As we look forward to seeing the effect of the “No Kings” protests, I think it’s important to bring forward the theological nature of what millions of Americans demonstrated against.
Donald Trump not only believes that his rule is absolute and that his word is law. He believes that he’s infallible — that he can do no wrong. To many in Magaworld, he’s less president than the right hand of God.
George Orwell once said that since no one is infallible, in practice, it’s frequently necessary for totalitarian rulers “to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened.”
In “The Prevention of Literature,” published in 1946, Orwell said, “this kind of thing happens everywhere, but is clearly likelier to lead to outright falsification in societies where only one opinion is permissible at any given moment.”
One such opinion is whether your faith is real and genuine. If it lines up with Trump’s views, it is. If it doesn’t, it isn’t. Religious Americans are protesting the treatment of immigrants by ICE. (A well-known example is Pastor David Black of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago being shot in the head with pepper balls and sprayed in the face with tear gas for leading a prayer outside an ICE facility.) But for Maga, you can’t be religious if you disagree with God’s right hand. (The Department of Homeland Security said Pastor Black was a “pastor.”)
The potential is for some religions to get protection while others get punishment. As Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons put it in a recent column for MSNBC: “That dynamic is antithetical to religious freedom.”
Then there’s Trump’s opinion of what counts in religion.
At last month’s memorial to demagogue Charlie Kirk, Trump said Kirk “was a missionary with a noble spirit and a great, great purpose. He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them.”
In this, the president was giving voice to Christian tradition of loving thy enemy.
But then:
“That's where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent, and I don't want the best for them. … I can't stand my opponent.”
In his opinion of the infallible ruler, love doesn’t count in religion.
Hate, however, is the One True Faith.
According to historian Claire Bond Potter, Trump’s “unprecedented statement” is a command that fits “the definition of truthful hyperbole: it asks an audience inspired by Charlie Kirk’s slick combination of bigotry, reason, and xenophobic patriotism to think big.”
Claire concluded:
“And the big thought from Donald Trump is this: You may be Christian — but don’t be a sucker. Hate is more powerful than love. Look at me — why, hatred made me president. Think what it could do for you.”
Claire is the author of Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy. In this wide-ranging interview below, we discuss the role of an “angry God” in Christian nationalism, dangers to religious minorities, and what liberal and moderate Christians are doing to fight back against the infallible ruler’s belief that hate is more powerful than love.
JS: Hate is more powerful than love. That's what Donald Trump suggested at the Charlie Kirk memorial, where the audience was said to be filled with the followers of Jesus Christ. You noted the connection in one of your latest. Walk me through that please.
CBP: One of the things we know about social media is that negative emotions – anger, hatred, resentment – are animating for a mass audience. The Maga movement has energized a populist audience with negativity. It's what is behind not just the policies they choose, but the reasoning behind those choices.
Let's take immigration as an example. Historically — and you can go back to the 19th century anti-Chinese movements — immigration has been a vehicle for white people, who believe they already "own" the United States and are entitled to its benefits, to express their resentment of institutions: corporations and the government are prominent.
Where religion enters the picture is the claim on the sacred as a litmus test as to who is entitled to the benefits of the nation and who isn't. Chinese, for example, were characterized as "godless," and allowed anti-immigrant organizers to ascribe a range of other characteristics to them following from that godlessness: sexual perversion, disease, dishonesty. Those are also core animating features of antisemitism.
Similarly, Maga’s anti-trans logic ascribes disease (mental illness), perversion (wanting to harm women) and dishonesty (pretending to be something you are not) to rejecting God's plan for your body and gender.
So religion, in this case, could point a political leader in two directions — the Christ/God of love, in which we embrace those who are different and even frightening; and the God of righteous retribution, who punishes those that reject His will and rewards the faithful.
It is that second God that animated the Conquest, the earliest stages of European colonialism, slavery and American Manifest Destiny — and it is no accident that it is these histories, with the exception of slavery, that MAGA embraces. And this God requires darkness and violence to animate followers to seek a world that is purged of their enemies.
It seems to me that religious minorities who are aligned with the Maga movement are putting themselves in danger, as the view of God's plan that you describe here will eventually come for them. I'm thinking specifically of the recent Mormon church massacre. I believe the shooter was a Christian nationalist in all but name. We know he saw Mormons as "the antichrist." Thoughts on that?
I would be careful with the thought that the Church of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) is Maga-aligned. Some Mormons are and some aren't. Fundamentalist Mormons (who have been excommunicated from the mainstream church) don't participate in politics at all. According to the Deseret News, about 64 percent of Mormons voted for Trump and 32 percent for Harris. But character has always been an issue for Mormons. Younger Mormons are less likely to even be Republican.
But back to violence: The LDS Church has always been a target for violence and conspiracy-mongers since it was founded in 1830 during the Second Great Awakening as a charismatic religion. One piece of this is that it essentially reinterpreted the scripture on the basis of revelation — but unlike Baptists, for example, those revelations keep arriving. One of them, quite recently, overturned the church's founding belief that people of color were less favored by God.
But the second reason that Mormons were targeted for violence was the principle of plural marriage, or polygamy, the practice of which coincided with the increasing moral authority of mainstream Protestant women over questions that were specifically sexually: Black women abused by southern white men who "owned" them, and anti-prostitution campaigns in urban areas, and polygamy was framed as a way of enslaving with women, specifically.
Which leads us to the third reason: secrecy. The LDS Church is governed by a concentric series of male leaders, and as you move to the center of that — the Temple in Salt Lake City — there is almost absolute secrecy about the rituals, practices and decisions that occur within. I mean, this is part of what powers anti-Catholic animus too, except that you can walk into any Catholic Church in the United States and see what is going on. That is less true of the LDS Church.
So anti-Mormon violence is as American as apple pie — and Christian nationalists who are animated by conspiracy theories, paranoia and a belief in opaque power systems are going to be drawn to it.
It's probably also worth saying the LDS Church has its own history of violence, as it established itself in the Utah territory. Church fathers punished dissent in their ranks, and were also murderous towards Native American inhabitants. Some of that survives in the illegal fundamentalist communities. But I actually think that the increasing Maga turn towards the use of state violence in particular is likely to be making Mormons more and more uncomfortable with Trump.
The Mormons may be unique in that they provide critics and enemies many ways to demonize them, but all religious minorities and sects can be demonized if the means and motive are there. Which brings me to suggest that moderate and liberal Christians are allowing Christian nationalists to speak for them. They need to speak out before the president prevents them from speaking out. Are there moments in history in which such Christians did that?
Moderate and liberal Christians are speaking out. A group of pastors who were shot with pepper balls outside an ICE facility near Chicago filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the Trump administration.
You could go back to the 15th century and Bartolomé de las Casas's critique of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, a project driven in large part by religion — the conversion of indigenous people and the acquisition of gold to defend the faith against Protestantism in Europe.
But in the United States, religious people of all faiths animated the fight against Black slavery, resistance to war in the 20th century, and the fight for Black civil rights - -and in each case, there were religious voices that supported the projects.
One good example are Quakers, a religious minority that was persecuted in the early colonial period in New England; then, tied itself to slavery; then became the leading voice opposing slavery; and in each war, Quakers have courageously stood up against violence.
But I would disagree that Christian nationalists are, in any sense, speaking for Christians. We have seen a number of prominent Southern Baptist women, most recently Jen Hatmaker, breaking with the Southern Baptist Convention over its alliance with Maga. What Christian nationalists have is the political megaphone.
