Faith and Politics

During Amherst College’s 2026 LitFest, former United States Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg received a question that I have heard in a hundred different forms over the years. A question that is rarely answered with any real honesty in public: How does a person reconcile religion and politics? This question is often met with safe answers about faith being private and an assertion that  politics are separate from belief. And I understand why people reach for that separation. In a pluralistic society where people hold profoundly different beliefs about God and morality, keeping faith an arm’s length away from politics can feel like the safest way to prevent conflict and ease the fear that one person’s convictions might become another person’s law.

To my surprise, the Secretary began referencing scripture. He pointed to John 13 and described the moment when Jesus washed his disciples' feet. Rather than turning the passage into an abstract moral lesson, he asked the audience to imagine the scene itself — to picture the figure believed by Christians to be “the living God” kneeling before ordinary people, washing the dirt from their feet. Leadership, in that image, is defined not by distance from others but by proximity and responsibility to those being served. And it suggests a politics where those entrusted with power remain as close to the people they represent. Yet too often our leaders begin there and slowly drift away, pulled upward by the comforts of money and status.

With his answer, Buttigieg offered neither a tidy dismissal of religion nor a declaration of certainty meant to definitively answer the question. Instead, he demonstrated how his views were shaped by lessons from the Bible. Buttigieg approached the tension between faith and politics with humility, and asked us to consider that they can inform one another more honestly and in healthier ways than we are used to seeing, without bending faith to fit political convenience.

Too often, religion appears in public life in only two forms, either as a weapon used to justify policies that harm vulnerable people, or as something embarrassing that must be hidden from public conversation altogether. While this dynamic is largely driven by Republicans who weaponize faith, Buttigieg said more Democrats should stop treating religion as an automatic liability and instead speak about it openly, whatever their personal belief may be. I can understand their hesitation when their opponents have helped create this dynamic, but I also suspect that more people, regardless of party, lean on faith more than we are willing to admit. The point is not to turn religion into a partisan brand, but to recognize how deeply it has shaped the language and imagination of morality in the public sphere. That influence can certainly be weaponized, but religion can also serve as a discipline that calls us back to responsibility.

This conversation resonated with me because, during my time at Amherst, I experienced an unexpected but deep return to my own faith. I have not resolved every tension between belief and politics, nor am I writing to persuade anyone toward religion. What I have come to understand is that politics without a deeper moral anchor can hollow a person out quickly. Ambition, proximity to power, and institutional success can feel like the entire purpose of public life. Faith, at least for me, has become a way to resist that gutting of the human experience. It reminds me that political work does not exist for its own sake, but rather for the lives it shapes and the dignity it ought to protect.

We all recognize what happens when faith becomes a costume. Many Americans have spent decades watching politicians quote scripture or invoke the name of God while defending policies that cause social division, deepen poverty, justify violence, or harden immigration systems against people seeking a better life. Ultimately,  the system is at fault. When religion appears only in those moments, it teaches the public that faith is simply another language of domination. It pushes many away from religious traditions entirely, especially those who have already been hurt by institutions claiming divine authority. Instead of faith appearing as an invitation to humility or justice, it becomes associated with hypocrisy and control.

At the same time, the reaction against that hypocrisy has created its own problem. I feel that people, especially in liberal spaces, have responded by removing faith from public conversation altogether. Religion is treated as inherently malicious. I understand why this instinct exists. The misuse of religion and misinterpretation of scripture cause real harm. Still, the total exile of faith from political language creates a vacuum. If serious conversations about moral responsibility disappear, they are eventually replaced by louder voices offering simpler and often more dangerous narratives about righteousness and identity.

A professor I once studied with at Amherst captured this tension through a paradox. He used to say that while there is no place for faith in his classroom, his classroom is nothing without faith. What he meant was not theological doctrine. He meant faith as a posture toward the world. It is the belief that truth exists and that human beings are capable of conversation and change. Whether one draws that conviction from Jesus, Muhammad, Abraham, the Buddha, or a more abstract belief in human dignity, the underlying impulse is similar. People do not sacrifice comfort for justice without believing their sacrifice matters. They do not continue pursuing fairness in bleak moments without some form of faith that the effort is meaningful.

This sentiment was echoed in Buttigieg’s talk and in a later conversation with him, where he told me about a lesson he learned from former President Jimmy Carter. Carter once suggested that public servants, and people in general, sometimes need to carry two hearts. One heart belongs to God or to one's deepest moral commitments. The other belongs to the person standing in front of you. Often, that person may be difficult to love or their perspective and experiences hard to resonate with. They may disagree with you, oppose you politically, or embody everything you find frustrating about the world. Politics trains people to stop having two hearts. It encourages leaders to categorize individuals as voters, donors, enemies, or obstacles. The two hearts idea resists that reduction by insisting that even opponents remain human beings worthy of grace, and even more so a grace they would not show you back.

When applied to public life, the idea raises uncomfortable questions about the purpose of political power. If a political order exists for any reason at all, it should be to secure opportunity and dignity for the people who live under it, particularly the most vulnerable. A society that fails to protect those who suffer the most eventually fails everyone, and we are seeing that play out right now in our own country in so many ways. Yet our current political culture often rewards a different set of priorities. Leaders speak eloquently about values while tolerating harm. Institutions ask the public for trust while avoiding accountability, and service is replaced by competition over who wins the next election or dominates the next news cycle.

This is why the image from John 13 remains striking. The act of washing another person's feet is not sentimental. It is intimate and unglamorous. It requires someone with authority to lower themselves and take responsibility for others' well-being. If that image guided political life, leadership would look very different. It would mean refusing to humiliate vulnerable people for political gain. It would mean acknowledging that governing is not about keeping one's hands clean but about accepting responsibility for the real conditions shaping human lives.

I am not naive about how difficult this standard is to meet. Faith has been used throughout history and now to justify horrific things. Politics will never be pure, because it is conducted by human beings with conflicting interests and imperfect motives. Yet faith, when taken seriously, should make us more demanding of ourselves before we judge others. It should push leaders to measure success not by dominance but by the degree to which their power protects the dignity of those who have the least of it. 

I left the talk humbled by his response and even more grateful for the chance to speak with him later that evening, because what he offered was neither a tidy dismissal of religion nor a declaration of certainty meant to close the conversation. Instead, he approached the tension between faith and politics with humility, asking us to consider that they can inform one another more honestly — and in healthier ways than we are used to seeing — without bending faith to fit political convenience. I write this for our community because we are in a moment where a new social contract must be imagined, something else he said that evening. 

The status quo cannot return to business as usual, and I have deep faith that Amherst College students are more than capable, through our intellectual curiosity, of helping shape what comes next. In the years ahead, I hope that curiosity turns into radical engagement. In times of political turmoil, I hope we hold onto our faith more closely and never hesitate to make a more moral argument, because that is what the world to come will demand — and I am grateful to Buttigieg for reminding me.