Trump's Two Religions

The Prayer Breakfast and the Executive Order

Yesterday, President Trump spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast and followed that with a speech at the Hilton to assembled followers. Later that afternoon, he signed an executive order

Reading the news today about Trump’s addresses and the EO (see here and here), I was struck between two very different visions of American religion he offered.

I made a rough transcription of the Hilton speech.¹ What I found were two very different versions of religion: a civil religion that would make Robert Bellah proud that defines the nation as a whole and a manichean view of religion where “they” are always out to get the true and faithful Christians.

He seemed to shift seamlessly² from one to the other. Here’s an example of the civil religion introduction.

After years of decline Americans are reasserting our true identity as a people ordained by God to be the freest and most exceptional nation ever to exist on the face of this earth. We weren’t that for four years I don’t believe we were and we’re getting there very soon and we’ll be able to say it again as I said in my inaugural address two weeks ago a light is now shining over the world and I’m hearing it from other leaders that have traditionally not been on our side that there’s so much more good feeling in the air so different than it was just a short time ago. Because here in America we believe in ourselves, we believe in our destiny and trust in the providence of Almighty God.

This sentiment has probably been shared by every president at every prayer breakfast since the first one under Eisenhower in 1953. I think this is where Trump is most comfortable. I think back to the famous Liberty University Two Corinthians speech where he quoted the verse about liberty and said “that’s the whole ballgame, isn’t it”. It fits with his Norman Vincent Peale upbringing.

Yet he immediately follows the civil religion sentiment with this:

I can tell you the opposite side, the opposing side and they oppose religion, they oppose God, they’ve lost confidence.

After some tangents on fixing the middle east, complaining about Ukraine and Russia, and recognizing released hostages held by Hamas, he was back to civil religion.

These events remind us how blessed we are to live in a nation that has thrived for two and a half centuries as a haven of religious freedom although I will tell you the last four years have been very difficult. It would have been a very difficult thing for me to make that statement if this speech was taking place two years ago.

My administration is absolutely committed to defending this proud heritage and I will always protect religious liberty.

So we get the blessings of providence that he will always protect, sandwiched aroudn a vague reference to the difficulties of the past four years (ignoring the Catholic president and Baptist vice president and the office of faith outreach).

But this speech needed to set the table for the executive order, so he had to maximize the largely imagined and anecdotal damage done by the Biden administration.

Today I’m announcing that I will be creating a brand new presidential commission on religious liberty. It’s going to be a very big deal which will work tirelessly to uphold this most fundamental right. Unfortunately, in recent years we’ve seen this sacred liberty threatened like never before in American history. There’s nothing happened like the last four years what’s so many things have gone bad for religion. What they’ve done and the persecution that they’ve executed have been just horrible. For example, most of us would not have believed it possible that a grandmother with a severe medical condition, quite elderly woman, would be put in jail for praying here in America. She was put in jail as she was praying outside a clinic.

She and others, while praying, had been blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic — which is, in fact, against a federal law that has been on the books for over 20 years. He pardoned her on the first day. But she was a cause among conservative religious leaders and politicians who had been lobbying for her pardon.

She works as an example of Trump’s second kind of religion. The one where anything that doesn’t give broad license to conservative Christians is anti-religion (and anti-God). Here’s how he describes the purpose of the talk force.

To confront such weaponization and religious persecution today I am signing an executive order to make our attorney general … the head of a task force brand new to eradicate anti-Christian bias -- about time, right – anti-Christian bias. The mission of this task force will be to immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government including at the DOJ, which was absolutely terrible, the IRS, the FBI, and other agencies. In addition, the task force will work to prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society and to move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide. If we don’t have religious liberty then we don’t have a free country. We probably don’t even have a country

Toward the end of his remarks (which were followed by long tangents on the assassination attempt, the North Carolina hurricane/FEMA complaints, and the California Fires/Water release), he said returned to civil religion language but begins the imagined anti-religion crowd.

Throughout history those who have sought control and domination over others have always tried to cut the people off from the connection to their creator. At the same time every nation with big dreams and great ambition has recognized that there is no resource more precious than faith in the hearts of our people. It’s the thing that makes our nation great. It makes other nations great when you don’t have it you don’t see great nations.

These remarks made me think immediately of PRRI data on how white evangelicals believe Christians are discriminated against more than any other subgroup in society. They believe that because they get a steady diet of anecdotes (often taken out of context) about someone somewhere who was called a homophobe.

It’s also consistent with the recent PRRI data on Christian Nationalism. While nation-wide, only three in ten respondents were either Adherents or Sympathizers of Christian Nationalism, the figure for White Evangelicals was over six in ten (and almost that for Hispanic Protestants). The fact that America is not recognized as a Christian Nation may be seen as discrimination by the adherents.

The Executive Order itself doesn’t bother with flowery language about civil religion.

It is the policy of the United States, and the purpose of this order, to protect the religious freedoms of Americans and end the anti-Christian weaponization of government. The Founders established a Nation in which people were free to practice their faith without fear of discrimination or retaliation by their government.

My Administration will not tolerate anti-Christian weaponization of government or unlawful conduct targeting Christians. The law protects the freedom of Americans and groups of Americans to practice their faith in peace, and my Administration will enforce the law and protect these freedoms. My Administration will ensure that any unlawful and improper conduct, policies, or practices that target Christians are identified, terminated, and rectified.

The contrast between the two versions of religion couldn’t be more stark. On the one hand, a vague sense of belief or faith in Providence is what makes countries great. On the other, the primary concern about violation of religious freedom protections only extends to Christians (which by example means conservative Christians).

It’s worth noting that the Roberts court has been remarkably friendly to conservative Christians. The speaker of the House is himself a conservative Christian who worked for a Christian legal organization. The Senate Majority leader graduated from a Christian university. And now the Executive branch has come to the rescue.

I was going to also quote extensively from Trump’s official remarks at the actual breakfast event, It starts with Winthrop’s city on a hill and Williams quest for religious freedom (which Winthrop’s people didn’t like, as I remember), talks about Billy Graham, and then meanders through the assassination, the plane crash, his plan for a Statuary Garden, crime, and immigration. But he ends like this.

And God bless everybody. We want to come together. And the happiest — the person, the element, the everything that’s going to be happy. People of religion are going to be happy again.

And I really believe you can’t be happy without religion, without that belief. I really believe it. I just don’t see how you can be. (Applause.)

So, let’s bring religion back. Let’s bring God back into our lives.

I don’t know how to reconcile these two versions of religion. My suspicion is that he prefers the civil religion language but his people want the Christian persecution language because it keeps the base happy. The latter also feeds his transactionalism. But he moves so quickly between “the city on the hill” and “you’re all going to die without me” that I get whiplash.

I’ll be over here waiting for the other Executive Orders protecting the religious freedom of Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, and Nones. But I won’t be holding my breath.

1. Using a CBN(!) YouTube at 1.5 speed and the sound muted and closed captioning on. Funny thing — the closed captions also capitalize random words!

2. This was explicitly so on the closed captions as he would slide from phrase to phrase to new sentences or paragraphs without any warning.