Although the left castigates conservatives for bringing God into the conversation, the reality is that, in this election cycle, there's only one candidate who relentlessly paints himself as being on the side of God, and that candidate is Pete Buttigieg. He was at it again Tuesday night, during a televised town hall, when he insisted both that God is non-partisan and that there is no way Christians could support Trump.

It began when a self-identified Democrat and Episcopalian Christian asked how to make it clear that "you can be both," in a world in which "the right thinks they own" Christianity. Buttigieg had an answer:

First of all, I'm glad to be with a fellow Episcopalian and I agree. Look, it starts with sending the message that God does not belong to a political party. And by the way, it's also very important to make clear that the presidency and the Constitution and my presidency will belong to people of every religion and of no religion equally. This is not about imposing my faith on anybody. But, I gotta say, like you, I find a message in Scripture that is very different from what the political right wants to talk about all the time. A lot about poverty, a lot about compassion, a lot about humility that I seek in my imperfect way to live up to and that does have implications for how I will approach public office. And the time has come to send a message that people of faith have a choice and if you belong to a Christian tradition, or any moral or religious tradition, that emphasizes making yourself useful to the oppressed and standing with and identifying with the prisoner and welcoming the stranger. Stranger, by the way, is another word for immigrant. Yes, that has implications in public life and I won't be afraid to talk about how my positions were informed by my faith.

Just a few minutes later, though, Erin Burnett, of CNN, reminded Buttigieg that he had said in a past town hall, "Faith calls upon you to help the marginalized, those who are afflicted, to comfort people, to strive for humility and decency as the Christian faith does. *** I just can't imagine that requires of you that you be anywhere near this president."

She then asked the logical follow-up question: "Do you think that it's impossible to be a Christian and support Trump?"

Buttigieg's answer was blunt. "I'm not going to tell other Christians how to be Christian," he said, "but I will say I cannot find any compatibility between the way this president conducts himself and anything I find in Scripture."

Pete Buttigieg attacks Christian Trump supporters as violating their faith and Scripture.



"I cannot find any compatibility between the way [@realDonaldTrump] conducts himself and anything I find in Scripture."



What an utterly disgusting and false smear.pic.twitter.com/3yw6LTLbmW — Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) February 19, 2020

Buttigieg is a reminder that the days of the 1980s' Moral Majority are gone. It's not conservatives who want to bring Christianity into the public square; it's the progressives who want to impose on America a Christianity that takes Christ's exhortations to the individual and tries to impose them on society as a whole through socialist governance.

Thus, what you'll see repeatedly — and Buttigieg perfectly embodies — is leftists arguing that conservative Christians are hypocrites because, despite claiming allegiance to Jesus Christ, they refuse to have the American government function in a way consistent with the "laws" that Jesus demands. They contend, instead, that theirs is the moral high ground because they intuit Jesus's plan for government enforcement of Christian doctrine.

Leftist Christians might want to remember that Jesus incisively established that his parables, strictures, instructions, demands, and actions were directed at the individual, not the government. When disbelievers tried to confound him with a question about paying taxes to the Romans using coins with Caesar's image upon them, Jesus refused to be drawn into such a discussion. Instead, he dismissed entirely the possibility that his teachings intersected with civil politics, rather than pure faith: "Jesus said to them, 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.' And they marveled at him" (Mk. 12:17).

It's easy to come away with the impression that Buttigieg is obsessed with religion because he worries that his chosen lifestyle is incompatible with the Bible as written. To this end, he rewrites the Bible to comport with social Marxism and then works to gain salvation by selling the American people on his leftist evangelism.