Thread by @benrileysmith

I got to ask Pete Buttigieg about how his time at Oxford Uni influenced him recently.

As well as the usual stuff, he said something unexpected at the end - it helped him find faith...
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Religion plays a big part in Buttigieg’s pitch. His stump speech includes a riff on how Trump and his admin are betraying Christian values - help thy neighbour, turn the other cheek, do unto others how you’d like done unto you etc.
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He’s flagged it in debates. “The Republican Party likes to cloak itself in their language of religion,” he said in one. “We should call out hypocrisy when we see it”

It’s led to Trump taking a swipe. “Now all of a sudden he's become extremely religious,” he mocked recently.
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Buttigieg grew up the only child of academics. He describes in his book sitting wide-eyed at the dinner table as his parents and friends debated the world’s problems. It politicised him. There’s not much mention of attending church when young in it.
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A wonder kid academically, Buttigieg won a two-year Rhodes scholarship to Oxford (he did a 3yr PPE course in 2yrs and still got a first)

Friends who knew him then - many fellow Americans and Rhodes scholars - say he used to attend evensong often at college chapels.
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They too credit his time there as the moment Buttigieg began to think more “inwardly” about faith.

Here’s how Jeremy Ferris, who Buttigieg shared a house with, and another friend put it to me.
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A source on the campaign backed up the idea it was in England that Buttigieg found the faith that is now at the heart of his White House bid. (Quite a few voters mentioned his Christianity when I was on the Iowa stump in December)
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Some other nuggets about his Oxford days (he used to watch West Wing with housemates, debating who was which character) in this long read I’ve done on his candidacy for today’s @Telegraph mag.

Link below if that’s your bag 👇

telegraph.co.uk/politics/0/pet…