WASHINGTON (RNS) — As the GOP pivots to an unpredictable general election season, it remains committed to framing the contest in the familiar tropes of the Christian right. The choice the nation faces, the party leaders assert, is between godly governance or the triumph of the ungodly. Former President Donald Trump, according to this narrative, has divine protection — and the proof is in his survival of the assassination attempt on July 13.
The representation of Trump as a candidate from on high, however, extends well before the assassination attempt. Last month’s Road to Majority Policy Conference, a rally organized by Ralph Reed’s Faith & Freedom Coalition that has been meeting annually since 2010, distilled a yearslong effort to anoint Trump and reimagine America’s political conflicts as a spiritual battle.
There was much at Road to Majority that was familiar: the refrain that this nation was founded on the Bible, the idea that conservative Christians are being actively persecuted, and condemnation of abortion.
The conference also reflected some of the ongoing demographic shifts in the movement’s base of supporters. Contrary to the notion that faith-driven Republicanism consists only of old, white evangelicals, the crowd at these gatherings is getting younger and more diverse, with the inclusion of Catholic, Pentecostal and charismatic Christian speakers and notable surges in people of color at the podium and in the audience.
This year’s conference should also definitively quash any doubts about the religious right’s enthusiasm for Trump, despite his moral mismatch with this audience. One speaker after another spoke of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee as if he were sent from heaven. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina affectionately described him as “a handful” but added, “He is your best hope.” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, having long gotten past Trump’s humiliating attacks on his wife, also appeared to have made his peace with the nominee.
The latest senator to undergo ritual loss of dignity at the hands of Trump is Oklahoma’s James Lankford, the GOP’s point man in the negotiations that produced a strict bipartisan immigration bill last fall. The bill was hailed on both sides of the aisle as a major step in managing the border crisis before Trump signaled his faction in Congress to sabotage the bill, and it died.
At the Washington conference, Lankford toed the MAGA line, appearing to blame the Biden administration for Trump’s act of sabotage. “I’m willing to work with anyone to be able to solve the issue of the border. Because I understand what’s happening. We have terrorists crossing every day. We had a 12-year-old murdered in Houston this week,” he said. “Because President Biden allows thousands of people to cross the border every single day.”
The association between immigration and crime does not show up in crime statistics, but it was unquestionable doctrine at the Road to Majority event. Cruz was especially keen to make sure that even people not living in border states should feel the fear. “You may think you don’t live in a border town,” Cruz said. “You’re wrong. Every city in America is a border town because this administration is putting illegal immigrants on planes and buses and sending them to cities across America.”
He did not mention that his own state’s governor, Republican Greg Abbott, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, also a Republican, have made headlines for sending migrants by plane and bus to New York, Chicago and other cities that tend to vote for Democrats.
Many speakers here ran victory laps on abortion, celebrating the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and effectively eliminated abortion rights in many states. These speakers’ message was, in essence, “Don’t look back.”
Trump has attempted to moderate his messaging on the issue, most prominently through his revision of the GOP abortion plank, signaling to blue- and swing-state voters that they need not worry about losing their rights. But conference attendees were eagerly pushing an abortion ban, and Trump, in his address to the gathering, appeared to drop a hint that the anti-abortion activists would eventually get what they want, reminding them of the three conservative justices he had put on the Supreme Court.
As for the revised plank, he said: “You have to also remember you have to get elected,” he said, perhaps an allusion to the fact that majorities of American voters do not support abortion bans. “Over time it will all work out.”
