The wrong way to attack Amy Coney Barrett

Going after Barrett’s charismatic faith will do nothing to block her progress through the Senate. It will not add to anti-Trump enthusiasm among the Democratic base, which has long since reached max capacity. But it could well alienate key voting blocs who don’t find charismatic Christianity as weird and scary as many white progressives evidently do. I’m particularly thinking of Hispanic voters who are recent immigrants, children of immigrants, or otherwise maintain close ties to extended family in the Global South, because there is a strong chance those family members or these voters themselves are charismatic Christians, too.

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“We are currently living in one of the transforming moments in the history of religion worldwide,” explains religion scholar Philip Jenkins in The Next Christendom. “Over the last century,” his landmark work demonstrates with exhaustive qualitative analysis, “the center of gravity in the Christian world has shifted inexorably [to the Global South] … If we want to visualize a ‘typical’ contemporary Christian, we should think of a woman living in a village in Nigeria, or in a Brazilian favela.”…

That typical contemporary Christian likely speaks in tongues, dances in church, believes in miraculous healing, and sees spiritual warfare as an imminent part of her daily life. She doesn’t fit neatly into our political boxes; we would likely describe her as very liberal on economics but very conservative on socio-moral issues, including gender roles. She may well be part of a “base community” of Christians who are heavily involved in each other’s personal and spiritual lives, gathering for Bible study and community organizing. She has, in short, quite a bit in common with Amy Coney Barrett and the People of Praise.

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