Religion and Politics

Struggling to Bring the “Blue Wave” to Deep-Red Alabama

For The New York Times Magazine, Ruth Graham profiles Tabitha Isner, a Democrat and ordained minister running for Congress in the deep-red Alabama’s second district. Graham writes, “Before their wedding, in 2009, Isner and her husband, Shane, wrote a mission statement for their marriage. Isner sums it up as liberal values emerging from their faith: being stewards of God’s creation, caring for ‘the least of these’ and being open to go where the Holy Spirit leads them.” Graham adds, “She talks about policy ‘in the pastoral way rather than the academic way,’ she told me, to avoid voters’ hangups about jargon. She frames paid parental leave as a matter of family values, and the section of her website devoted to criminal justice starts with the declaration that ‘we are all sinners.”’

Read at The New York Times Magazine

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