One Country Project's Hot Dish

Joel Heitkamp [00:00:04]:
You know, today, ladies and gentlemen, I get a chance here on the Hot Dish to introduce some interesting folks. But first, I want to welcome you to the Hot Dish, comfort food for middle America. I'm Joel Highkamp, and this is a special episode with two great guests. Before we get started, I want to thank all of our listeners for your continued support. We love hearing from you, so please keep those questions and suggestions coming. Reach out to us via email at podcast ne project.org. and be sure to check out onecountryproject.org for updates on what we're doing to lift up girl voices in Washington. I'm pleased to introduce these two guests.

Joel Heitkamp [00:00:46]:
It's a little bit intimidating. I could do this forever, quite frankly, because their resume is pretty long. But let me just get to some of the things quick here. Joe Donnelly, good friend, a man I respect immensely. He was in Congress from zero seven to 13, US Senate from 13 to 16, and US ambassador, that the Holy see from 22 to 24. So in other words, I don't know what to call him, but I'm going to call him ambassador, just flat out. Joe, at some point. Robert Jones, are you going to hear me call him? Robbie, president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute.

Joel Heitkamp [00:01:23]:
He writes for the Atlantic, time religion news services. But here's something I want you to check out for him. The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy in America. It's a New York Times bestseller and definitely worth your time. Now, here's what we're going to focus on, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to focus on this election and what the religious impacts are going to be and how they can affect this. Joe, good to have you on the Hot Dish.

Joe Donnelly [00:01:57]:
Thank you very, very much. It's wonderful to be with you. And it was always such a privilege to serve with Heidi, your sister.

Joel Heitkamp [00:02:04]:
Well, that's good because it wasn't always great to grow up with her. I'm just going to tell you, it's.

Joe Donnelly [00:02:10]:
Kind of what they say about great baseball players, too.

Joel Heitkamp [00:02:15]:
Robbie, good to have you on with us.

Robert P. Jones [00:02:18]:
Yeah, thanks. I'm really thrilled to be here.

Joel Heitkamp [00:02:21]:
Yeah, I have, too. I'm glad you're on because I've heard a lot about you, and I think that you're perfect for this conversation. I'm going to begin with you, Robbie. We're going into a part of this election. You got one week to go. And obviously, there's a lot of people pointing to a lot of different ways somebody can win or lose. But part of the premise of what you've worked on is the effect it can have on politics. And, of course, people are playing that card, not even hiding it so much anymore.

Joel Heitkamp [00:02:52]:
Give me your take on how you think religion has affected this election so far.

Robert P. Jones [00:02:57]:
Well, you know, I think the main thing I would say is that what's remarkable is how little things have changed in terms of the religious landscape going into this election. So if we look back at previous election cycles, 2020, 2016, you even go back even even further. It's remarkable how stable the religious landscape is and also how fairly simple it is to describe the kind of landscape in terms of its kind of support for presidential candidates. And it basically is this. That in the US, really, in the last half century, you could describe it this way, that White, non hispanic Christians tend to vote republican, and basically everybody else tends to support Democrats. And that's been true, like, in the last 50 years. So the strongest supporters of Donald Trump have been and continue to be. We see no evidence, even down the helm stretch of this election cycle, of any major shifts here, that White evangelical Protestants are going to look like they're going to support him about 80% of their vote, which they have been in the past two election cycles.

Robert P. Jones [00:04:00]:
And it looks like White, non evangelical Protestants will give him about 60% of their support, and White Catholics will give him about 60% of their support. Again, that's, like, very, very consistent with what we've seen over the last few election cycles that even further back. And then other Christian groups, that Christians of color will tend to vote for Harris, and the religiously unaffiliated american Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, and others will tend to vote for Harris. And that's been really the unchanging scene for the last few election cycles.

Joel Heitkamp [00:04:32]:
Senator, you don't exactly wear your religion out on your sleeve, but you're a man of faith. You really are. Fellow Catholic, probably a little bit stronger than I am. But I have to ask you, when did the Democratic Party lose us? And by us, I mean people of our religion, people of faith in certain areas, like Robbie just said, so much.

Joe Donnelly [00:04:54]:
Of it, Joel, has been a result of the abortion discussion, that the Catholic Church has been a leader in the pro life movement, and the Democrats position is pro choice. And so that was a big separator, but primarily of the Catholics who go to church. A lot of them consider themselves Catholic and who do not. And so it is not as big a difference with that particular group.

Joel Heitkamp [00:05:25]:
Okay, but let me take that to another place. You and I both know, Joe, that the hardest thing that the Catholic Church has is finding priests it's a narrow window of who you're going to find. Is it that as well? Is it something where you can only get people of that strict part of your faith versus a broad range? Because I have priests that I attend mass with and they're not this strict ideology.

Joe Donnelly [00:05:55]:
It's really changed, Joel, at least in my eyes. I know back when I was in college and, you know, we were young raising a family, the priests were different than the young priests are today. The young priests are very doctrinaire. You know, having been in Rome, I experienced it firsthand, very doctrinaire, significantly conservative. And, you know, I remember back in the seventies and eighties, hey, bring out your guitar. Let's play some music for Mass. You know, it was a completely. It was a completely different church in a lot of ways.

Joe Donnelly [00:06:31]:
And, you know, one of the things that has been hard to get so many of the stricter Catholics to take a look at is the fact that at the end of the Obama administration, abortion rates were lower than before Roe versus Wade was ever put in place. And that was because, you know, there's two ways you can focus on this. You can focus on trying to put in a bunch of laws and punishment, or you can put in pre k and you can put in the best healthcare possible, and you can put in job assistance and you can put in housing assistance to try to take away the problems that a woman can face in that situation. And when you do those things, you wind up where you are at the end of the Obama administration, where the rates were actually lower than before Roe versus Wade. It's just a statistical fact.

Joel Heitkamp [00:07:24]:
So, Robbie, how much of this is about butts in the seat? I'd love your take on that.

Robert P. Jones [00:07:29]:
Well, I'd love to complicate it a little bit here. I mean, what's been interesting inside, if we're talking about american Catholicism, is the shift in the demographics of who the American Catholic Church is. I'm speaking of actual people who identify as Catholics. So if you go back to the 1990s, the ratio of White to non White Catholics was about ten to one. And today it's about 60-40. Right. So we're almost looking at a Catholic church that is half White and a half non White, mostly Latino, mostly from Mexico. And so that has really changed not only the kind of demographics, but the kind of internal politics of the church as well.

Robert P. Jones [00:08:08]:
And you can see this interestingly in the data that what we see is the numbers I gave a minute ago were White. Catholics have been very consistently given 60% of their vote to Trump every time he's been on the ballot. But the opposite has been true for Latino Catholics. About two thirds of them have been giving their vote to Trump's Democratic opponents in those election cycles. So you get this very interesting and complex partisan kind of divide inside the Catholic church that runs along ethnic lines as well. And then the other thing to say is that as the country's attitudes on abortion have shifted into a more liberal direction, Catholic attitudes have actually shifted along with them. So even though the Catholic Church has this very anti abortion stance and a pro life stance, it is not true of everyday American Catholics. Right.

Robert P. Jones [00:08:57]:
So, in fact, they, American Catholics look about like the country does. And that's true for both Latino Catholics and White Catholics, both of whom say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases at about 60%.

Joe Donnelly [00:09:10]:
I think much of that comes from the feeling of I'm going to do the best I can to live up to the tenets of my faith in my life and for our family, and I'm going to root for my neighbor and hope they have a good life, but I'm not going to spend my time telling them, in effect, the Tim Walz version of mind your own business. I'm going to do the very, very best I can to live up to the things that I hold dear. But we're all flawed, we're all challenged, and I'm not going to spend my time trying to force my neighbors to do what I do.

Joel Heitkamp [00:09:48]:
Yeah, and Joe, this is why you're a better Catholic than I am, because I would have said what Tim Walz says, which is mind your own damn business. But I'm just going to say this, and we're going to move on from Catholicism in just a second. But when we talk about this, Robbie, what you just said about how this is changing as the more Latinos are involved, is that what scares the Republican Party? Is that why they make it so anti people of color? Because they're afraid that the more that we have, the less they're going to be able to draw through religion?

Robert P. Jones [00:10:30]:
Well, I think there is some of that zero sum thinking, right? Yeah. That every time somebody else gets something, we get less way of thinking about the country. And that's a really tough worldview to kind of work your way out of. But here's the thing. So my last book is called The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy in America. Well, the hidden part is actually how these views of entitlement and kind of acclaim on the country have come up through Christian teachings right inside of White Christian churches. And I think this one thing's we're really struggling with. You know, if you go back even, you know, before abortion, like, so I grew up in the south.

Robert P. Jones [00:11:04]:
All my sort of forebears, they're not Catholic. They're White evangelicals, Southern Baptists, all right? All the way back, like 200 years, back to the founding of the denomination. My forebears are pretty much in that in Mississippi or in Georgia. And, you know, all of my grandparents were Democrats in the south. They were conservative, White evangelical Christians in the south, and they were all Democrats. And so by the time I got into college in the eighties, my little Baptist college that I went to had virtually no young college Democrat group, but it had a very vibrant college republican group. So how do we get that sea change? And the thing inside the evangelical world isn't really abortion, it's civil rights. That is the kind of precipitating event.

Robert P. Jones [00:11:49]:
So once the Democratic Party, with the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, became the party of civil rights and championing civil rights for African Americans, that's when you saw kind of sometimes called the great White Christian flight from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, was actually fleeing those policies. It wasn't really abortion before, a decade before that. It was opposition to civil rights there. And that's been very, very thick, and I think that's still with us today. So that's why I think a lot of the rhetoric around reclaiming all this nostalgic imagery you get from Trump but with the whole MAGA mantra, right, the most powerful word and make America great again is the last one again, right? It's this, this move to nostalgia, back when kind of White Christians held sway in places of power in the country where the unchallenged majority, like, that's, that's the kind of thing that's been going. And so who's the enemy of that? Well, it's people who are not White and people who are not Christian, right? That's the enemy of that vision of the country.

Joel Heitkamp [00:12:52]:
But, Joe, your name's been on a ballot. I mean, you've had to make sure you connect with as many people as you can about this. How do you deal with the hypocrisy? Because, you know, we're heading into the time when a lot of people have already voted. I get that. But there's still a lot of people going to walk in that booth. And you've got people of faith that, as Robbie just said, they believe in and what they believe in relation to Donald Trump. But you've got a man that's been married three times, cheated on every one of them, been dishonest in the workplace. Now, I'm going to show you my partisan side.

Joel Heitkamp [00:13:28]:
I don't care. But, I mean, you've got a man that basically has broke any tenet of any religion, as they teach you, and yet they still follow him. So if you're Kamala Harris, how do you take that on?

Joe Donnelly [00:13:42]:
You know what? There's a particular group that has made that deal, and you're probably not going to get those people, but what you can get are the ones who are looking in that are uncomfortable with it. And you talk about character and you talk about integrity, and you talk about dedication to country, and you go, so who has those qualities? Those qualities are from Kamala Harris and from Tim Walz. And when you look at Donald Trump, the quality there is, he has never told the truth to anybody. And so do you want somebody who you wouldn't even hire to mow your lawn or to work with you in your company? Do you want to give them the chance to run the country? Let's have character as part of this. And are you going to get everything you want? No, but you'll get 70% of what you want. So 70% of something is better than 100% of a trade rack.

Joel Heitkamp [00:14:36]:
So, Robbie, one of the big targets that Kamala Harris has struggled with in this campaign is Black man.

Joe Donnelly [00:14:44]:
Why?

Joel Heitkamp [00:14:45]:
Why? Because there's many people who think religion play into that. I'm curious what you think.

Robert P. Jones [00:14:51]:
Yeah, well, we'll see on election day whether that really holds up. I'm a little skeptical that it's as weak or as problematic as it seems. You know, our latest data, you know, is showing african american protestants, for example, only 15% saying that they're going to vote for Trump in this upcoming election. There is a gender gap there, you know, between Black men and Black women. So I think, you know, some of it is the. Just the machismo, um, that, you know, that kind of tough guy image, I think that just has appeals, right. And we got to remember that voters are complex, right? They don't just get animated by one aspect of who they are. Right.

Robert P. Jones [00:15:25]:
Whether it's race or gender or social class or region of the country, all of that stuff is in the mix. We all get pulled different ways there. So I think it's not so surprising that there'll be some small group, but it's still the fact that African Americans are the most reliable supporters of Harris in this campaign. Even if there is some gender gap that we see there okay, Joe, I.

Joel Heitkamp [00:15:49]:
Want to ask the question this way, because oftentimes we see families vote the way families vote. And in the Catholic religion, I mean, I'm the last of seven, and those seven were born in nine years, as mom put it. She didn't know about the pillar I went to made the cut. So the point.

Joe Donnelly [00:16:09]:
Well, Joel, I'm the fifth of five, okay?

Joel Heitkamp [00:16:13]:
So, you know, but my point is this. In the african american community, my perception is family is strong. It's really strong. In the Catholic community and in many religions like ours, it might be strong, but we're not having as many kids. I mean, we're not having as many kids. And so I'm curious, when you look at polling data, when you look at all of this, how big of a factor that is?

Robert P. Jones [00:16:41]:
Joe.

Joe Donnelly [00:16:42]:
Well, I think that the whole nature of the family in America has changed. And it's changed because where our moms may have worked around the house or, you know, worked in the community, they were still home more than a lot these days. And so you had these families of five and seven and nine, especially in the Catholic church where, you know, you bring in five families and you fill up five pews. And so I think it plays a role. You see so many of the families with a couple of kids. But, you know, those are decisions each family makes. Those are decisions that for some, they just weren't fortunate enough to have more. And so I think that overall, it's just a general tenet of, I love my church, I care about my church, but God also gave me a brain, and I'm going to make the decisions based on what I see out there in so many churches still.

Joe Donnelly [00:17:43]:
And I don't think this applies as much to the Catholic church. So many churches, you know, you talked about 80% in the evangelicals, it's, hey, the pastor gets up and says, this is what we're going to do. And everybody marches in. The Catholic churches these days. It's just like, you know, that's not reflective of the character that I'm looking for. That's not reflective of what my life is. But your point about the hispanic community in the church, it's getting close to 50 50. And, you know, who realizes that more than anybody is Pope Francis, because a lot of the conservative bishops in the church give him a very, very difficult time.

Joe Donnelly [00:18:20]:
And those bishops are not in the same place as where the people in the pews are.

Joel Heitkamp [00:18:25]:
Robbie, I want to go back to your comments about the Latino community and tie that into what Joe and I just talked about. Because while there isn't one family, one pew taking up the whole pew or even the little one to the side of it, you know, I'm curious, when it comes to the Latino community, how that plays out, because I think that they're where we used to be.

Robert P. Jones [00:18:51]:
Well, we're certainly seeing it in terms of demographics that you were talking about. And I think this is relevant to, again, the kind of desperate kind of, we are a persecuted minority politics that we see among many White Christian groups, whether they be protestant or Catholic, because what we are seeing over the last, say, three decades is a decline and aging of White Christian groups. Right? So if you look at the three biggest White Christian groups today, White evangelical Protestants, White non evangelicals, sometimes called the mainline Protestants, like Presbyterians and Episcopalians, or White Catholics, the median age of all those groups is in the mid fifties. Right? That's the median age. Right, today. And so it's, and it's been, and those groups have all been shrinking. If you go back just a few election cycles ago to when Barack Obama was ranked for president, the country was still a majority White Christian country, demographically speaking. So if you put all protestant, Catholic, non denominational, White, non hispanic Christians together, they made up 54% of the country.

Robert P. Jones [00:19:52]:
But that number today is 41%. Right. So this kind of decline of White Christian groups while non White Christian groups and non Christian groups are actually growing. Right. So in the Catholic church, where White proportion of Catholics are shrinking while the Latino proportion is growing. Right. And that's true. Kind of in the, in the protestant world as well.

Joe Donnelly [00:20:11]:
Nowhere down to a week to go. But I remember, you know, when I would campaign, I would do three or four churches a week. And it was basically, Joel, in part because it's like, I need help from everybody. And so I would do the african american churches, the Black churches, you would do the protestant mainline church, I would do an evangelical church, I would do a Catholic church. We would do that every single week. And in the evangelical churches, some of them would come up and go, well, I didn't know you believed what we believe. It's like, yeah, you know, we're all a different flavor of ice cream, but we all like ice cream. And so I just think that the more Democrats can show that and show we believe in faith, faith is a big part of our character.

Joe Donnelly [00:21:01]:
The american people would like that. I think they are concerned that the Democrats don't have that feeling all the time.

Robert P. Jones [00:21:09]:
Yeah. I mean, it's remarkable that two thirds of Democrats identify as religious, right. And that often gets lost, I think, in the debate. But part of it is because it's a diverse kind of Christianity, right? It's not all one flavor. Whereas in the Republican Party, like, one in three are just White evangelical Protestants, and 70% of Republicans are White and Christian. Right. Whereas in the Democratic Party, it's only 25% who are White and Christian. But then you've got another 25, 30% that's non White and Christian, then a bunch of others who are, like, Jewish or buddhist, non Christian religious.

Robert P. Jones [00:21:42]:
But again, it's two thirds who claim some religious religious faith. But that's not the story that's often out there.

Joe Donnelly [00:21:48]:
Joel, one of my favorite moments, Washington, when I was leaving my home parish after mass, and the pastor had gone a little long, so it was about an hour and ten minute mass, and there was this fellow walking along next to me, and he leans over, he goes, you know, if he's going to keep this up, I don't know if I want to keep coming here. And I put my arm around him and I said, I was at one of our Black Baptist churches last week, and it was 3 hours long.

Robert P. Jones [00:22:20]:
And he looked at me, he goes.

Joe Donnelly [00:22:21]:
Well, maybe I don't have that much to complain about.

Robert P. Jones [00:22:26]:
That's right. Or have him go to a local synagogue service. Right. Yeah. I'll also be two to 3 hours long.

Joe Donnelly [00:22:31]:
Right.

Joel Heitkamp [00:22:32]:
Robbie, what about when religion is used for hate? Yeah, you know, what about when it's taken to a different place? And I would argue that certain politicians who people are about to decide whether or not to vote for that he has used religion as a tool for hate and division. How big of a factor is that playing in politics today?

Robert P. Jones [00:22:56]:
Well, one of the most dangerous things we've seen is the rise of Christian nationalism as a really potent force, particularly in this election cycle. We had previous versions of this in the old Christian right, the Tea Party movement, et cetera. But, you know, this, this is something, I think, quite new and more militant than we've seen before. And so, you know, we've actually measured this on public opinion surveys at PRRI. And, you know, we do that. What we find is that, you know, while two thirds of the country rejects this view, and we measure this with some pretty robust statements, they are things like, the US should declare itself a Christian nation. US laws should be based on the Christian Bible. If we move away from our Christian faith, we will not have a country anymore like those kinds of sentiments.

Robert P. Jones [00:23:39]:
So these are nothing fluffy sentiments. They're pretty straight up dominionist, theocratic kinds of sentiments. And we have about two thirds of the country that rejects that view. But that means there's about three in ten Americans who are either fully on board or sympathetic toward that view. And there's two major groups that are in majority leaning toward being sympathetic to or fully supportive of that view. And they are Republicans, 54% of Republicans and two thirds of White evangelical Protestants. There religious base affirm that view. And that view is correlated with things like anti semitism, it's correlated with anti Black views, anti Muslim views, and it's correlated with there about two.

Robert P. Jones [00:24:21]:
If you, if you hold those views of Christian nationalism, you're about two and a half times more likely to say you would support political violence as well. So there, it's a quite dangerous and quite militant version of Christianity that's been weaponized and politicized, and particularly in the MAGA movement today.

Joel Heitkamp [00:24:38]:
Joe, did Donald Trump make it okay to be all of that? I call it my Dale Lugard example, and I don't care if he sues me. If he's listening to one country, which is, he made it okay to be Dale Lugert, a man that could wear the swastika, could talk about people in the most degrading ways, can do a lot of things wrong. You know, Dale's not, you know, here. So, I mean, yeah, my point is, I'm just using him as an example. But did those people really felt as though, the way they have chose to live their life? Donald Trump made it okay. He made it okay.

Joe Donnelly [00:25:21]:
Rupert Murdoch made it okay. Rupert Murdoch put the gas in Donald Trump's tank to go out and do these things. When he came down the escalator and attacked hispanic immigrants, when he has gone and been so cruel to physically challenged people. Yet Donald Trump has had no boundaries and has said, I'll do what you want to the Christian nationalists. You give me your vote. And Rupert Murdoch is the one who, in effect, almost planted the garden that Donald Trump came out of, because FOX News, they have provided the jet fuel for this whole operation.

Joel Heitkamp [00:26:05]:
Robbie, I'm curious, your take on that.

Robert P. Jones [00:26:08]:
Yeah, no, I'll just add, I mean, you can actually see this in the data. You know exactly what Joe's talking about. So we've asked about media preferences and national public opinion surveys. And if you look at Republicans who say they most trust FOX News to give them accurate information about current events and politics, they look fundamentally different than Republicans who say they trust any other source of news. In fact, Republicans who say they trust any other source of news look basically like the general population. And Republicans who said they most trust FOX News are just wildly different. Like, more like. And on these issues, we were talking much more Christian nationalists, much more anti immigrant, much more likely to support political violence.

Robert P. Jones [00:26:51]:
And that's exactly right. It has been this kind of media push along with sort of, you have a charismatic leader kind of projecting, this authoritarian, we're going to take back the country, and then you've got a media empire kind of right behind it in an echo chamber that's really disseminated it in pretty powerful ways and, again, ways you can literally measure in the data.

Joel Heitkamp [00:27:11]:
Robbie, I'm going to go back to the Latino, the african american communities where my sense and some of the data that I've read is that Ma plays a much more powerful role. And I know in the native american community as well, that the most respected person in the family and the one that provides the most direction and the one that told me, get off your butt, you're going to church today was mom. And so have we gone away from that? My mom is one of the reasons I'm a strong democrat. She supported civil rights. She supported people who helped those individuals that had less than us. I'm curious what your thoughts are on that.

Robert P. Jones [00:27:55]:
What I'm really thinking about is Georgia. In the last election cycle, there is no doubt that Black women in Georgia were, like, the key to Senate victories there. That really made a whole difference in the whole makeup of the Senate. I think that that is still very much true, particularly the african american community. Community organizers. While I think many african american pastors get put up as the kind of figureheads or the kind of community leaders that get the most spotlight behind the scenes, it is african american women doing all that organizing and making it all really run.

Joe Donnelly [00:28:29]:
If you look back to the 2020 primary election, Joe Biden was in incredibly deep trouble until he got to South Carolina, and James Clyburn endorsed him. And when asked why he endorsed him, Clyburn said, I was going to support Joe. And one of the women in the congregation I was at came up and said, who are you supporting? And he said, well, I'm supporting Joe Biden. And she said, well, if you are, you better tell people, because they want to know. And gave him full instructions as to what to do. And James Clyburn followed those full instructions, and it changed everything. But it was that woman, that strong woman, who looked him in the eye and said, don't you try to hide what you're doing. If you're doing it, stand up and believe in it.

Joe Donnelly [00:29:24]:
And it changed everything.

Joel Heitkamp [00:29:26]:
I get it. I understand that more than anything, Robbie, you look at how Kamala Harris has run this race. You have to connect with the agnostic, you have to connect with the atheists. You have to connect with a little bit of everything. And yet in the end, you got to connect with the very people we're talking about. How do you do that? I mean, how is she done when it comes to that? Because to me, that's going to be a big factor in what gets decided November.

Robert P. Jones [00:29:56]:
Well, I think there's a different set of standards, right. Because the democratic coalition, as I mentioned, is so diverse. So you can't stand up and just sort of give your evangelical testimony, assuming you have one or one you need to make up in order to appeal to that one group. You've got to say, like, I respect people of faiths and none, right? We hear that language of people of all fates and none language pretty consistently because that's the coalition. The truth is that's the coalition of the country, right? That's where the country is today. People who claim no religious affiliation make up nearly three in ten Americans today. And among young people, they make up four in ten Americans, Americans under the age of 30. But it's not a small group.

Robert P. Jones [00:30:37]:
In fact, if we were sorting the way we typically do, like in sociology, all the kind of major, you know, religious groups, religiously unaffiliated Americans would be the largest, quote, religious denomination in the country if we kind of sorted them along with all the rest. So it's a really important, really important factor. The name of the game is, I think, like representing like who you are and doing it authentically. I have always thought, you know, it's never like a good plan to try to pander, you know, to try to invent something that you're not, but to be genuine, talk about your values, talk about where you came from. I think she's done a really fine and believable, convincing job of doing that in a way that I think is going to connect and also make unaffiliated people not feel like, you know, theyre being completely ignored.

Joel Heitkamp [00:31:24]:
Joe, what does this mean for people in Hot Dish country, for those of us in the middle of this country? You look at my state, you look at the state below me in terms of South Dakota, Nebraska, theres less people of color. And if this is going to be the game plan of the Democratic Party, and clearly its worked in many elections, what does this mean for us in the middle of this country?

Joe Donnelly [00:31:48]:
Well, the middle of the country is going to determine, I think, who wins this election. And so it will be the Eau Claire's, it will be the Kenosha's, it will be the Appletons, it will be the Erie pas. And so you just have to constantly work there to show them who you are, what your values are. That I'm like you. We pick up a lunch bucket. We work hard every day. We try to make ends meet. We take care of our families.

Joe Donnelly [00:32:21]:
The basic values of family, faith, and country, that is who we are. And when we talk about that and talk about that and talk about that, we win. When we don't, we lose.

Joel Heitkamp [00:32:34]:
Robbie, your take on that?

Robert P. Jones [00:32:36]:
Yeah, well, the one interesting thing, I was just looking at North and South Dakota, just for kicks here. Um, so, you know, they are more White and more Christian than the rest of the country, but even North Dakota and South Dakota are only about 60% White and Christian.

Joel Heitkamp [00:32:50]:
Right.

Robert P. Jones [00:32:51]:
So even there, religiously unaffiliated people are more than one in five. And then even, you know, other people of color, you know, are good 10% of the, 10% of the population altogether. So even there, there's more diversity than. Than one might think, you know, even in kind of middle. Even in middle America.

Joe Donnelly [00:33:07]:
And, Joel, it is also they become more supportive when they become more comfortable with you. And so, I mean, this has been a shortened election, but seeing you on a constant basis in their kind of setting, in the things they're comfortable with in the schools, they're comfortable with, in the places they're comfortable with, at a Wisconsin football game, at a Penn State football game, at the union meeting halls, those kind of things? Support comes from getting better known and becoming more comfortable. And I know how hard Kamala and Tim have worked at that.

Joel Heitkamp [00:33:45]:
So that would beg me to ask you this question, Robbie, which is, how much has it helped or hindered Kamala Harris when you have different ethnicities, a different family, different religions, those type of things, you know, she's married to a Jew. She comes from, her parents have different backgrounds. I mean, the very things you've described, how big of a factor has that been for the vice president?

Robert P. Jones [00:34:12]:
Yeah, my sense is it's a bigger factor, certainly for older Americans, than it is for younger Americans. For younger Americans, essentially anybody under the age of 50, I mean, this is what their families and friendship networks look like, right? That kind of diversity. And so it's not new, it's not odd, it's not alien. It just is what they see around them. And so I think that that's, you know, we've got one in five Americans today are in a kind of interfaith relationship, you know, like. Like her. So it's becoming less. And among younger people, there's.

Robert P. Jones [00:34:42]:
There's even more, I think, where the challenge is. And, you know, and here's where, you know, gender may still come into play. Right. People still imagining. Right, a female president of the. Of the US, people think kind of being less familiar. But I think what Joe's saying is right. It's about familiarity and connection.

Robert P. Jones [00:34:59]:
But again, I think it's mostly kind of older voters that are going to have any issues with that, but for younger voters, it sort of looks like them.

Joel Heitkamp [00:35:07]:
Joe, has that been a strength? Bill? I mean, what I just got done, asking Robbie, has that been a strength for Kamala?

Joe Donnelly [00:35:16]:
I think it's a quality of Kamala's. But, you know, I agree with Robbie that in most cases now, it's like, you know, that's a really wonderful picture. How are we going to create more jobs? How am I going to be able to make sure that my family can get ahead? All of those basic things. It's like, that's wonderful. Are we going to be able to get the garbage picked up on Monday? Those basic qualities are still what's critically important. And so you want to get to that point where they look and they go, I trust you with my family that you'll be able to make sure next year will be better than this year.

Joel Heitkamp [00:35:57]:
Okay, just a couple more questions. Robbie and Joe, I promise Robbie, the injection of Christianity into public schools and how big of a factor that plays. I'll give you an example. We had, in North Dakota, a state senator introduced legislation that the Ten Commandments had to be presented in the public school. It had to be posted on the wall. She came on my radio show. I asked her to recite the Ten Commandments. She couldn't do it.

Joel Heitkamp [00:36:26]:
I mean, literally, she got to six. I hope, Joel.

Robert P. Jones [00:36:29]:
I was going to say Joel, she.

Joe Donnelly [00:36:31]:
Probably said, you know, will six out.

Robert P. Jones [00:36:33]:
Of ten be okay?

Joel Heitkamp [00:36:34]:
Well, and then when she stumbled, you guys, she said, well, what version? And so you see what I'm getting at, though, Robbie. You know, the indoctrination for the future, that, that whole political base, I mean, how big of a factor do you think that is?

Robert P. Jones [00:36:51]:
Well, I think it's part of this whole Christian nationalist push, you know, which is a reactionary movement to the diversification of the country. We gotta, like, always remember that's what it is. It's a reaction. And, you know, the. And when you start unpacking this, it gets pretty clear pretty fast. So. Okay, ten commandments like that sounds, in some ways, maybe that's just sort of neutral, but when you start, like, unpacking it. So could we put them up there in Hebrew, which is, of course, the original, you know, text? Would that count? Well, of course not.

Robert P. Jones [00:37:21]:
That's not what we mean. Right. Because it's not the Jewish Ten Commandments we want. It's the Christian Ten Commandments that we want up on the wall. And we saw a similar thing in, in Oklahoma, in Tulsa, right. Where they're buying Bibles for public schools. And so you asked real quickly, well, which Bible, right. Are we going to buy for the public schools? Is it, you know, the Catholic Bible, which has slightly different, has a few extra books in it than the Protestant Bible does? Oh, no, no, not that one.

Robert P. Jones [00:37:49]:
Right. It's the King James version of the Protestant Bible that we want in the public school. So it becomes very quickly, it's not really about, like, Christian writ large, you know, but it's about a very particular, usually evangelical White kind of version of Christianity that's being injected and kind of smuggled in under terms that sound much more neutral than they really are. And in Oklahoma, it was like really rich, because if you look at the RFP the government put out to see which Bible would fit the criteria, there's only one Bible that would fit the criteria because they said that it had to be the King James Version of the Bible and that in between the COVID it also had to have published in there the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And there's only one Bible that fits that definition. And it is. Wait for it, the Trump Bible, right, is the only Bible. It was going to inject literally $3 million into Trump's pocket by buying these supposed Bibles to enhance Oklahoma classroom.

Robert P. Jones [00:38:47]:
So again, I think it doesn't take much to kind of unpack this as a culture war move to kind of reassert a very particular kind of conservative, White Christian dominance into public space.

Joel Heitkamp [00:38:59]:
Joe, I'm just going to say this. I'm Catholic. My wife's Lutheran. We used to, when the priests turned around, get done singing, you know, my wife's church, when I attend that, they sing every verse. They're going to sing every verse. And in the end, we had two kids. Those two kids left the Catholic Church or don't attend Catholic mass because of the religion. They don't.

Joel Heitkamp [00:39:23]:
They're both Lutherans, and they're both Lutherans to stay. And they're voting for Kamala Harris.

Joe Donnelly [00:39:28]:
As we look with a week to go. What you ask everybody is just what we talking, what we were talking about at the start, which is, you know, and you always hear that expression, what would Jesus do? Well, I don't think Jesus would be selling Donald Trump Bibles in Oklahoma. I think Jesus would be asking, you know, who has the character to make sure that every child in America has a chance at good healthcare, has a chance at good schooling, has a chance at the same future as every other chance as every other child? You know, I always talked about when I was in office and we were talking about the Affordable Health Care Act, I said, so give me a reason why the child in the greenhouse, whose family is very rich, should have better healthcare than the child in the yellow house, where it's a single mom who's struggling to make ends meet. What would Jesus do? Jesus would make sure both of them had a shot. And so that's what you ask voters to say for those who are Christians. Just say, look, maybe one question you ask is not which particular denomination or this or that, but what would Jesus do with these two candidates? Who do you think he'd look at and say, this is the kind of person that I would trust with my planet that I created, with this beautiful country that I helped birth.

Joel Heitkamp [00:40:48]:
Robbie, I thank you. I just want to remind people that New York Times bestseller lists The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy in America. Check it out. It's definitely worth your time. Joe, thanks for not only having faith, but living that faith and making sure people understand it. So thanks for joining us on the Hot Dish, you guys.

Joe Donnelly [00:41:07]:
Thanks so much.

Robert P. Jones [00:41:08]:
Yeah, thank you.

Joel Heitkamp [00:41:11]:
Thank you both so much for joining me today. It was great having you here. And thank you, listeners, for joining us today on the Hot Dish, which is brought to you by the one country project, making sure the voices of the rest of us are heard in Washington. Learn more@onecountryproject.org dot. That's onecountryproject.org dot. I'll be back with Heidi right after the election with more Hot Dish comfort food for Middle America.