Is Jesus Running For Governor Of Georgia?

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Behold, please: the wonder that is Kandiss Taylor’s campaign bus. Taylor is one of three Republicans challenging incumbent Georgia governor Brian Kemp in the primary. (Stacey Abrams is running in the Democratic primary apparently unchallenged.) Taylor, a grade-school counselor in rural southeastern Georgia, has no prior electoral experience, but apparently enough Georgians support her to afford a large, diesel-burning coach bus.

I can find embarrassingly little information on Kandiss Taylor’s campaign online. Described as a GOP activist, Taylor has alliances with Georgia hard-right icons Marjorie Taylor Greene and Herschel Walker. Her campaign website rehashes comfy conservative standbys: election “integrity,” aggressive immigration enforcement, and opposition to Critical Race Theory. It’s a Mad-Libs of right-wing talking points, overseen by Taylor’s admittedly photogenic face.

Except: Taylor’s website, like her bus, extols the three-legged stool of her campaign: Jesus, Guns, and Babies.

This roughly corresponds with the three conservative “wedge issues” identified in Thomas Frank’s book What’s the Matter With Kansas?: “God, guns, and gays.” Since Frank’s book dropped in 2004, it’s become political suicide to be openly anti-gay, just as being brazenly racist once became toxic. However, since Taylor’s website says she opposes both abortion and comprehensive sex education, “Babies” clearly serves the role of signalling restrictive sexual values.

However, by yoking Jesus together with Guns and Babies, Taylor makes visible something only implicit in Thomas Frank’s formulation. Speaking as a Christian, I must begin by admitting: Jesus isn’t here. We may believe that Jesus, with the wide-sweeping agape of saving love, dwells in our hearts, but Jesus isn’t physically present. We have Christ’s words, and guidance from ministers, and (arguably) Christ in our hearts. But Jesus isn’t here.

Therefore, campaigning for Jesus is easy. Jesus won’t disagree, won’t muster counter-arguments, won’t say “Hey! I never said that.” When candidates promise to crack down on welfare cheats and undocumented immigrants, Jesus won’t inconveniently remind them of the Sermon on the Mount or the Parable of the Sheep and Goats, where Christ said the mark of salvation was feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and welcoming the stranger.

Kandiss Taylor

Thinking about it, I realized Jesus has something in common with guns and babies: they’re all incapable of asking for help, or expressing gratitude. They’re all ideologically inert. All three serve important roles in political discourse, but they serve those roles passively, as mute recipients of political beneficence. Jesus, guns, and babies never ask anything of anyone, at least not directly. You can “be for” Jesus, guns, and babies without having to ask their permission.

By contrast, the people Jesus told Christians to support have needs. The hungry and the naked require our assistance and support, but just as importantly, they require our dignity. That’s why Jesus told us to give alms freely, but not let our left hand know what the right was doing. In seeking personal glory for our generosity, or electoral position, or résumé filler, we don’t uplift the poor; we only gratify ourselves.

While Republicans, like Taylor, have positioned themselves as champions of smiling babies and big, scary guns, Democrats have badly fumbled the effort to empower populations. A heavily White contingent of Democrats loves dispensing government largesse to Black, Indigenous, gay, and other beloved populations. But the Democrats remain focused on being seen as generous, and in so doing rob their favored groups of dignity.

In other words, Republicans ignore populations able to express their own needs, while Democrats ignore the words those populations say about their own needs. Republicans embrace the existing power structure, and promise to preserve it against meddlesome do-gooders. Democrats prefer to see themselves as White saviors, even those who aren’t necessarily White themselves, rescuing the poor by dispensing patronage plums.

Kandiss Taylor loves Jesus, guns, and babies, because loving the passive is easy. Much easier, certainly, than praying for those who curse you, as a certain Galilean said. Also easier than forgiving debts, which Jesus considered pretty important, and which Democrats promised to do, before reneging. Taylor has embraced literally the most passive campaign pledge possible, promising to do nothing, while shifting the responsibility onto God.

As a Christian and a citizen, I want a candidate who shares my values. But the problem is frustratingly reflexive: the more loudly a candidate proclaims her Christian bona fides, the more likely those credentials are false. And both parties are avoiding the difficult work of listening to “the least of these” where they actually are. I fear conditions will only get worse before there’s any chance of getting better.