Hillary wants to preach

Shillady said Clinton could have talked about her faith more during the campaign, but largely blamed commentators for ignoring that aspect of her identity. “It’s been there all along,” he said. “The general public didn’t necessarily want to accept the fact that she’s a Christian because there’s so many critics out there about the Clintons.” Kristin Du Mez, a professor at Calvin College who is working on a book about Clinton’s faith, agreed. “When I would hear Hillary speak, knowing that she was a Methodist, I just heard so many resonances—about education, about women’s rights, about the importance of community,” she said. “Because of that, it was just baffling to me that so many other Americans not only didn’t know she was Methodist, but didn’t accept that she was Christian.”

Clinton might argue that her politics were the ultimate expression of her faith. Methodists helped lead the early 19th-century Social Gospel movement, a faith-based campaign for greater aid to the poor and vulnerable. “Historically, Methodists have been very comfortable talking about policy issues in terms of their faith,” said Heath Carter, a professor at Valparaiso University in Indiana. But “for them … it’s possible to talk about the reasons why you might support a policy without specifically citing theological doctrines.” As Shillady put it, Clinton “doesn’t wear her religion on her sleeve, she just practices it. She follows the edict of what’s attributed to St. Francis: ‘Preach the gospel always, and if you need to, use words.’”