The American president wears many hats: head of state, head of government, commander in chief, top diplomat, party leader, number one citizen, and leader of the free world. Donald Trump wants to add another: defender of the faith.
In a pair of speeches to prayer breakfasts one morning last week, he declared his mission to “defend the rights of Christians and religious believers” and “bring God back into our lives.” It is a Republican crusade, he said, because Democrats “oppose religion. They oppose God.”
So much for healing a broken nation. Trump sees himself as God’s chosen, divinely spared from two assassination attempts so he could be president again, he revealed.
Keeping a campaign promise, he announced the creation of “a brand-new presidential commission” – the White House Faith Office – whose job will be to “immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting” and “prosecute anti-Christian violence.” He named Florida televangelist Paula White to lead it. He also charged Attorney-General Pam Bondi to oversee a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias.”
Where does that leave the rest of us in Trump’s Christian America?
“Rather than protecting religious beliefs, this task force will misuse religious freedom to justify bigotry, discrimination, and the subversion of our civil rights laws,” Americans United for Separation of Church and State stated.
The Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, a Baptist minister and head of the progressive Interfaith Alliance, accused Trump of “suppressing religious diversity.” He said the administration’s “aggressive government overreach is infringing on religious freedom in a way we haven’t seen for generations.”
When president Ronald Reagan demanded “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” he was referring to the Berlin Wall dividing that city in the Cold War. Trump appears determined to tear down Thomas Jefferson’s wall, too.
Jefferson said the intentions of the Founding Fathers in the First Amendment were “building a wall of separation between Church & State.” There must be no established religion in these newly United States, unlike the country they had broken away from where there was an established church and a king with the title: Defender of the Faith.
TRUMP DOESN’T take much of the First Amendment very seriously, either. While he seems convinced the Second Amendment (the right to bear arms) is sacrosanct and carved in stone by the deity Himself, he seems to believe the First, with its protection of five fundamental freedoms – religion, speech, press, assembly, petition – are just some suggestions to be ignored at will.
He has referred to the news media using the Stalinist term “enemy of the people,” and has spoken of revising the First Amendment. During the 2020 George Floyd protests, he considered shooting demonstrators in the legs.
Contrary to what Trump and many of his supporters would have you believe, including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, America was not founded as a Christian nation. In fact, many of its founders – Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, James Monroe, and Thomas Paine – did not consider themselves Christians but Deists. They believed in a supreme, uninvolved being but not in the interactive divinity of Jesus Christ.
Secular document
The Constitution is a secular document that does not mention Christianity and makes no reference to the Bible, God, or Jesus. The closest it gets is in Article VII, where “the year of our Lord,” refers to the year in September 17, 1787, the day it was signed.
“Defender of the faith” is an odd role for someone known to be not particularly religious, not a regular church-goer, not familiar with scripture, and hawking Chinese-made “God Bless The USA” Bibles for $59.99, from which he gets a hefty commission.
Many question the sincerity of Trump’s playing the role of savior of Christianity but there is no doubt it has proven politically profitable for him.
ONE THING is certain: he’s not a turn-the-other-cheek, forgiving Christian. He is notoriously thin-skinned, easily offended, and quick to strike back in anger.
That was on full display when he attacked Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde for having the temerity to speak truth to power in her Inauguration sermon at the Washington National Cathedral. Trump called her “nasty” and demanded an apology for asking him to “have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” including LGBTQ+ people and immigrants.
Pope Francis had a similar inaugural message for Trump, urging him to “strive to build a more just society, where there is no room for hatred, discrimination, or exclusion.” The pontiff had already said the US election was a choice between two evils. The Pope had earlier said Trump was “not a Christian” because of his immigration policies, and the president hit back, calling the Pope “disgraceful.”
Evangelical Christians are a loyal and powerful base, but not the discriminated minority Trump claims. FBI statistics show that when it comes to hate crimes, 30% of the victims are Blacks and African Americans, 11% are Jews, gays and Whites 9% each, Muslims 2%, and anti-Christian victims are only 1%. Among the perpetrators, Whites are the majority (52%), while Blacks carry out only 20% of hate crimes.
Trump has a long history of hate speech, including antisemitic tropes and embracing White nationalists and similar groups trafficking in Jew-hatred, including violent extremists like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. In three elections, he has accused Jews of disloyalty by voting against him.
Most maga Republicans and their Evangelical base believe this country was founded as a White, Christian nation and the wall of separation must be removed. It is seen around the country in mandates to post theTen Commandments in classrooms, in a case now before the Supreme Court that would permit taxpayer funding of religious schools, in sanctioning prayer at high school athletic events, and in the use of public schools and buildings for religious services.
It is a theme prominent in many Republican political campaigns, with some members of Congress even introducing legislation to officially declare the United States a Christian nation.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia conspiracy theorist and Trump acolyte, declared: “We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly: We should be Christian Nationalists.”
White supremacists like Tucker Carlson, a Trump confidant and former Fox News host, spread conspiracy theories about the threats to Christianity.
They have seen the percentage of Christians in the United States declining in recent years and they fear the “others” are coming to replace them and take over their White Christian country. It is this fear that Trump successfully exploited in the last election and pursues with his migrant hunts and Christian crusade.
The president wants to round up, remove, and wall off those who, for the most part, are not White and don’t practice his approved brand of Christianity.
Trump sees his “big, beautiful wall” keeping out the undesirables, and he wants to tear down Jefferson’s wall, which for nearly two and a half centuries has attracted and protected Jews and other minorities seeking the freedom to worship as they wish, free from state dictates. Let’s keep it that way.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and a former legislative director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.