If Only They Didn't Speak English by Jon Sopel

Author:Jon Sopel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

And don’t think this is exclusively a preserve of the Republican Party. In May 2015, Hillary Clinton, a lifelong Methodist, found herself in a South Carolina bakery. She was out canvassing and struck up a conversation with a customer about a passage he was reading in his Bible. Their talk was enough for Clinton to win his support. The former secretary of state’s Bible knowledge ‘is important in my world’, the man, a Baptist minister, later told CNN. ‘I’d like to know that my president has some religious beliefs in God.’ Clinton may not have shouted about her faith from the hilltops as some candidates are prone to do, but she knows how to use it to connect with people.

OK – so it’s hard to compare this to the UK, where you don’t have paid-for television commercials, which are the cornerstone of US elections. But can you imagine any mainstream candidate producing material like this to support his or her campaign? This advertisement was played out across the state. It would have been a conscious decision by the Rubio campaign – born of faith, of course, but also born of necessity to show just what a good and devout Christian he was.

Now if I wanted to be flippant I might ask, is that the same Marco Rubio who later in the campaign would talk about Donald Trump’s small hands being indicative of something else being small, but that is not my purpose (though surely it will go down in the history books as a peculiarly low point in political campaigning). In Iowa and a number of other states with very high numbers of conservative, evangelical voters, discussing your relationship with Jesus wasn’t an optional bolt on, it was de rigueur.

Even Donald Trump emerged with a new prop at his rallies and prayer breakfasts – the copy of the Bible that his mother had given him when he was a child – one that would appear again at his inauguration, along with the Lincoln Bible (though his confusion over the name of a certain scripture reading at one early meeting suggested he might not be one who avidly reads it every night before turning the light out). More likely he had to blow the dust off and wipe away the cobwebs from it before bringing this cherished family heirloom out before the camera lights. Soon after he became president, Donald Trump was guest of honour at the annual Prayer Breakfast held in Washington, at which various senior clergymen gather, and prayers are offered. When he rose to speak he asked people to pray for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ratings on The Apprentice, which he had taken over hosting. It was – while we’re on Germanic sounding words – pure schadenfreude. Oh, how the president loved that his successor was failing.

The eventual victor of the Iowa caucus was Senator Ted Cruz from Texas. He emerged onto the stage in Des Moines, camera lights flashing, cable TV channels ready to take his speech live across the nation, and he began thus: ‘Let me first of all say, to God be the glory.

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