Last month, Harmeet Dhillon, an Indian American Republican leader and a devout Sikh, recited the Ardas, a Sikh prayer, during the benediction on the first night of the Republican National Convention. The backlash against Dhillon from fellow Republicans was swift and intense. On X, for example, Lauren Witzke, the 2020 Republican Senate candidate from Delaware, reposted Dhillon’s benediction and said, “How about you get deported instead, you pagan blasphemer. God saves our president and the RNC mocks him with this witchcraft.”
Contrast that event with what happened last week, when another Indian American, Sri Rakesh Bhatt, delivered an invocation at the Democratic National Convention. Offering what was celebrated as the first time a Hindu prayer was given onstage at the convention, he did not receive the same online harassment and public criticism that Dhillon did. There were some celebratory posts and news articles, but mostly there was silence. His prayer was a non-issue for Democrats.
A look at the speakers invited to give invocations and benedictions at the Republican and Democratic national conventions reveals yet another matter on which there is a stark partisan divide in America: how to engage religion. As the conventions made clear, the two parties have different bases of religious voters, different political strategies for how to talk about religion during the 2024 election, and different approaches to handling the religious diversity in the United States and the historical power and privilege enjoyed by Christians. These observations, of course, are anything but new.
However, what struck me while watching the conventions this summer is how much the two parties diverge on this front. Despite efforts at their convention to include representatives of different religions in their speaker lineup, the Republican Party still centered Christianity—particularly evangelicalism—in their programming and platform. In contrast, Democrats used their convention to offer a carefully choreographed display of their commitment to unity and religious pluralism. What both conventions presented to voters and viewers was a choice between two very different visions for a religious America.
Although scholars and pundits alike have written much about the Republican Party’s unapologetic embrace of Christian nationalism, Republicans have actually shown some interest in widening their tent and making more space for religious diversity in recent years. There are good reasons for doing so. First, the reality is that the United States is religiously diverse, and a party that doesn’t reflect that fact looks out of touch. Acknowledging and accepting diverse religious communities is good optics and helps a party look current.
More significantly, it could help them win over new voters and remain competitive in an era of shifting racial and religious demographics. Consider the case of Indian Americans, one of the largest communities within the fastest growing racial group of eligible American voters. A significant percentage of Indian Americans identify as Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh, and religion is one reason why Indian Americans have historically supported Democratic candidates. For example, the 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey found that Indian American voters were wary of the Republican Party because they perceived it as hostile to non-Christians, revealing a vulnerability for Republicans. “A large section of Indian Americans view the Republican Party as unwelcoming,” the report authors wrote. “Indian Americans refrain from identifying with the Republican Party due, in part, to a perception that the party is intolerant of minorities and overly influenced by Christian evangelicalism.” (A survey released this summer indicates that a higher percentage of Indian Americans now affiliate with the Republican Party compared to four years ago, though it’s not clear why.)
At a time when Indian American Republicans have risen to national prominence—Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Usha Vance are just a few examples—some Republicans are taking a more inclusive approach to the religious diversity of their party and country, with Indian Americans at the front and center of these efforts. During his presidential campaign last year, for instance, Vivek Ramaswamy spoke openly to conservative Christians about his Hindu beliefs, practices, and identity. And then, of course, Harmeet Dhillon recited the Ardas, a Sikh prayer, during the Republican National Convention last month. Republicans also included two Jews in their convention speaker lineup: Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, and Shabbos Kestenbaum, a recent Harvard graduate who is suing the university for anti-semitism.
But Republicans’ public embrace of religious diversity at the convention only went so far. When non-Christian speakers took the stage, images of crosses still appeared on screens behind them. And aside from Dhillon, all of the individuals who led the invocation and benediction were Christian. Most of them were also Protestant, with the exception of Archbishop Elpidophoros of America, who is Greek Orthodox, and Archbishop Jerome Listecki of Milwaukee, who is Catholic. Indeed, what was most obvious at the Republican National Convention was the party’s enthusiastic embrace of evangelical Christianity, in evidence nearly everywhere you looked, from the shirts worn by convention delegates to the rhetoric of the evening speakers. The fourth night even felt like what one commentator described as “a tent revival,” with Franklin Graham speaking not long before Lee Greenwood performed an emotional rendition of “God Bless the U.S.A.” as President Donald Trump appeared onstage to accept his party’s nomination.
If the convention in Milwaukee revealed that the Republican Party is the party of and for Christians, especially evangelical Christians, even more telling was the public response to the convention’s few attempts at welcoming religious diversity. The conservative activist and commentator Candace Owen, for example, declared that Dhillon’s benediction was “not emblematic of America.” “[Y]ou can find a melting pot in different cultures within America, but this is not something that patriots are rallying behind,” she said. “This is — it doesn’t make any sense for this to be on the RNC stage.” Thomas Kidd, professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, said on X that “It would be better to have no prayers than this type of ‘COEXIST’ pabulum.”
In the end, despite some efforts by Republicans to make space for Sikhs, Jews, and other non-Christians, their work was undercut by the party’s continued loyalty to conservative Christian people and their priorities.
Last week’s Democratic National Convention was something entirely different: a lively celebration of religious diversity. The invocations and benedictions featured six Protestant leaders, many from historically Black churches; three rabbis; two imams; one Catholic archbishop; one Greek Orthodox archbishop; one Hindu priest; and one interfaith activist who identified as both Hindu and Sikh, wore a keffiyah, and worked for the Los Angeles Episcopal Diocese.
The invocation and benediction leaders not only represented different religious communities but made a show of interreligious unity by appearing onstage not as individuals, but as interfaith pairs. The second night, for example, opened with an invocation from an imam from Washington, D.C. and a rabbi from Los Angeles and ended with a benediction from a bishop in the A.M.E. Church and an archbishop in the Greek Orthodox Church. The arrangement did more than remind the audience of their favorite jokes beginning with various religious leaders walking into a bar. By arranging for the invocation and benediction speakers to share the stage and speak side by side, the convention planners not only made space for more participants but also conveyed a clear message of unity across religious difference.
Unity was a theme directly addressed in the speakers’ invocations and benedictions. Rabbi Michael S. Beals of Temple Beth El in Newark, Delaware spoke of “being inclusive” and “bridge-building.” Bishop Leah Daughtry of the House of the Lord Churches prayed that the American people will “join together with one voice, in one fight, to move our national away from division and despair and forward toward its highest ideals.” And Sri Rakesh Bhatt of Sri Siva Vishnu Temple urged,
We should be in unison, like our mind think together, like our hearts beat as one, all for the betterment of society. Let us make us powerful so we can unite and make our nation proud. Even if we have difference when it comes to the nation, we have to be united, and it moves us toward justice for all. We are one universal family.
The lineup of invocation and benediction speakers did more than simply highlight Democrats’ religious inclusiveness. It also revealed shrewd political strategy. Democrats knew that one of the purposes of a convention is to excite the communities that historically have been an important part of their base. For Republicans, that means white evangelicals, but for Democrats, that means Black Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus.
In addition, Democrats understood that success in November depends in part on recreating the anti-Trump coalition that emerged victorious in 2020. Uniting the party and rebuilding the coalition is no small task, given the internal divisions that have roiled the party in the past year, especially around the issue of Israel and the war in Gaza. On that point, the specific messages of the prayers at the Democratic National Convention were notable. In addition to emphasizing unity, speakers brought up the war in Gaza both directly and indirectly. The Reverend Tahil Sharma, for example, wore a keffiyah in a sartorial show of support for Palestinians, and Rabbi Sharon Brous stood alongside Imam Dr. Talib M. Shareef of the Nation’s Mosque and offered a prayer for peace,
Holy One, help us write America’s redemption story, a story of ceaseless striving toward a true multiracial democracy, rooted in equal justice where every person is treated as unique, mighty, and worthy of love. In this story, politics is not a vehicle for repression, bigotry, or personal profit, but a call to service. This story counters extremism with capaciousnes and compassion. It rejects the inevitability of war, affirming that every one of us, Muslim and Jew, Christian, Black, White, Latino, AAPI, queer and straight, Israeli and Palestinian, deserves to live in dignity and in peace.
To be clear, the Democrats’ speaker lineup, with all its celebration of interreligious unity, did have some significant absences. Most significantly, there were no invocations or benedictions led by white evangelicals—a striking contrast with the Republican National Convention. Buddhists and practitioners of indigenous traditions were also absent. And compared to the past couple conventions, there was less discussion of Catholicism on display, which makes sense, since neither Vice President Kamala Harris nor her running mate Governor Tim Walz are Catholic. (President Joe Biden and 2016 Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine before him never let you forget that they’re Catholic.) But overall, the politically strategic story that the Democrats told through their convention lineup was that theirs is the party of religious inclusion.
Ultimately, both parties made strikingly different choices about how to handle religion at their conventions. Republicans made some gestures toward religious inclusion but generally chose to lean into their alignment with conservative Christianity. Democrats, on the other hand, sidelined evangelical Christianity, showcased their commitment to religious pluralism, and emphasized a message of unity through diversity. The conventions couldn’t have been more different.
Yet I would argue that the two parties’ contrasting approaches to religion reveal that they have one critical thing in common: the driving desire to win in November. The purpose of a political party, after all, is to gain power, and when political parties talk about religion, deploy religious rhetoric, and mobilize religious people, it is always to that end. How you plan to capture 270 Electoral College votes looks different in these two parties, but the goal is still the same.
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