During Donald Trump’s inaugural address on Jan. 20, he spoke of the day a would-be assassin’s bullet narrowly missed his brain, announcing that he had been “saved by God to make America great again.” Perhaps this would be a benign statement, except it came from a man ready to deliver America’s religious right into power. There are many angles to take regarding the dangers Trump presents; in other articles, I have covered several of those issues. Yet, on the subject of religion, one can find the ideological core of his designs.
The day after Trump’s inauguration, he attended a service at the Washington National Cathedral, which included a sermon by Episcopal Bishop Marian Budde. Directly addressing the president, Budde made a plea for “mercy upon the people who are scared now,” mentioning LGBTQ+ people facing discrimination and degradation of their rights, as well as undocumented immigrants who have been threatened with deportation under the new regime. But the bishop’s Christian call for mercy induced Trump’s fury, as he called her a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” who “brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way.” Disregarding the mangling of capital letters in Trump’s social media screed, there is bitter irony in the claim that Budde is the one merging politics and religion, as the integration of church and state is the Christian right’s most important and overarching goal, and Trump is in service of that ideal.
Trump’s fealty to the religious right, and in turn their loyalty to him, emerged during his first presidency with his promise to end Roe v. Wade by putting right-wing judges on the Supreme Court. Indeed, Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices during his term, and all of them joined the 6-3 majority in a 2022 case that sounded the death knell for federal protection of abortion. For nearly 50 years, evangelicals and other conservative Christians had worked to end Roe v Wade, failing many times, but in Trump they at last found their savior. And far from a culmination of their efforts, the ruling marked a new beginning for religious right-wingers. With their power unleashed and the Supreme Court on their side, the process to turn America into an explicitly Christian nation began.
In 2024, the Louisiana state legislature passed a bill mandating that the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom. Although the law is currently being challenged in federal court, the boldness of the attempt is astonishing. The Constitution mandates freedom of religion in the First Amendment, and any effort to undermine that freedom by putting a document specifically advocating for the worldview of Christianity in state-funded schools is clearly unlawful. But Louisiana has paved the way for similar bills in other red states; Texas, North and South Dakota, Tennessee and Oklahoma have all introduced Ten Commandments bills in their legislatures. All across red America, the separation between church and state is becoming dangerously thin, and with a heavily conservative Supreme Court, the Constitution being enforced is hardly a guarantee.
A large part of the problem regarding the potential Christian dominance of America is the idea’s significant base of support among Republicans. According to NPR, more than half of Republicans believe in Christian nationalism or, in other words, that the U.S. was and should be set up to follow the laws in the Bible. This mindset, however fervently brought forth by some Christians, is unequivocally wrong. The founders did not want America to be a Christian nation, which is why we don’t have an official religion and we allow people to practice—or not practice—religion as they see fit.
Despite the laws of religious tolerance in America, the movement of Christian nationalism is surging under Trump, who is a deeply ironic figurehead for the religious right given his many travails. If Republican lawmakers want to mandate the Ten Commandments in schools, they should probably have Trump read them first. He has been held liable in civil court for sexual assault, which occurred while he was married, in direct violation of the Seventh Commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” There is not enough space to document all of his other moral failings. But none of that really matters to conservative Christians, because Trump is the one giving them power. He nominated Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense, who holds far-right Christian nationalist beliefs, including the idea of ‘sphere sovereignty,’ which posits that the church has supremacy over government and is the highest authority in the land. At the same time, Trump has nominated several authors and contributors of Project 2025, a sweeping plan to remake the government into a system based on biblical ideas, to other important positions in government. These individuals include Russel Vought, who was selected as director of the office of management and budget and has said that America should be known as a Christian nation. Although Trump denied that he had any connection to Project 2025 during the election campaign, this was an outright lie, and it is clear that he is ready to install the favored figures of the religious right into power.
We have therefore come to a moment in the U.S. where the federal government is set up to cater to Christian nationalism. The extremely conservative Supreme Court, having already struck down Roe v. Wade and allowed religious dominance to creep into public schools, stands ready to give aid to the religious right. The Republican-controlled legislative branch, whose politicians have long been under the thumb of the current president, is either going to sit by or cheer on the efforts to erase religious freedom. Finally, at the crux of the matter is Trump, who owes a large part of his support to conservative, evangelical Christians and will work to advance their aims. Trump, despite his disdain for morality, has become the true prophet and savior of Christian nationalism in America.