy country, where two-in-five claim to pray daily and where evangelicals comprise nearly the same ratio in our armed forces, despite being only a quarter of the population.

The fact is the first amendment’s free exercise clause was designed to protect those who embrace discomforting creeds. In a narrow 7-2 decision this June, the supreme court sided with a baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. In the majority’s view, the Colorado civil rights commission demonstrated “hostility” to the baker’s religious beliefs by ordering him to undergo anti-discrimination training.

Politicians less doctrinaire and more capable of nuance than Pence may yet be able to achieve a modus vivendi. With the Democrats in desperate search of a foothold in red America, the percentage of religious nones growing and evangelicals not backing down anytime soon, that result may even be a matter of civil and political necessity.