Something strange has occurred in American politics. The 2016 presidential race—marked by a feverish populism, in a country with one of the most religious populaces in the industrialized world—is experiencing a secular insurgency. Donald Trump has drawn support from evangelicals despite (not because of) his personal piety. No one missed Trump’s mangling of scripture at his Liberty University talk, nor the comparison of his Art of the Deal to the Bible itself. Meanwhile, Senator Bernie Sanders would be the first agnostic president, albeit of Jewish descent. Sanders even went so far as to distance himself from his youth on a kibbutz in Israel, and his campaign is being run along starkly secular lines. (Compare this to Joseph Lieberman’s far more pious run in 2000 with Al Gore.)



This secular turn is notable because this election marks the transfer of power from the presidency of Barack Obama, who riled many on the religious right for his apparent lack of piety, explicit opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act, and has even been accused by some on the political fringes of being a “secret Muslim,” “atheist,” or—astonishingly—both. But the difference between Obama and Sanders is that Sanders doesn’t make a pretense of being religious, while Obama got his political start organizing in Chicago-area churches. And Trump is hardly the paradigm of sober virtue: He’s been divorced twice, and has a track record of being liberal on a number of key social issues, including abortion. He was even recently attacked (unsuccessfully) in a Ted Cruz robocall for his former support of gay marriage.

This race reveals, more broadly, three different modes of secularism in American politics. With Sanders, personal faith appears not to determine public policy whatsoever. At most, Sanders appeals to a broad, intuitive humanism, and has described himself as “spiritual,” but outside of any organized religion. Hillary Clinton, following the model of Obama, has professed deep personal roots within organized religion. As a practicing Methodist, Clinton explicitly claims that her personal faith inspires her policy stances, proclaiming in Iowa, “I would say I am a Democrat because of my Christian values.” Yet, when it comes to Clinton’s specific policies, they are defended in terms of practical costs and benefits, and not through invocations of God’s will. Trump, meanwhile, espouses a secular politics, yet geared towards the protection of Christian—especially evangelical—ways of life against the so-called PC culture.

As diverse as these modes of secularism are, what they all have in common is the basic separation between a private sphere of religious belief and the public sphere of policy. Private belief can inspire policy, and policy can defend religious interests; but only from afar, and each from within their own proper domains. This is best expressed philosophically in John Rawls’s formulation of liberalism. The essential claim here is that the adherence to “comprehensive doctrines,” or in other words, absolute truth claims about reality, are an anathema to free public discourse in a democracy. Such strong beliefs may be held privately, but they cannot be allowed to bleed into public discourse. Even a certain strain of conservatism (especially American Neoconservatism) has assented to this “amicable separation,” as Leo Strauss perennially warned against the rise of a “Philosopher-King”—lest he become an absolute tyrant.

We may contrast these secular positions with Ted Cruz’s conservative Christian critique. For Cruz, politics is grounded in morality, and morality is grounded in a Judeo-Christian ethic. Thus, public policy is first and foremost a religious mission, invoking along with Ronald Reagan the construction of a “shining city on a hill.” Rights are not granted by governments, but instead, “Our rights come from our creator.” As such, we can contrast the candidacies of Cruz and Trump when it came to the Kim Davis affair. When Davis went to jail for refusing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Kentucky, Cruz was one of the first politicians on a plane to lend his personal support. Trump by contrast invoked the “rule of law” against Davis’s attempt at civil disobedience. This, however, did not stop Trump from advocating such other policies as banning all Muslims from entering the U.S. The common thread? Trump is willing to use state power (even beyond the limits of the Constitution) to encourage a more “traditional” American constituency, but will not subordinate state power to narrowly religious interests. That is the difference between Trump and the Moral Majority.