Democratic candidate for president and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg answered questions about his faith Tuesday — including whether he thought God would belong to the Grand Old Party or not.
While speaking on NBC’s “Today Show,” Buttigieg explained that he couldn’t see God today endorsing the core principles of the Republican Party.
Buttigieg, an openly gay man who is married, regularly discusses his Christian faith while he’s on the campaign trail. He does so, he said, to get people to “stop seeing religion as a kind of cudgel as if God belonged to a political party.”
“And if he did, I can’t imagine it would be the one that sent the current president into the White House,” Buttigieg added.
The South Bend mayor doesn’t believe the Christian talking points that are taught in churches and Sunday schools across the country necessarily match up with what the Republican Party pushes for.
In church, Buttigieg said, “I hear about taking care of the marginalized and defending the weak and supporting the poor and visiting the prisoner and welcoming the stranger and humility and decency.” Those tenets, he implied, aren’t emphasized by the GOP.
He went on, stating that he doesn’t think God really belongs to any political party, but that He certainly isn’t owned by Republicans, either.
“And so the idea that that is the property of the Republican Party, especially this Republican Party and some of the choices they have made in recent years, it just doesn’t add up to me,” Buttigieg said.
Discussing his faith while on the campaign trail has indeed carried with it some difficulties, as some have gone out of their way to heckle or complain about Buttigieg. During an event last week in Texas, for instance, a small number of individuals interrupted his campaign event in order to shout out their beliefs that marriage is between one man and one woman only, per previous reporting from HillReporter.com.
But Buttigieg doesn’t seem like he’s going to stop talking about his faith — as well as the love of his life, husband Chasten Glezman — anytime soon.
“It can be challenging to be a person of faith who’s also part of the LGBTQ community,” Buttigieg said on NBC, “and yet, to me, the core of faith is regard for one another.”