Gun-totin’ Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (Q-Colo.) has made a habit of claiming God supports her political views. Fox News hypocrite Laura Ingraham wears a cross around her neck as she spews vile lies about minorities and her political opponents. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Quintana Roo) seemingly weekly calls on God to bless his allies and to strike down the efforts of people he doesn’t agree with. Donald Trump used military and law enforcement to clear a group of peaceful protesters from in front of a church so he could get a photo op holding a Bible.
But quietly, First Lady Dr. Jill Biden has practiced her faith out of the limelight, as a Washington Post profile describes. Dr. Biden spoke to the congregation of Baptist church in West Columbia, South Carolina about her journey in faith, particularly after struggling with the death of her stepson Beau. She regained her religious practice thanks for a “prayer partner,” Robin Jackson, the wife of the pastor at Brookland Baptist Church whom Dr. Biden had never met prior to a visit to the church in 2019.
While both are devout, President and Dr. Biden do not hide their faith, but unlike most Republicans, they do not use their claimed belief in God as a cudgel to justify a wealth of poisons, like ignoring public health guidelines to protect their friends and neighbors from a pandemic or codifying misogyny to control women’s reproductive rights. (Dr. Biden was raised by agnostic parents, but attended a Presbyterian church as a teenager. It’s unknown if she ever converted to Catholicism, her husband’s faith.)
“I’m not very public about my faith,” Biden told the church congregants. “But it’s always been an important part of who I am. I chose it as a teenager when I fell in love with the peace of the quiet wooden pew, the joy of the choir like this magnificent choir here, and the deep wisdom of the Gospels. Prayers especially are a way that I connect to people that I love and to the world around me.”
On the contrary, the Bidens’ political opinions sometimes seem counter to their denomination. While the Vatican publicly pushes against abortion and birth control, the Bidens are defenders of the right to choose and reproductive freedom. They are personifications of what it means to be constitutionally “pro-choice” while still personally feeling that abortion would not be a personal option.
Dr. Biden’s Sunday visit to Brookland Baptist Church wasn’t on her public schedule; her aides intentionally tried to keep a “small footprint” for the visit, with little press and no hype. The meeting with Jackson and the congregation was personal, not self-promotional.