The Trump Republican Party Believes in Religion Without Responsibility
Belief requires putting aside your ego and self-sacrifice.
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump wished everyone a happy Easter in a pair of social media messages on his Truth platform.
First, he told us:
Melania and I would like to wish everyone a very Happy Easter! Whether you are heading out to Church or, watching Service from home, may this day be full of Peace and Joy for all who celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. HE IS RISEN!!
Not bad. Trump’s first message seemed to evince at least some knowledge of what Christian practice in the United States involves. Millions of Christians from coast to coast use the holiday to celebrate Jesus Christ’s resurrection: proof that his crucifixion was not the end of his life nor his message.
But then the president followed that up with his usual emotional register, putting out a message full of anger, contempt, and disgust towards his political opponents:
Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane, and well known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters, back into our Country. Happy Easter also to the WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue, an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten! Sleepy Joe Biden purposefully allowed Millions of CRIMINALS to enter our Country, totally unvetted and unchecked, through an Open Borders Policy that will go down in history as the single most calamitous act ever perpetrated upon America. He was, by far, our WORST and most Incompetent President, a man who had absolutely no idea what he was doing -- But to him, and to the person that ran and manipulated the Auto Pen (perhaps our REAL President!), and to all of the people who CHEATED in the 2020 Presidential Election in order to get this highly destructive Moron Elected, I wish you, with great love, sincerity, and affection, a very Happy Easter!!!
There were all of six minutes between those two messages, suggesting that the “peace and joy” Trump referenced in his first missive were short-lived.
Now, nobody thinks of Trump as a particularly religious man, including many of his fans.
Rep. Tim Burchett, a Republican congressman from Tennessee, earlier this month echoed that sentiment.
“Look, I don’t want Donald Trump teaching my daughter’s Sunday school class, but doggone I like him in the White House because he understands the rule of law, I feel like,” he told a reporter.
But Burchett was being asked about Trump floating the possibility of exiling American citizens to a notoriously abusive prison in El Salvador.
It’s not just that Trump the man lacks a proper religious education or attitude. Under his tutelage, the party itself has unmoored itself from Christian values (or really the values of any major religion). If Trump can’t recite Bible verses by memory, he’s like most Americans. But if he’s okay condemning Americans to starvation or torture in a foreign dungeon, what’s the point of invoking the Christian faith on Easter? What exactly does he think religion means?
Practicing Christianity requires responsibility. The teachings laid out by the God of Abraham and recorded in the Bible ask believers to put aside their own secular desires and serve a higher calling.
Increasingly, that’s not what you see from Trump and his broader coalition as represented by elected officials, media figures, and party activists.
Over the weekend, Natalie Winters, the White House correspondent for Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, shared her own Easter salutation during a visit to the president’s residence. “An Easter Egg hunt but we search for illegals instead,” she wrote on X, adding a thinking emoji.
The Tweet resonated with me because it summarized so much of what Christianity as expressed by this crowd actually is: a belief in a God who asks nothing of them but who can be invoked as a sort of indulgence for engaging in whatever vices you want.
It doesn’t matter if you are supposed to be celebrating the resurrection of God’s only son, that’s no obstacle to joking about how you’d prefer to be hunting down immigrants and shipping them off to El Salvador.
Meanwhile, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG), long known for her bombastic additions into the nation’s political debates, seemed to celebrate the passing of the Pope, writing on X that “Today there were major shifts in global leaderships. Evil is being defeated by the hand of God.”
Does anyone really believe that these political figures think they will be judged by an almighty God? Trump and MTG are both notorious adulterers, so maybe cosmic judgement has never deterred them from following their earthly desires.
News came this week that Mahmoud Khalil’s, the Columbia University graduate student and green card holder detained and slated for deportation because of his opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza, was denied the opportunity to be at his wife’s side as she gave birth to their only son.
A temporary release to meet his son would not have endangered a single American. After all, even the Trump administration can’t cite any actual crimes committed by Khalil or his family. What was the harm?
A God-fearing administration wouldn’t be trying to tear away a law-abiding man from his own family. A God-fearing administration wouldn’t sully the Easter celebration with denunciations of “Radical Left Lunatics” or sadistic fantasies about hunting down illegal immigrants. And a God-fearing Congresswoman wouldn’t be pining for the death of the Pope.
I’m not saying that you have to be religious to be ethical. I know hardcore atheists who are among the most ethical people I know.
But the Republican Party has for decades been guided by a Christian ethos that demands of them humility, grace, charity, and, above all else, responsibility. A truly Christian Republican knows that he is not himself God; he must fulfill his responsibility to his family, church, community, nation, planet, and creator.
Does anyone really get the sense that Trump and the Make America Great Again movement feels any of these responsibilities? The administration seems afraid of ever apologizing for anything (like trying to deport a Japanese visa holder over a fishing violation and speeding ticket before backing off after the move garnered media coverage).
Every mistake is waved away with whataboutism. Oh yeah, what about the Left? I can already hear some of the responses to a column like this in my head. OK so you say we aren’t religious. But the Democrats are waving transgender flags in churches!
Well, what if the Left didn’t exist? What if there were no Democrats? What would you believe in? Because increasingly it seems like the brand of conservative Christianity embraced by the Republican Party just has no content at all. It’s just cultural clothing worn by politicians, empty words thrown out there matched with no commitment to action.
Religion cannot be emptied of responsibility, because then it’s no religion at all. It’s just secularism with more pretending.
I do occasionally see a glimmer of Christianity as traditionally understood in the Trump administration.
Following the arson attack on the residence of Pennslyvania’s Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro, Vice President JD Vance tweeted a message of sympathy.
“Thanks be to God that Governor Shapiro and his family were unharmed in this attack. Really disgusting violence, and I hope whoever did it is brought swiftly to justice,” he said.
Many of his readers did not appreciate Vance’s nonpartisanship and Christian grace. They started to criticize Democrats and the political left, placing political party over religious principle. But Vance did not take the bait.
Instead, he represented what a more authentically Christian or at least religious politics might look like: understanding that some things transcend your political squabbles and that you have a duty to aid a soul in peril.
We can only hope that the administration learns to listen to its better angels, much as Vance did that day. Otherwise, we may be spiraling quickly towards a politics stripped of any meaningful spirituality whatsoever.
"Does anyone really believe that these political figures think they will be judged by an almighty God?"
I can't speak to Green, but yes I genuinely believe that Donald Trump, in his own "I'll worry about the details later" way, DOES actually believe that God exists and will judge him in the end. The more pertinent question is perhaps what standard he believes God will judge him on. I'd argue that he believes he'll be judged primarily on his job performance as President.
In fact, he seems to believe since narrowly surviving the assassination attempt that he is in some way actively chosen by God to be our President and accomplish some great tasks. He's certainly no theologian, his knowledge of Christianity seems to be no more or less than what any American of his generation might be expected to have passively picked up from the culture, showing a shallow belief system that vaguely represents traditional Christianity, but with a lot of the Mandate of Heaven and Prosperity Gospel emphasized: essentially that God appoints rulers to bravely lead their people in conflict against their enemies, to wisely steward their resources, to fairly enforce justice, and that when rulers do these things to their best of their ability, God rewards them and their nations with wealth and safety.
Here's the thing though: that's a view that's actually quite supported within the Bible and Christian tradition. He's certainly missing a LOT of other elements regarding personal obedience and conduct, but that's not a clearly wrong interpretation of Christian doctrine on the responsibilities of rulers either. AFAICT, he IS deliberately obeying God's will to the extent of his rather limited understanding of it. That's not to say that his interpretations are necessarily correct or complete or that he is likely to ever be truly Christian, much less devout, but he's frankly shown more deference to Christian belief and greater consistency with it than many nominally Christian politicians before him, so it's more of a step in the right direction than a sign of religious decay.
So I don't agree with Zaid on a number of policy issues, but that's precisely *why* I read this.
The pious posturing I see kind of reminds me of the Christian conservatives of the Bush era. Many, not all, but many were quick to leverage their faith to belittle or judge others.
It was...exhausting.
Our faith, whatever it is, is not a cudgel for our political views. It needs to be a guide for how we treat one another.
(For the record the progressive left has their own religion which includes rituals (performative protests), excommunication (purity checks, usually on trans or Israel issues), ritual objects such as "in this house" posters, etc.)