{"id":2409,"date":"2026-06-18T10:37:51","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T10:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=2409"},"modified":"2026-06-18T10:37:51","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T10:37:51","slug":"opinion-why-california-is-americas-most-catholic-state-and-how-it-defines-our-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=2409","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Why California is America’s most Catholic state \u2014 and how it defines our politics"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pro tip: If you are ever asked to predict a winner in a California governor\u2019s race, be sure to bet on the Catholic.<\/p>\n

Read more Horoscopes June 18, 2026: Blake Shelton, turn your surroundings into a productive space<\/a><\/p>\n

Xavier Becerra\u2019s rapid rise to one of the top-two spots in this month\u2019s gubernatorial election was a surprise, but it shouldn\u2019t have been. If, as expected, Becerra wins the governorship in November\u2019s runoff election, he\u2019ll be the state\u2019s fifth consecutive Catholic governor.<\/p>\n

And that is no accident. While California is caricatured as crazy, uber-progressive, even godless, the truth is that we might be America\u2019s most Catholic state.<\/p>\n

California has more Catholic residents than any other U.S. state \u2014 more than 10 million. By percentage of Catholics among our population, we rank eighth, trailing mostly East Coast states with strong Irish and Italian heritage. And the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is the nation\u2019s most populous Catholic diocese.<\/p>\n

Catholicism also bonds together our people, particularly our diverse immigrant groups. Our massive populations from Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Central America, Vietnam and the Philippines all have a religious tradition in common.<\/p>\n

But our catholic mix also results in contradictions that can curdle into hypocrisy, in ways that feel familiarly Catholic. Our state and the Roman Catholic Church are both known for large populations, for great beauty, for enormous wealth and for the highest of ideals. Both state and church are also known for failing to live up to those ideals, for permitting indefensible abuses, for ugly histories.<\/p>\n

Mission roots<\/h4>\n

Those histories intersect in California. The 18th century history of this place is inseparable from the Catholic Church, via 21 Franciscan missions stretching from San Diego to Sonoma.<\/p>\n

These missions shaped our architecture and design, and named our cities for every Catholic saint in heaven. Which is why Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and San Diego are our most powerful regions. It\u2019s also why \u2014 Father, hear my confession\u2014 your heretic-columnist can tell gullible children that the Silicon Valley capital is named in his honor. (\u201cSan Jose\u201d is \u201cSaint Joe,\u201d and kids, that\u2019s me.)<\/p>\n

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Former California poet laureate Dana Gioia, himself a Catholic, has argued that the \u201cCatholic imagination\u201d shaped California into something vastly different than the rest of the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur seasons, climate, landscape, natural life and history are alien to the worldviews of both England and New England,\u201d wrote the former National Endowment of the Arts chair in 2011 essay, \u201cBeing a California Poet.\u201d \u201cOur towns are named Sacramento and Santa Rosa, not Coventry or New Haven. There is no use listening for a nightingale in the scrub oaks and chaparral.\u201d<\/p>\n

But through that Catholic imagination, Californians, Gioia wrote, see this landscape as \u201csacrament, shimmering with signs of sacred things.\u201d Which explains our bipartisan environmentalism.<\/p>\n

Catholicism also explains the fervor of our current fight with the Trump administration over immigrant rights.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

A sanctuary is a sacred physical space with a church, and a synonym for the right to asylum. And sanctuary policy is central to modern California-Catholic history.<\/p>\n

Read more Asking Eric: He made me laugh and also cringe. The cringing won out.<\/a><\/p>\n

When the U.S. government refused Central American refugees political asylum in 1980s, Our Lady Queen of Angels, the L.A. church of Father Luis Olivares, openly defied the feds by providing sanctuary for immigrants. The networks formed in that era to defend unauthorized immigrants included the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), a leader in today\u2019s struggle against Trump\u2019s mass deportation.<\/p>\n

Modern leaders<\/h4>\n

Ever since the anti-immigrant 1990s governorship of the Protestant Pete Wilson, our governors, all Catholic, have defended immigrants.<\/p>\n

Gray Davis, who was raised Catholic and returned to the church at the urging of his wife, effectively killed off Wilson\u2019s anti-immigrant measure, Prop 187.<\/p>\n

Arnold Schwarzenegger, a lifelong Catholic, also fought his party in service of the environment and public health. When he was less than pious, First Lady Maria Shriver, a daughter of America\u2019s most famous Catholic family, provided faithful reassurance.<\/p>\n

Jerry Brown left seminary before becoming a priest but made his Jesuit education central to his political identity \u2014 especially his frugality, environmentalism and preference for rehabilitation over incarceration.<\/p>\n

Critics sometimes dismiss Gavin Newsom as a WASPY pretty boy without understanding he\u2019s Irish Catholic. In office, Newsom has invoked his Catholicism on climate policy, his personal clean-ups of filthy roadsides (\u201cgood works!\u201d) and his decision to halt the death penalty.<\/p>\n

Becerra fits that mold. In the campaign, he has described himself as a practicing Catholic, and he has long credited his religion for his commitment to health care access and immigrant rights.<\/p>\n

Five Catholic governors in a row is longer than our streak of Democratic governors. This Catholic continuity reflects real differences between California and a country that has elected only two Catholic presidents: John F. Kennedy and Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

According to a Pew Research study published last year, American adults are more than twice as likely to be Protestant (40%) than Catholic (19%). In California, it\u2019s more evenly split, with Protestants and Catholics each representing one-quarter or so of the adult population.<\/p>\n

One California-based, Catholic scholar (who asked not to be named) compared California\u2019s place in America to that of Samaria in Biblical Israel.<\/p>\n

Samaritans worshiped the same God as the Jews, traced their lineage to Abraham and adhered to the Torah. But they were independent and rejected the Jerusalem temple establishment.<\/p>\n

Instead, they built their own temple on Mount Gerizim and interpreted the religion in their own peculiar way.<\/p>\n

Read more Harriette Cole: I\u2019m the neighborhood crone, and you need me more than you know<\/a><\/p>\n

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Z\u00f3calo Public Square.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While California is caricatured as crazy, uber-progressive, even godless, the truth is that we might be America\u2019s most Catholic state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\nOpinion: Why California is America’s most Catholic state \u2014 and how it defines our politics - Next City Digest<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=2409\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Opinion: Why California is America’s most Catholic state \u2014 and how it defines our politics - 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