To his most zealous Christian supporters, Donald Trump’s campaign is a crusade against “evil” liberal forces that must be vanquished by any means necessary to save the republic.
Democrats aren’t opponents, but enemies to be “smited.” Vice President Harris is
depicted as Jezebel, the epitome of womanly wickedness who meets a grisly end. Teachers, librarians, drag queens — all perceived as introducing dangerous ideas to children — are condemned to drowning with millstones around their necks, a la Matthew 18:6.
Spiritual warfare is a central theme of Christian nationalist movements that are reshaping the GOP by preaching that the country’s theological identity is under attack and in urgent need of a revolution to put the faithful in charge. Their rhetoric has been galvanizing crowds at conservative gatherings all year, and is likely to be woven into messaging at the Republican National Convention, which starts Monday.
The movements’ biblical references, extremism monitors warn, soften violent and racist messaging, and offer plausible deniability should believers turn into vigilantes, as hundreds did during the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“You are either on the side of God or the side of the Devil,” said Miranda Zapor Cruz, a
theologian at Indiana Wesleyan University, summing up the rhetoric. “If you are on the side of the Devil, then just about anything can be justified to cast you out, to eradicate your influence. And, for some people, that ‘just about anything’ would include physical violence.”
………Longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone told a podcast that a “demonic portal” had opened above the Biden White House. Another MAGA stalwart, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, says the nation is in the throes of a spiritual war and has called former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) a demon.
Despite never being particularly religious, Trump in recent years has played to the hard-right Christian view of him as a beleaguered defender of the faith, including comparing his legal troubles to the trials of Jesus. He declared the Nov. 5 election “
Christian Visibility Day” and
promised a faith advisory group that he would “create a new federal task force on fighting anti-Christian bias.”
“No one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration,” Trump
pledged in February, drawing loud cheers from a crowd of hundreds at a Christian media convention in Nashville. “I swear to you.”
In sermons and on podcasts, hard-right Christians reason that Trump’s utility in pushing a more conservative national agenda on issues such as abortion outweighs hesitation over his history of lying, his 34 felony convictions, or the accusations against him involving sexual assault and other crimes. They depict flaws as chances for redemption and stay laser-focused on the broader mission: Beating back the diabolical forces they call “Demon-crats.”
“If everything is cosmic combat, you never compromise,” said Matthew Taylor, who researches Christian nationalism at the Baltimore-based Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies. “Who wants to compromise with demons?”
