Who is Mike Pence? The “evangelical Catholic” charged with defending Trump against Tim Kaine tonight
WRITTEN BY Jake Flanagin
October 04, 2016
No Catholic has been elected to the office of president of the United States since John F. Kennedy—and none since. The same could be said for vice presidents entirely, until Joe Biden came into office with the election of Barack Obama. In 2016, the next vice president will unquestionably be Catholic—in practice, or at least in origin.
Hillary Clinton’s running mate, Virginia senator Tim Kaine, cites a mission to Honduras with Jesuit priests in the early 1980s as a “North Star” in orienting him toward a career in public service. Donald Trump’s running mate, Indiana governor Mike Pence, identifies as an “Evangelical Catholic,” whose hard-right views on same-sex marriage and women’s reproductive rights are squarely in line with Church social doctrine.
Tim Kaine’s liberal politics were, in part, infused by liberation ideology—a strain of Catholic and Christian thought that elevates service to society’s least empowered as the central tenet of faith in practice. “I got a firsthand look at a system—a dictatorship—where a few people at the top had all the power and everyone else got left out,” he said of his time in Honduras in a speech at the Democratic National Convention in July (delivered partially in Spanish). The experience put him on a track through public service that would include 17 years as a civil right attorney,—specializing in housing discrimination cases—the mayorship of Richmond, Virginia; lieutenant governorship of Virginia, governorship of Virginia, and eventually a senate job from the same state.
And while this history certainly appeals to likeminded, liberal Catholics and Christians across the country, it has provoked some criticism from conservatives within Catholic America.
http://qz.com/800098/who-is-mike-pence-the-evangelical-catholic-charged-with-defending-trump-against-tim-kaine-tonight/