But Trump may be appealing to “comfort food Christian nationalism,” a version of “God and country” patriotism familiar to older Christian voters who remember the heyday of civil religion. “It was this more inclusive kind of Christian America — though if you weren’t Christian you just had to be quiet and go along,” said Du Mez.
In Trump’s hands, that idea has been turned into a weapon, with Trump’s Christian followers portrayed as the “real Americans” pitted against not only non-Christians but Christians who don’t share their political views. “You are either for us or against us,” said Du Mez, author of “Jesus and John Wayne.”
In this sense, Trump is trying to turn a bygone Christian consensus into a source of power, a message he made plain earlier this year at a meeting of evangelical Christian broadcasters in Nashville, Tennessee, telling them, “If I get in, you’re going to be using that power at a level that you’ve never used before.”
Tobin Miller Shearer, a professor of history at the University of Montana, points out that civil religion appealed to faith in defense of democracy. Trump, Shearer argued in a recent essay, is instead using God to motivate people to undermine democracy. “Regardless of the outcome of the 2024 election, the switch from historical claims of divine authority for democracy to divine authority to challenge democracy is already obvious and apparent,” he said.
Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump speaks at the National Religious Broadcasters convention at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center, Feb. 22, 2024, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Princeton historian Kevin Kruse, author of “One Nation Under God,” a study of Eisenhower-era “God and country” politics, said some of Trump’s supporters may still recall that earlier version of civil religion and long for that era, even if the former president has a different goal in mind.
When they hear “One nation, under God,” that means “We are all in this together,” Kruse said. “Not — if you don’t toe the line, you are out.”
Those who see Christianity as important to many Americans are exasperated at the gap between those teachings and the rise of Trump, said NPR political correspondent Sarah McCammon, even those who don’t embrace the Bible or Christianity but know its teachings.
Sarah McCammon. (Photo by Kara Frame)
McCammon, whose book “The Exvangelicals” was prompted by her experiences covering Trump’s 2016 campaign and his surprising hold on evangelicals, said that she often gets asked, “How can Christian people think that this is what Christianity is all about?”
“I don’t think most white evangelicals are supporting Trump because they think he’s a devout Christian,” she said. “It’s not because they think Trump is one of them. It’s because they think he will be a champion for them. That distinction is really critical.”
Even if many Americans no longer read the Bible — Trump’s endorsed version or any other — Christianity is still embedded for many in what it means to be an American. And it remains a force in American culture, said McCammon.
“Flannery O’Connor talked about how Christ-haunted the South was,” she said, referring to the mid-20th-century novelist from Georgia. “In a way, Christ has haunted America. We can’t get away from that history.”
For his part, Wallis said he is still hopeful about America’s future. During his bookstore talk, he spoke of the short-term goal of saving democracy. But the bigger goal, he said, is to transform the nation into the kind of inclusive community Christians — and all Americans — can share.
Hope is needed to make that possible, he said, turning to the New Testament Book of Hebrews. Faith, he said in quoting that book, “is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
(This story was reported with support from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation.)
This article originally appeared here.
