President Donald Trump and his supporters claim to admire former President John F. Kennedy. Trump partially owed his 2024 reelection to the endorsement of third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., JFK's nephew (now a cabinet official), and the Republican has gone to considerable lengths to force his name on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a living memorial left to the assassinated president.
Yet Kennedy was America's first Catholic president, and according to an esteemed historian, Trump's political supporters — the so-called "MAGA" movement — have a lot in common with those who hated Kennedy for his religion.
In her new book "Reconcilable Differences," Dr. Barbara A. Perry (presidential studies professor at the University of Virginia's Miller Center) dives into detail about the relationship between then-Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-MA) and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, with a focus on Kennedy's election in 1960 and early presidency (Roosevelt died in 1962, one year before JFK's assassination). While Roosevelt did not hate Catholics, Perry acknowledges that she shared some of the prejudices of her class, and needed to overcome them before working constructively with Kennedy on key issues like women's rights and foreign policy.
I spoke with Perry for AlterNet about what Kennedy's struggle against bigotry the early 1960s tells us about America under Trump. In particular, we focused on Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan. When confronted with an Islamophobic question by a Republican operative at a rally — like El-Sayed's Republican opponent, the man implied the Democrat is loyal to terrorists and hates America through his question — El-Sayed replied "you assume, Tommy, that because I am Muslim, that somehow I would have some allegiance to something that is not our Constitution." El-Sayed mentioned Kennedy's need to confront the same issues and paraphrased Kennedy's own responses to criticisms of his Catholicism, saying "I'm not running to be a Muslim senator. I'm running for U.S. Senate and happen to be Muslim."
Similarly, Kennedy famously dispelled the issue of religious bigotry when he became America's first Catholic president in 1960 by saying ""I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him."
Kennedy added, "I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all."
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity, context and length.
"An act against one church is treated as an act against all."
Rozsa: When I read Kennedy's speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960, I thought of how Dr. Abdul El-Sayed recently shot down a Republican operative who tried to embarrass him by implying a Muslim could not be a U.S. senator. Do you think America could overcome its anti-Muslim prejudices in the same way that millions of Americans, including Eleanor Roosevelt herself, overcame their anti-Catholic prejudices — which, I might add, were not viewed as disqualifying when Joe Biden was president 60 years after Kennedy's election?
Perry: Oh, great observation and insight, Matthew. I'm very impressed. Thank you. I've been thinking about that myself. Periodically, the Gallup Poll — I don't know if they still do it; they might and should, given what's happening in Michigan — would put out a list of characteristics or backgrounds of an anonymous person running for president, and they'd ask, "Which of these people would you vote for?" So it would be a Catholic, a Mormon, a Jew, a gay person, a lesbian, a bisexual person — now they might add trans — a Muslim, and they'd have this whole list. I can remember looking at it, gosh, 40 years ago, and seeing that at that point 90-plus percent of Americans said they would vote for a woman for president. And yet look at what has happened to Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris.
Now, they both had other issues that people might not have wanted to vote for them over, but we still haven't had a woman president. When Kennedy won, I think the percentage was something like 75 percent of Americans who said they would vote for a Catholic. He was able to win about a third of the Protestant vote. He didn't get 100 percent of the Catholic vote — that would have been difficult — but he got about, I think, 83 percent. Some Catholics were afraid there would be a backlash against Catholics if he won, and we saw that happen with Barack Obama and race, and we'll see what happens in Michigan. But I would say you are absolutely right in your observation that once the barrier is broken, at least on religion and Catholicism, there is a sense that it's okay. Even if only 75 percent of Americans said they would vote for a Catholic, enough Protestants did — again, a third or so in 1960 — and enough Catholics supported their own that Kennedy was able to eke out this victory in the popular vote over Nixon, which was very slim.
It was only about 0.2 percentage points, but he did win the Electoral College by a fair amount. It does show you that even though it took a long time to get another Catholic into office, with Joe Biden it was barely an issue — except for abortion, both politically and because Catholic priests or bishops would say that people like Joe Biden or Ted Kennedy or Nancy Pelosi, because they support the right to choose, should not be given communion in their parishes.
Rozsa: I should point out John Kerry is also Catholic, and he was the Democratic nominee in 2004, but I also recall it not being an issue in that campaign either.
Perry: Yeah. I did my dissertation when I was focused more on the Supreme Court than the presidency — I've since switched back to my true love, the presidency. One of the topics I focused on was religion, race and gender in appointments to the Supreme Court. And one of my arguments was about when, in the national consciousness, it appears that the barrier has been overcome. When Kennedy was elected in 1960 and took office in '61, there didn't seem to be a need anymore for presidents to think about rewarding Catholics by having a Catholic seat on the Court. When there were very few Catholics on the Supreme Court, there'd always be this one seat saved for them. A Catholic would leave it, the president would put a Catholic in, and I made the case that that was to attract Catholic voters to himself.
It was the same with a Jewish seat, which gets founded in 1916 and goes on to be important until we have a couple of Jewish justices. And of course, now we have five or six Catholics on the Court, which also tells you that it's not going to be a barrier, or even something presidents feel they need to do — although you can make the argument that these are mostly conservative Catholics, so on the abortion question they meet the needs of a Republican, conservative president. So where are we now? I think El-Sayed is where Catholicism was possibly in 1928, when the first Catholic at the top of a major party ticket, Al Smith, ran as the Democratic nominee for president and was absolutely shellacked by Herbert Hoover. So we'll just have to see what happens in Michigan.
But if El-Sayed loses, and if he loses by a lot, we're going to say that barrier is still there. If he wins — because he'll be the first Muslim senator in the United States — I think it will be...
Rozsa: If he loses, it will be especially problematic for Muslims, because Michigan has more Muslims than any other state in America.
Perry: That's correct. So what will the Muslim vote be in Michigan? Will it be like Kennedy getting 83 percent or more of the Catholic vote? I don't know what...
Rozsa: One must also recall it is different analyzing the vote of Michigan versus the vote of the United States.
Perry: Correct. But in any event, if he does lose, that will be one of the major issues, and it could be that he's the Al Smith of 2026, and that somebody else down the road will crack that barrier. We'll just have to wait and see what happens next week.
Rozsa: If that is true, then we'll have to wait until the 2050s, perhaps even the 2060s, until Muslims can make it in mainstream American politics. That would be pretty tragic.
Perry: It certainly would be. And Matthew, isn't it interesting, since we're talking in these terms, that for Catholics it was the religion itself, and how the religion was viewed as mysterious and odd. There had been vast discrimination against Catholics, and immigrants of Catholic backgrounds — Irish, Italians, Germans — through the so-called Know Nothing Party in the 1850s. Know Nothing Party members would go on rampages in cities like Philadelphia, and even my own hometown of Louisville, and they would attack Catholic churches that were German or Irish. They would attack Irish and German immigrants, and eventually maybe Italians, but in that era it was mostly Irish and Germans. It was not only anti-immigrant; it was anti-Rome. So there was this sense of: you have this odd religion, we don't understand it, and you want to impose it on us.
And then there was also the political realm: if we elect a Catholic president, he will be taking his dictates from Rome. The pope will be running the country — which just seems ridiculous to us, I think, but people really believed that. If you watch not only Kennedy's 1960 speech in Houston but also sit through the Q&A, these Protestant ministers are asking him about his fealty to the U.S. Constitution. And he has the great answer to that, which is, "Well, I'll take the oath of office and I will follow the Constitution, as I did taking the oath to become a Navy officer in World War II, to become a member of the House of Representatives, and to become a U.S. senator. And I will be guided in my public life by that." The one thing that was missing from those who discriminated against Catholics in those days, and that is unfortunately all too present, I think, in the anti-Muslim world of conservatives or MAGA people, et cetera, is the concept of terrorism. And that we currently, to this day, are fighting a war against a Muslim country, Iran.
Good faith versus bad faith.
Rozsa: I'd say there is a second key difference. I've watched both Kennedy's speech and the subsequent Q&A, and I've watched El-Sayed's speech and Q&A during the incident where he spoke up against the Republican operative who was being Islamophobic. The key difference between those two sets of exchanges is that there was good faith in the exchanges with Kennedy and bad faith in the exchanges with El-Sayed.
Perry: Ah. Now, I haven't watched or listened to his speech. I've just gotten some of the headlines from it, and there might be — you tell me —
Rozsa: Do you see my point about good faith versus bad faith?
Perry: I do, yeah. And what I will say about Kennedy is that he was a very strong advocate of the separation of church and state. I think he accepted that and believed it wholeheartedly as a politician. For example, in Congress he would not vote to allow public money to flow to parochial schools. That was also a commonality he had with Eleanor Roosevelt, but she knew that he and his family were very close to Francis Cardinal Spellman in New York, who had been pushing for public support of Catholic schools for years. So that was another one of the reasons she didn't quite trust Jack Kennedy. I don't know about El-Sayed. Has he spoken about separation of church and state?
Rozsa: He has spoken about the separation between church and state.
Perry: And do you accept his view as genuine?
Rozsa: I do accept his view as genuine. I believe that El-Sayed is a left-wing Democrat who happens to be of Muslim belief in terms of his religion.
Perry: Right. Well, then that's a similarity between the two. And just as a general matter — as someone who has studied and worked at the Supreme Court, taught civil rights and liberties, and is at the University of Virginia, where the great separationists Madison and Jefferson were ensconced and which Jefferson founded — I just firmly believe in separation of church and state. Not to the point where religion suffers, because we also have freedom of religion. But I think the founders had it absolutely right in the First Amendment: no establishment of religion, which becomes the basis for separation of church and state, and yet robust support over the years in the Supreme Court for freedom of religion. I just got back from Ireland, and I was so reminded again — I had hoped that people could say that things were still pretty quiet in Northern Ireland.
I had a good friend when I was studying at Oxford in the '80s who was from Northern Ireland and Catholic. I heard all about the Troubles and really learned about them firsthand. I went with her to her home in a little town on the North Sea, but also to Belfast at the height of the Troubles. I'd never been in a war zone before. And here were people fighting to the death over Catholicism versus Protestantism, because Protestants are in the majority. You also have the England element that intervenes, but it intervenes in a religious way. And this past week I went through all of these museums in the south of Ireland telling the story of the subjugation, and really enslavement, of Irish Catholics. And I kept saying to my friends, this is one of the reasons — the founders knew that through all of human history, one of the greatest causes of warfare and civil conflict was religion, and religious discrimination and hatred between and among religions.
And Jefferson said in his Notes on the State of Virginia, "What good does it do to try to force someone to have your beliefs and your religion?" And he said, "It only causes them to not want to be in your religion, and it causes people to be burned at the stake," et cetera. And he was absolutely right about that, I think. So again, my view would be: judge Dr. El-Sayed based on whether you agree with his politics or not, not on whether you think he's going to do something just based on his religion, because he won't. Now, I guess you could make the argument — and this would be true of a fundamentalist Christian — "I'm not against there being a fundamentalist Christian, but because they're a fundamentalist Christian, they don't believe in divorce, or they don't think the government should allow certain things to happen in civil and civic life because of their religion." And then my view would be, well, then they're imposing their religion on the civic life of the city or town or state or government. So it's clearly a parallel to Jack Kennedy's issue in 1960.
Rozsa: Now I have my closing question. Based on how President Trump and his advisers are openly citing Christianity when shaping policies, and can be accurately described as Christian nationalists, how do you think the principles that Roosevelt and Kennedy stood for when it came to separating church and state — the same principles that El-Sayed articulated during this ongoing campaign — apply to the Trump era?
Perry: Well, sadly... As I say, I'm a separationist myself, as long as that doesn't go to the extreme of impacting freedom of religion. That's where my line is. And I think the Supreme Court had found that right line with a whole series of separationist cases. If one thinks they went too far in the direction of separationism, then you could come a little more toward the middle, as the moderates Justice Kennedy, Justice Souter and Justice O'Connor did, and take what they called a neutral approach, rather than going over into what's called accommodationism, where there's too much government support of religion. And then there's the onslaught, I will call it, against separationism, which particularly begins in the Reagan era with his form of conservatism and the appointments of people like Scalia, and now Roberts and Alito and Amy Coney Barrett and Gorsuch on down the road. We've got so many accommodationists now on this conservative majority court that over the last 10 years, I'll argue, they have moved us away from separation of church and state. They have blown through the neutrality of the moderate conservatives Kennedy, O'Connor and Souter, and now are almost strictly on the side of government accommodation of religion.
That gets to having government be very supportive of religion, along with this movement in the MAGA sphere toward Christian nationalism — which, at its extreme, is to have as many pillars of society as you can think of — education, culture, government, schooling — be as right-wing and nationalistic, in an evangelical, right-wing Protestant way, as possible, to the point of Trump saying, "We were founded as a Protestant nation of believers, and therefore we must stick to that and we must go back to that." I believe that most of the founders were believers, but they also, as I say, knew their history, they knew constitutionalism and they knew democracy, and they knew that maybe the worst possible threat to democracy is the demagogue.
And so now we have a demagogue as president in Donald Trump. And you can say, "Well, what is a demagogue?" The definition is a person who tells lies and half-truths, who picks out others in society to attack, and who gins up the anger of people and appeals to their base instincts. That's what the founders feared the most. And I'd say right along with it was Christianity, or any other religious view, becoming dominant in the public sphere — the public square, as it is called. I think that has created a real danger, not just to our democracy, but in going against the First Amendment and the founders' view of religion and government.
