With the presidential election nearly two weeks in the rearview mirror, it feels as if things have slightly calmed down after some uncertainty in the days following November 3. We now know (with about as much confidence as possible) that on January 20, 2021, former Vice President Joe Biden will become President Joe Biden. Senator Kamala Harris will make history as the first woman to serve as Vice President. And President Trump will continue to shape the Republican Party in his image, and possibly even begin preparing for another run for the White House in 2024.
Of course, Trump has not yet conceded the election. There’s a real possibility he never will, arguing that this election was stolen from him by a cabal of deep state operatives and Democratic election officials in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee. But even though his numerous legal challenges have fallen flat, the conspiracy theories among the Very Online crowd have flourished, blaming boxes of fraudulent ballots, misidentified vote counts, and even rigged computer software for Trump’s “defeat.”
Ultimately, none of this matters for who the next president will be. Barring some development of unprecedented proportions, the next president will be Joe Biden. But as far as the legitimacy of Biden’s electoral victory (and, in some sense, the country’s electoral process itself), this may matter a great deal. True, there are plenty of Americans who never acknowledged the Donald Trump presidency as legitimate, clinging to their conspiracy theories and fever dreams. But these folks were mostly relegated to the sidelines of American society. This time around, most Republicans in Congress have been hesitant to acknowledge Biden as the president-elect, offering vague pronouncements of “we should wait until all legal votes are counted” as a way of delaying the inevitable. Save for the 2000 election, this is unprecedented in recent American history.
And while Trump is certainly afforded the opportunity to raise legal challenges and contest the results, the comparison to the situation in 2016 (an election much more similar to this year’s than is 2000’s) is stark. Four years ago, following a surprising (and close) victory for Trump, President Obama welcomed President-elect Trump to the White House and quickly initiated the transition process. It’s difficult to see such a process starting until after the Electoral College makes this official in December —if at all.
That said, Joe Biden strikes me as just the right person to handle a rocky transition process. He has decades of experience in the machinery of national government, including eight years in the branch he now prepares to lead. And while it has been four years since he’s been on the inside, there’s certainly less of a learning curve for Biden than there’s been for any president-elect in recent history (perhaps only George H.W. Bush was more “prepared” for the job). This doesn’t mean there aren’t dangers in delaying a smooth transition—there certainly are, given the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and unknown security challenges the president-elect should know about prior to taking office—but these dangers might be more pronounced facing someone with little or no previous government experience.
With that, here’s the Monday, November 16 edition of The Overview:
1) Writing for Christianity Today, Kate Shellnut and Daniel Silliman break down the Biden victory through the lens of Christianity in the United States. While Trump’s support among white evangelicals in 2020 was essentially the same as in 2016, “Biden’s campaign saw a boost from black Protestants, Catholics, and the small cohort of increasingly vocal and organized “Never Trump” evangelicals, some of whom previously voted third-party.”
2) In the New York Times, Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham examine how Christian conservatives responded to the news that President Trump was not reelected. Not surprisingly, most were discouraged and disappointed, some because Trump would be gone—“The policies are absolutely remarkable,” said one—and others because Biden would be more hostile to their faith—“He doesn’t stand for Christianity at all,” said another. Importantly, there was a recognition of the legacy that Trump will leave behind, namely, a conservative rebrand of the federal judiciary, culminating with his last-minute confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Said the president of a conservative Christian interest group: “We put some points on the board.”
3) Michael Wear argues in the New York Times that Biden’s campaign made important inroads with religious voters, and that was enough to succeed where Hillary Clinton’s campaign had failed four years ago. Wear cites an improved and wide-ranging strategy of outreach to religious Americans, closing the gap from 2016 just enough to push Biden over the top in several key states. And while Wear acknowledges that conservative Christians will likely remain skeptical of Biden’s policies, he suggests there are things Biden can do to continue to reach out to these Americans, including forging “a broad consensus on L.G.B.T.Q. rights that affirms pluralism, protects religious freedom and rejects a zero-sum approach that would lead to years of divisive litigation.”
4) In an op-ed for the New York Times, Asma Uddin explains how the Supreme Court’s impending decision in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia—argued November 4—has the potential to reshape the landscape of Free Exercise jurisprudence, to the benefit of religious minorities. A couple of weeks ago Andy Lewis and I detailed how the Court’s decision in Fulton could revisit a decades-old precedent, Employment Division v. Smith, and restate what the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment requires of government. “As the court considers Fulton,” Uddin writes, “it should aim to restore robust First Amendment protections for Americans of all religious faiths.”
5) The Atlantic’s Emma Green talks with Andy Stanley, pastor at North Point Community Church in Atlanta, about evangelicalism after the Trump era. It’s an insightful interview, one in which someone who never bought into Trump’s style of politics reflects on why that style resonated with so many in his church. Consider the following paragraph:
“What [Stanley] seems to take issue with is the mindset that evangelicals should be all in for Trump because of their faith. “It’s disappointing,” he said. “It does not reflect anything in the New Testament. Zero.” Christians should put their “faith filter” in front of their “political filter,” he told me, putting one hand in front of the other before his mouth to demonstrate. “We dare not allow politics to define us as individuals if you’re a Jesus follower,” he said. “But that’s hard to keep straight for all of us, I guess.”
6) Finally, last week John Brown University and the Center for Faith and Flourishing (in partnership with Neighborly Faith) hosted a dialogue featuring Shadi Hamid and Matthew Kaemingk on religion and American democracy. The conversation, held in the aftermath of the presidential election, highlighted shared perspectives among Christians and Muslims on the role religion plays in structuring civil society, and what happens to our politics when religion recedes from the public square.