Donald Trump, now facing a tougher challenge in the US election after Joe Biden stepped down in favor of Kamala Harris, is increasingly leaning into religious extremism aimed at energizing a key section of his support base: socially conservative Christians.
Fears that Trump would be an authoritarian leader if elected seemed to be realized last week, when he told a group of Christian supporters they “would not have to vote” in four years if he becomes president.
“My theory would be that since Harris has entered the race, Trump has recognized that he’s on shakier ground,” said Matthew D Taylor, author of The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy.
“If you watched the RNC and saw the discourse there, [Republicans] really were quite confident that they were going to kind of have a cakewalk to victory in November.
“I think there’s, there’s more anxiety there now. I think Trump is dialing up religious dog whistles, and sometimes just straight up whistles to really galvanize and submit that religion’s religious support.”
Since 2016, Trump has become an unlikely hero for Christian nationalists – a loose grouping of evangelical Christians who believe the US was founded as a Christian nation, and want to see Christianity feature prominently in American life and politics.
After a stumbling start – during his first run for president the thrice-married Trump struggled to name a single Bible verse, referred to the Eucharist as a “little cracker”, and put money in the communion plate during a church visit – the relationship was cemented when Trump-installed supreme court justices overturned Roe v Wade.
The bond between Trump and Christian nationalists has now deepened to the extent that Trump is comfortable with comparing himself with their messiah, while some on the religious right have come to believe that the one-term president has been chosen, or anointed, by God himself, especially after a recent failed assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania.
Over the past couple of weeks, as Harris has posed a threat that Republicans apparently didn’t see coming, and Trump has been questioned over appointing JD Vance as his running mate, he has looked for the support of these religious groups.
The speech at Turning Point’s Believers’ Summit, a gathering of Christians and Republicans that had the stated aim of “ultimately turning our nation towards the Lord”, was the furthest Trump has gone yet in appealing to this Christian base.
“Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians,” Trump said in his speech, where he also repeated a promise to form “a new federal task force on fighting anti-Christian bias”, which would investigate “harassment and persecution against Christians in America”.
The crowd at the Believers’ Summit was a gathering of the more extreme type of American Christian, and came days after the Trump campaign launched a “Believers for Trump” coalition, backed by controversial religious figures who reinforced the sense that the base was being pandered to.
Those backers included Eric Metaxas, an anti-vaxxer and conservative radio host, who in the press release accompanying the event claimed that “American Christians are falling for the same religious lies” that German christians succumbed to as the Nazi party ascended in the 1930s”, and who recently retweeted a post on X which discussed “the way to wipe that smug, bitchy smirk off Kamala’s face”.
Taylor said there is a distinction between Christians who merely support Trump and those – like the people at the Believers’ Summit – who have a “religious attachment” to the former president. Those people, who include an array of religious leaders, see Trump in religious terms and have attached “spiritual narratives” to him: one example being the comparison of Trump to King Cyrus, who, according to the Bible, liberated the Jews from Babylonian captivity, despite himself being a Persian ruler.
The real goal with Trump’s appeal to this crowd is about more than just winning individual votes, Taylor said.
“I think the more overt Christian appeals are maybe a little bit of desperation, but also it’s a tried and true method for them, of drumming up more and more support and the truth is the religious voters who have a religious attachment to Trump are not just voters – they’re force multipliers,” Taylor said.
“If somebody believes that it is God’s will for Donald Trump to be elected, and they believe that there are demonic and satanic forces pushing back against God’s will, and that they need to be active and pushing against [those things] to see Trump elected. That is a level of political fervor and ardency that is very, very valuable to a candidate, because those are people who are then talking to their friends, who are then mobilizing some of these groups.”
The assassination attempt, Taylor said, “added even more certainty for these folks that God wants Trump to be elected”.
At the Republican national convention, held days after the shooting, speaker after speaker leaned into this idea that God had been at work.
Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator, suggested that it was “the devil”; Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Arkansas governor, said “God almighty” had saved Trump; and Ben Carson claimed that God had “lowered a shield of protection over Donald Trump”. Corey Comperatore, the former fire chief who was killed in the shooting, was rarely mentioned.
Trump is appealing to a specific type of Christian, Rev Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance, said in a statement. Raushenbush said Trump is trying to reinforce his popularity with the religious right, who do not represent every person of faith.
“The majority of religious people in this country are alarmed and threatened by Trump’s promise to hand Christian nationalists the keys to power. Their agenda hopes to repress diversity and difference and impose one extreme religious worldview on all of us,” he said.
“Trump’s shameless appeals to ‘my beautiful Christians’ are unsettling and infuriating to the many millions of American Christians who proudly believe in pluralistic democracy and healthy boundaries between religion and government.”
The leaning in has continued since Trump made his incendiary speech at the Believers’ Summit. Jake Schneider, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, sent an email out on Tuesday which falsely accused Harris of supporting “taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand without limits until birth”, which was designed to appeal to the Christian base.
On Truth Social, meanwhile, Trump has accused Harris of being “anti-Catholic” and made a direct appeal to Catholics as he tries to expand his religious support.
“I think he’s really trying to win votes and shore up his quote unquote religious base,” said Kristin Du Mez, a professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University whose research focuses on the intersection of gender, religion and politics.
Du Mez said Trump “has been unsettled by what’s transpired in the last couple of weeks, that’s been very clear”. But she said it was impossible to say whether Trump had recalibrated his speech in response to Harris replacing Biden on the Democratic ticket.
“There’s no way that isn’t a part of this context. And yet, I don’t really envision that his speech to that particular crowd would have been that different, even if he was still kind of on top of the world as he was a couple of weeks ago,” she said.
The main takeaway from the speech, Du Mez said, was the lingering fear over what Trump has planned if he wins a second term.
“Those of us who study authoritarian movements saw huge red flags right there. That language is unprecedented for a US presidential candidate, and I think it’s important to say that, because Trump is always saying weird things, and it’s important to just put down that marker,” she said.
“This is not normal for a presidential candidate in this country to say anything remotely like that.”
