Pete Buttigieg shouldn't lead the religious left. There shouldn't even be a religious left.

[True Dough]

85. He was unfortunately linked to a rogue pastor, yes

So he did leave that particular church. He did not abandon his religion, but he wasn't a "hardliner" either. That's the sort of open-mindedness that can allow a president of faith to appeal to non-believers (like myself).

2016: Final Easter Prayer Breakfast

“(O)ur faith changes us. I know it’s changed me,” Obama said. “It renews in us a sense of possibility. It allows us to believe that although we are all sinners, and that at times we will falter, there’s always the possibility of redemption. Every once in a while, we might get something right, we might do some good.”


2015: Eulogy for the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, pastor of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.

“Our pain cuts that much deeper because it happened in a church," Obama said. "The church is and always has been the center of African-American life, a place to call our own in a too often hostile world, a sanctuary from so many hardships. … That’s what the black church means. Our beating heart. The place where our dignity as a people is inviolate.”