The Christians who see Trump as their saviour

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The Christians who see Trump as their saviour

BBC

Standing on a podium in a Florida convention centre on the night of the election, a row of ********* flags behind him and a jubilant crowd looking on, Donald Trump declared: “Many people have told me that **** spared my life for a reason, and that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness.”

This was one of the most striking themes of his election campaign – that he had been chosen by ****. Yet even before the attempt on his life on 13 July in Butler, Pennsylvania, millions of Americans already felt guided by their ****** to support the former, and now future, president.

Some cast the election in an apocalyptic light and likened Trump to a Biblical figure.

Last year, on the ********** show FlashPoint, TV evangelist Hank Kunneman described “a battle between good and evil”, adding: “There’s something on President Trump that the ****** fears: it’s called the anointing.”

EPA

Donald Trump delivered his victory speech to a jubilant crowd

Jim Caviezel, an actor who played ****** in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the *******, proclaimed, albeit jokingly, that Trump was “the new Moses”. Then, in the months leading up to the election, many of his supporters referred to him as a “saviour”.

The question is why. What makes so many see this man, who isn’t known to have an especially strong ******, as sent from ****?

And what does that say about Christianity more broadly in a country where the numbers of churchgoers is in rapid decline?

‘All of us have sinned’

Reverend Franklin Graham is one of America’s best-known evangelists and the son of Billy Graham, arguably its most famous preacher. He is one of the Trump believers, convinced there is no doubt that the president-elect was chosen for this mission by ****.

“The bullet that went through his ear missed his brain by a millimetre, and his head turned just at the last second when the **** was fired,” he says. “I believe that **** turned his head and saved his life.”

The questions asked about Trump’s character – including accusations of ******* misconduct, and his alleged affair with ****** film star Stormy Daniels and associated

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– don’t dim Mr Graham’s view.

“Remember when ****** told the crowd, ‘Let the one without sin cast the first stone’ and that slowly, the entire audience began to disappear? All of us have sinned.”

Getty Images

Franklin Graham spoke alongside Donald Trump during the 2024 election campaign

Part of the reason some Christians may find it easier to look past questions of character is that during Trump’s first term in office he delivered on a particular promise: to appoint anti-********* judges to the US Supreme Court.

Mr Graham points to this as evidence that the president-elect is a man of integrity.

“This is a big win for Christians, for evangelicals,” he says. “We believe the president will defend religious freedom where the Democrats would not.”

The selection of Mike Huckabee as ambassador to ******* is already a hint that ****** might shape some foreign policy. US evangelicals including Huckabee are among the country’s most fervent supporters of *******.

Many of them believe that Jews should populate the whole of the area of biblical *******, including what is now the occupied West Bank and Gaza, in order to precipitate events leading to the Second Coming of ****** *******.

A religion in rapid decline

In the past Donald Trump had talked about having had a Presbyterian upbringing. But despite his strong support from Christians in last week’s election, he never tried hard to convince them in his most recent campaign that he was one of them.

“I think he realised it was going to be a bit of a stretch to argue that he himself is a religious man, but instead he adopted a quid pro quo approach,” says Robert Jones, founder and president of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), which has long tracked religious trends in the US.

That approach centred on changes in demographics and dwindling numbers of churchgoers.

********* Pressphoto Agency

Pope Francis meets with President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump at the ******** City in 2017

In the early 1990s, about 90% of US adults identified as Christians – a figure that had fallen to 64% earlier this decade, with a large increase in the number of those unaffiliated to any ******, according to data from Pew Research Center.

This, says Dr Jones, was something Trump was able to draw upon.

“Trump’s message was: ‘I know you’re in decline, I know your numbers are waning. I know your children and grandchildren aren’t affiliated with your Churches anymore, but if you elect me, I’m going to restore power to the ********** Churches.”’

Not all Christians in the US were won over, however. For some, their ****** has guided them to precisely the opposite impression of Trump.

‘Trump has demeaned and debased’

In recent months, from the pulpit of ****** Ways Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia, Reverend Monte Norwood has been sharing a very different message to that of Franklin Graham.

He, for one, was dismayed at last week’s election result.

“Trump has demeaned and debased just about anybody he could, from immigrants to minorities to women to those who are disabled,” he says.

handout

Monte Norwood and his wife Wanda after voting in Atlanta

“White ************* *********** Christianity that ignores character is just hypocritical.”

He has long been opposed to the idea of a second Trump presidency, and he has voiced this on social media and through activism encouraging voter turnout – such as by helping other ****** voters to register to vote and access free rides to the polls.

“I am a Matthew chapter 25 kind of ********** – where ****** said: ‘When I was hungry you fed me, when I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink.’”

In history: ********** voting patterns

PRRI’s research has looked into voting records in history, not just by religious practice and belief but also by race, and found that when it comes to political views, there has been a clear trend for decades.

“Almost without exception, white ********** groups have tended to vote *********** in presidential contests,” says Dr Jones. “Non-white ********** groups, non-********** groups and religiously unaffiliated voters have tended to vote Democrat.”

This pattern dates back to the 1960s, he adds, when the Democratic party became associated with the civil rights movement and white ********** groups began migrating to the *********** Party.

Polling ahead of the 2024 election looking at voter intention suggested that for the most part this pattern held. “From our polling, we have a *********** party that is 70% white and **********, and a Democratic party that’s only a quarter white and **********.”

According to the PPRI’s

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of 5,027 adults, white evangelical *********** voters were the strongest backers of Trump over Harris by 72% to 13%. White ********* voters also backed Trump, with 55% supporting him and 34% aligned with Harris. White “mainline” non-evangelical Protestants showed a similar split.

By contrast 78% ****** Protestants supported Harris while just 9% backed Trump, according to the survey. Harris’s backers also included *******-Americans, the religiously unaffiliated and other non-********** Americans, according to the PPRI.

Reuters

Rev Franklin Graham speaks during a rally in North Carolina ahead of the presidential election

When it came to the actual vote, there were signs of departures from familiar patterns.

The results from Michigan showed a clear lurch towards the *********** Party by ******* voters in the state, likely the result of the Biden administration’s role in aiding ******* in its war in Gaza.

Analysis also shows that more Latino ********** voted for Trump than expected, when previously they have tended to lean Democrat.

Economic hardship brought about by soaring inflation, among other factors, is likely to have resulted in “non-traditional” *********** voters being drawn to vote for Trump.

As for his appeal to traditionalist Christians, Dr Jones argues that there has been a ****** component to the idea of “Making America Great Again”, with the promise of restoring the country’s ********** character.

“His has been a campaign of grievance and loss and nostalgia,” argues Dr Jones, “and that includes nostalgia from a ****** perspective.”

The future of ****** in the US

For all his political strength, one thing that Trump cannot do is hold back the tide of demographic change in the US – including the move away from ******.

While the number who define themselves as “atheist” ******** lower in the US than in most Western countries, those who say they are “religiously unaffiliated” is growing.

There is a generational component to that, along with the familiar trends of personal economics meaning that people have greater autonomy to move away from the accepted norms in their communities. But there are other reasons too.

A third of ********* atheists or agnostics say they disaffiliated from their childhood religion because of high-profile ******* ****** scandals, according to a PPRI study.

In 2020 the ********* ******* released lists of living members of clergy in the US found to have been accused of abuses, including some linked to child ************ and *****. There were around 2,000 names.

Two years later, the Southern ******** Conference collection of US *********** Churches released a list of hundreds of ******* leaders accused of child ****** between 2000 and 2019.

It shows the scale of the issue that Trump faces. Nevertheless, Franklin Graham is optimistic.

“******* attendance is not going to go up next week because President Trump has been elected – but what I think it does mean is that legislation that we might have seen coming down the road that that would make it very difficult for people of ****** will not come,” he says, referring to the idea of more progressive legislation around, for example, ********* and gay and trans rights.

“He will protect people of ******, he will protect religious freedoms in this country. I don’t talk about just ********** religious freedoms… [but] all people of ******.”

As to whether he is right, Americans can only watch and wait. But just as some are revelling in the promise of governance influenced by Christianity, others are undoubtedly nervous.

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#Christians #Trump #saviour

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