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Donald Trump, now facing a tougher challenge in the US elections after Joe Biden resigned in favor of Kamala Harris, is increasingly relying on religious extremism aimed at energizing a key section of his base of support: socially conservative Christians.
Fears that Trump would be an authoritarian leader if elected appeared to be realized last week, when he told a group of Christian supporters that they “shouldn’t vote” in four years if he becomes president.
“My theory would be that since Harris entered the race, Trump has recognized that he is on shakier ground,” said Matthew D Taylor, author of The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian movement that threatens our democracy.
“If you looked at the RNC and you saw the speech there, (Republicans) were really pretty confident that they were going to kind of cakewalk to victory in November.
“I think there’s, there’s more anxiety here now. I think Trump calls the religious dog whistles, and sometimes just the right whistles to really galvanize and undercut the religious support of that religion.”
Since 2016, Trump has become an unlikely hero for Christian nationalists – a group of evangelical Christians who believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, and want to see Christianity appear in American life and politics.
After a stumbling start – during his first run for President Trump, three times married he struggled to name a single verse of the Bible, referring to the Eucharist as a “little cracker”and put money in the communion plate during a church visit — the relationship was cemented when Trump-installed supreme court justices overturned Roe v Wade.
The bond between Trump and Christian nationalists has now deepened to the point that Trump is comfortable with comparing yourself with his messiah, while some of the religious right have come to believe that the one-term president was chosen, or anointed, by God himself, especially after a recent failed assassination attempt in a demonstration in Pennsylvania.
In the past two weeks, as Harris has posed a threat that Republicans apparently didn’t see coming, and Trump has been questioned about the nomination of JD Vance as his running mate, he has sought the support of these religious groups.
The speech at the Turning Point’s Believers’ Summit, a meeting of Christians and Republicans who had the stated purpose of “finally turning our nation toward the Lord,” was the furthest that Trump went in appealing to this Christian base.
“Christians, go out and vote, just this once. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know that, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you don’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians,” said Trump in his speech , where he also repeated the promise to form “a new federal”. task force on combating anti-Christian prejudice,” which will investigate “harassment and persecution of Christians in America.”
The crowd at the Summit of Believers was a gathering of the most extreme type of American Christian, and it came days after the Trump campaign launched a “Believers for Trump” coalition, backed by controversial religious figures who reinforced the sense that the base was pandered to. to.
Those supporters included Eric Metaxas, an anti-vaxxer and radio conservative, who in the press release accompanying the event stated that “American Christians have fallen for the same religious lies” that German Christians have succumbed to the rise of the Nazi party in the years 1930″, and that recently. retweeted a post on X that discussed “how to get that smug, whore smirk off Kamala’s face.”
Taylor said there is a distinction between Christians who simply support Trump and those — like the people at the Believers’ Summit — who have a “religious attachment” to the former president. Those, who include a number of religious leaders, see Trump in religious terms and have attached to him “spiritual narratives”: an example is the comparison of Trump to King Cyrus, who, according to the Bible, freed the Jews from captivity babylonia , despite himself a Persian ruler.
The real goal with Trump’s appeal to this crowd is more than just winning individual votes, Taylor said.
“I think the most obvious Christian appeals are maybe a little desperate, but it’s also a tried and true method for them, to drum up more and more support and the truth is that religious voters who have a religious attachment to Trump are not no. just the voters — they’re force multipliers,” Taylor said.
“If someone believes that it is the will of God that Donald Trump is elected, and believes that there are demonic and satanic forces that are pushing back against the will of God, and that they have to be active and push against (these things) to see Trump elected. . It is a level of political fervor and ardor that is very, very valuable for a candidate, because it is people who then talk to their friends, who then mobilize some of these groups.
The assassination attempt, Taylor said, “added even more certainty for these people that God wants Trump to be elected.”
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At the Republican National Convention, held days after the shooting, speaker after speaker leaned into this idea that God had been at work.
Tim Scott, the senator from South Carolina, suggested that it was “the devil”; Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the governor of Arkansas, he said “Almighty God” had saved Trump; and Ben Carson declared that God had “lowered a shield of protection over Donald Trump.” Corey Comperatore, the former fire chief who was killed in the shooting, was rarely mentioned.
Trump is appealing to a specific type of Christian, the Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president and CEO of the Interfaith Alliance, said in a statement. Raushenbush said Trump is trying to shore up his popularity with the religious right, which does not represent every person of faith.
“Most religious people in this country are alarmed and threatened by Trump’s promise to give Christian nationalists the keys to power. His agenda hopes to suppress diversity and difference and impose an extreme religious vision of the world to all of us,” he said.
“Trump’s shameless appeals to ‘my beautiful Christians’ are disturbing and infuriating to the many millions of American Christians who proudly believe in pluralistic democracy and healthy boundaries between religion and government.”
The tilt has continued since Trump delivered his incendiary speech at the Summit of the Faithful. Jake Schneider, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, sent an email on Tuesday falsely accusing Harris of supporting “taxpayer-funded abortion on demand with no limits until birth,” which was designed to appeal to the grassroots. christian
In Social Truth, meanwhile, Trump has accused Harris of being “anti-Catholic” and made a direct appeal to Catholics as he tries to expand his religious support.
“I think he’s really trying to win votes and strengthen his religious base without quotes,” said Kristin Du Mez, a professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University, whose research focuses on the ‘intersection of gender, religion and politics.
Du Mez said that Trump “has been disturbed by what has happened in the last two weeks, that has been very clear.” But he said it was impossible to say whether Trump had recalibrated his speech in response to Harris replacing Biden on the Democratic ticket.
“There is no way that is not part of this context. However, I really did not imagine that his speech to that particular crowd would have been so different, even if he was still on top of the world as he was a couple of weeks ago,” he said.
Du Mez said the main takeaway from the speech was the lingering fear of what Trump has planned if he wins a second term.
“Those of us who study authoritarian movements saw huge red flags here. This language is unprecedented for a presidential candidate of the United States, and I think it’s important to say that, because Trump always says strange things, and it’s important just to drop that marker,” he said.
“This is not normal for a presidential candidate in this country to say anything remotely like that.”
