This diagnosis is right — a growing number of Americans are feeling the pains of spiritual hunger and are searching to be fed. Through her words and deeds, Williamson has demonstrated that spirituality is relevant to everything, especially politics. In her resounding closing speech from the first round of Democratic debates in June, she pulled language from the New Testament in her challenge to Trump: “You have harnessed fear for political purposes and only love can cast that out. So I, sir, I have a feeling you know what you’re doing. I’m going to harness love for political purposes. I will meet you on that field and, sir, love will win.” Her words mirrored language from the First Epistle of John: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love” (1 John 4:18). Although blurred under the fog of her New Age aura, Williamson’s message carries a ring of timeless truth and is a forceful contender amid limp Democratic rhetoric…

Whether behind the pulpit or on the debate stage, Williamson has made it her mission to share the good news with others. Her preoccupation with the spiritual has granted her access to a resource that none of the other candidates have. Despite all her New Age regalia, Williamson knows how to sound like a philosopher, or maybe a mystic, every now and then. “We should be the party that talks not just about symptoms, but also about causes,” she asserted while discussing health care at the debate.

Williamson’s draw is her uncanny ability to drive straight to the spiritual heart of the issues at hand. She not only lays out the expected progressive ideology but goes further, housing it in a metaphysical context. While the Left of recent years has claimed a position of moral authority on the political issues of the day, Williamson actually provides something of an underlying framework for this demand. As her campaign’s tagline, “Turning Love into a Political Force,” exhibits, Williamson seeks to redefine why we have government in the first place. Her campaign has demanded “a politics that goes much deeper, . . . a politics that speaks to the heart.”