Whose Faith Is It?
Tulsi Gabbard, JD Vance, and the thorny question of who's really advising our leaders
Last Thursday, my family huddled in our basement from about midnight to 1 a.m. while tornado warning sirens blared outside. We were all half-asleep, which makes it tough to evaluate how serious the threat is and respond to that threat with the kind of calm and focus we’d like to. When our younger daughter started showing real fear, I closed my eyes to pray for safety.
Then my brain shorted out a little. That’s not how I think prayer works. I don’t believe that we’d be spared a tornado because I prayed, and I don’t believe someone else would be hit because they didn’t. Sitting on my couch with the sirens blaring and the meteorologists pumping out information faster than I could process it, I felt a mini-crisis-of-faith. What do I believe about prayer? Does it even matter right now? I ended up praying that I would be able to handle whatever comes and that I would be a comforting presence for my family.
I can imagine that being a political leader often feels like sitting in the basement at midnight with sirens blaring and information being pumped out faster than any person could process it. So I’m interested in what principles guide our leaders in those moments, whether or not I can relate to those principles.
We have a long-established and still-hotly-contested aspiration about separating church and state in the U.S. We also have multiple candidates for higher office and the sitting Vice President writing and speaking about faith and a new report from the Washington Post suggesting that the former Director of National Intelligence took more than advice from a faith leader. Sarah and I discuss the role of faith in the lives of our politicians today. I’m eager for you to join the conversation. - Beth
Topics Discussed
- The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool's $14.5M makeover gone wrong
- Keir Starmer's resignation and Brexit at ten
- What the center-left can learn from Europe's leadership turnover
- The Washington Post investigation into Tulsi Gabbard and the Science of Identity Foundation
- JD Vance's conversion memoir, Communion
- Sincere faith vs. faith as a political tool — Hegseth, Talarico, and Beshear
- Where a faith advisor ends and a political advisor begins
- Pantsuit Politics featured in the Washington Post
Want more Pantsuit Politics? Subscribe to ensure you never miss an episode and get access to our premium shows and community.
Episode Resources
Ross Douthat’s “Interesting Times” interview with JD Vance (YouTube)
The Washington Post’s investigation into Tulsi Gabbard and her guru (Washington Post)
Background on the Science of Identity Foundation (Wikipedia)
What to know about the archconservative church Pete Hegseth attends (PBS NewsHour)
What is the CREC, the Christian nationalist network (The Conversation)
James Talarico and religion as a Texas battleground (Religion Unplugged)
Episode Transcript
Coming soon…
Show Credits
Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.
Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.
Our show is listener-supported. The community of paid subscribers here on Substack makes everything we do possible. Special thanks to our Executive Producers, some of whose names you hear at the end of each show. To join our community of supporters, become a paid subscriber here on Substack.
To search past episodes of the main show or our premium content, check out our content archive.
This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.