Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination at the party’s national convention in Philadelphia last week after naming a Catholic, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, as her running mate.
However, the convention uneasily combined strong religious themes with aggressively anti-religious, or at least anti-traditional, religious speeches and policies. The Revd William Barber, President of the North Carolina National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), briefly turned the convention into a religious revival. As well as quoting from Scripture, he invoked the memory of Dorothy Day and the Revd Martin Luther King Jr, in a fiery speech that sounded more like a sermon.
Mrs Clinton, a Methodist, quoted John Wesley in her acceptance speech. “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can ...” she said. Many speakers spoke of the moral urgency of passing comprehensive immigration reform, and treating refugees and immigrants with respect.
Conversely, Cecile Richards, president of the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, addressed the convention in prime time, then sat next to former president Bill Clinton in the VIP box. Ilyse Hogue, president of the National Abortion Rights Action League, spoke about her decision to procure an abortion because she was not ready to have a child. This was greeted with applause.
Republican vice-presidential nominee Governor Mike Pence was also repeatedly criticised for signing a religious liberty bill that Democrats say permits discrimination against gays and lesbians.
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