Trump assassination attempt lays bare deep religious divisions in the U.S.
After avoiding an attempted assassination on Saturday, former president Donald Trump was quick to credit divine assistance.
In a posting on social media following the July 13 shooting, in which one man died and two others were wounded, Trump said: “It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening. We will fear not, but instead remain resilient in our faith and defiant in the face of wickedness.”
Emily Crews, who leads the University of Chicago Divinity School’s Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion, finds that language telling.
“How often have we heard Trump give credit or agency to God or really to anyone other than himself?” she says. “Very rarely.”
Crews says that language might suggest a change in Trump himself. It’s also language that resonates with his base.
“That term wickedness is unusual,” she says. “It has a biblical, conservative Protestant quality to it that we don't hear him use often, but that his conservative Christian followers do use and will recognize.”
Shortly after Saturday’s attempted assassination, Trump’s supporters also began using religious language to describe it.
Speaking on Fox News on Saturday night, Republican politician and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy said this: “I personally believe that God intervened today, not just on behalf of President Trump but on behalf of our country.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, also a Republican, made these remarks during a press conference about cleanup after hurricane Beryl: “Trump is truly blessed by the hand of God -- being able to evade being assassinated.”
That theme has continued this week at the Republican National Convention, where Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., used similar language.
“If you didn't believe in miracles before Saturday, you better be believing right now,” Scott said as delegates in Milwaukee burst into applause. “Thank God Almighty that we live in a country that still believes in the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the Alpha and the Omega. Our God still saves. He still delivers and he still sets free. Because on Saturday, the devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle. But an American lion got back up on his feet.”
Conflating religious and political language troubles many
This language of intervention and blessing troubles theologian Kaitlyn Schiess, author of the books The Liturgy of Politics and The Ballot and the Bible. She says rhetoric like this “usurps the position of what Christians believe: Jesus Christ as the Messiah.”
Schiess also said she worries that those who say Trump was chosen by God are confused by what it means in Scripture to be chosen by God.
“It doesn't actually mean that you'll always be protected from physical harm,” she says. “Often, it means you will have higher standards that you have to meet and that you will be judged for failing to meet them.”
But prominent evangelical and longtime Trump supporter Pastor Robert Jeffress preached that very chosen-ness to his congregation at First Baptist Dallas on the Sunday morning after the assassination attempt.
“What happened yesterday is also a demonstration of the power of almighty God,” he said, as the congregation began applauding. “I mean, what happened was inexplicable apart from God. God spared him for the purpose of calling our nation back to its Judeo-Christian foundation.”
Trump supporters often use the language of Christian Nationalism
The language of “Judeo-Christian foundation” alarms Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.
“When one tries to imbue God's providence or God's blessing on a certain event like this,” she says, “where lives were lost and lives were forever altered, that is very problematic theology.”
That theology is called Christian Nationalism, says Tyler, who is also the lead organizer of the group Christians Against Christian Nationalism.
She describes Christian Nationalism as an ideology and a movement that tries to merge American and Christian identities, and “relies heavily on this mythological telling of American history and American present as being a, quote-unquote Christian nation, as being a country that has been singled out by God for God's special providence and God's special design in the world.”
Tyler finds that belief troubling because it contradicts the foundational values of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. But she also finds it alarming from a religious perspective, because, she says, critique of government by people of faith and houses of worship is crucial when they believe elected leaders are pursuing policies that can oppress or marginalize.
“It has always been important to have a healthy separation,” Tyler says, “for the religious institution to maintain the necessary freedom to speak truth to power.”
