Pete Buttigieg has broken through the noise on community and religion. EJ Dionne

[elleng]

'Pete Buttigieg has broken through the noise of a cacophonous Democratic presidential field by raising issues that usually fall by the wayside in an era when politics feels prepackaged and defined by short-term obsessions.

He certainly got good news on Sunday with an Emerson poll in Iowa showing him surging from nowhere to third place and double digits. The poll found Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in the lead with 25 percent and 24 percent, respectively, followed by Buttigieg at 11 percent, Kamala D. Harris at 10 percent and Elizabeth Warren at 9 percent.

Mayor Pete, as he’s known, frequently talks about matters that are not strictly political, do not necessarily lend themselves to solutions by government and have more to do with how we live our lives than where we stand on an ideological spectrum. It will be useful if his recent comments on two themes, religion and community, have a contagious effect.

During an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” last week, the 37-year-old from South Bend, Ind., made a modest plea: “I do think it’s important for candidates to at least have the option to talk about our faith,” he said. He specifically targeted the idea that “the only way a religious person could enter politics is through the prism of the religious right.”

An Episcopalian and a married gay man, Buttigieg pointed to the core Christian concept that “the first shall be last; the last shall be first.”

He added: “What could be more different than what we’re being shown in Washington right now — often with some people who view themselves as religious on the right, cheering it on? . . . Here we have this totally warped idea of what Christianity should be like when it comes into the public sphere, and it’s mostly about exclusion. Which is the last thing that I imbibe when I take in scripture in church.”'>>>

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/pete-buttigieg-has-broken-through-the-noise-on-community-and-religion/2019/03/24/8fc72084-4ce0-11e9-93d0-64dbcf38ba41_story.html?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. I agree with Dionne, and of course with Mayor Pete.

Dionne says good for Pete for bringing this topic up and encouraging folks to debate it. I agree.

[nycbos]

2. I am a secular jew from New York city.

I can say without a doubt Episcopalians are my favorite kind of WASPs.

[defacto7]

3. K&R

[babylonsister]

4. And I just

read 2 DU posts seeming to indicate he was the devil incarnate.

Here we go.

Thanks for this, elleng.

“I do think it’s important for candidates to at least have the option to talk about our faith,” he said. He specifically targeted the idea that “the only way a religious person could enter politics is through the prism of the religious right.”

i see nothing wrong with giving the 'religious right' a run for their money. His faith to him is just as important and I'm ok with that, even though I am not at all religious.

[elleng]

5. Rough around here sometimes, eh?