God or Trump?
How Trump liberated the Religious Right from religion
"God made Trump.” So Trump’s platform, Truth Social, now declares. And He made him for a divinely appointed mission. This is actually the more discreet form of the new blasphemy.
Some of the former president’s base now treat him like the son of God. It is a mistake to see Trump only as a political leader. In 2024, he is also a cult for Evangelicals who no longer want to be Christians or churchgoers constrained by the Bible or a community of fellow believers. He has liberated them from the Bible, or from biblical morality, which is evidently too great a burden. Their new religion consists of participating in ritual acts where Trump tramples on that old morality in some new and shocking way, intoxicating his supporters with the thought that they, too, are now free to trample on these values.
In a January 11
front-page story published just before the Iowa caucus, the
New York Times described these Evangelicals who no longer go to church and instead religiously follow Trump, who
never goes to church. Given that Trump’s appeal is all about resentment, something like this was bound to happen. Like elite education, biblical morality was just one more thing about which Trump’s followers could be made to feel bad or looked down upon. So many of them are enraged at being judged, even by the Sermon on the Mount.
I was a stranger and you welcomed me? That sounds like Biden. Even if such biblical morality is by now much weaker than it once was, it is still there, as an irritant. Trump relieves his followers of this sense of shame.
By elevating a leader who violates every commandment, MAGA has become a new religion—and like any other new religion, it has created a burst of energy. The old Evangelical Christianity was not quite the right vehicle for Trump. Its replacement is better because it excises the moral element altogether.
It is a mistake to see Trump only as a political leader. In 2024, he is also a cult for Evangelicals who no longer want to be Christians.
www.commonwealmagazine.org