This is an updated article from March 2025.
Who are America’s Christian Nationalists, and why are they merging angry, gutter politics with matters of the divine?
As a prelude to my inquiry, I found a quote from Mahatma Gandhi: “An eye for an eye will only make the world blind.” A faithful Christian following the New Testament will likely agree with the quote. However, many self-proclaimed Christian Nationalists seem to be going blind.
Growing up in an Evangelical tradition, I think there are four possible non-exclusive reasons for people claiming to be Christians to vote for Trump: 1) simple religious hypocrisy, 2) those so filled with cultural rage that they ignore the New Testament in favor of the Old Testament or a religious huckster, 3) far-right extremists who wallpaper over the Founders’ insistence on the separation of Church and State, and 4) the secretive rise of full-blown, end-of-the-world fanaticism. Based on the wide variety of political coalitions formed by many political water carriers and actors in the Christian Nationalist movement, all four above can and will overlap. How else can anyone explain the profound differences in the morality of Donald Trump, Lauren Boebert, and Pete Hegseth compared to the Christian ideal of the New Testament?
There are non-religious reasons for some of the old-guard zombie Republicans to tag along with the MAGA cult, such as the fantasy that Trump will lower the federal deficit (he did the opposite in his first term after reducing taxes for the ultra-wealthy.) These tag-alongs demonstrate daily their feebleness and moral emptiness. The Democrats have been far from perfect, but at least they are NOT abandoning Ukraine, allowing 21-year-old computer nerds to fire federal workers indiscriminately, cutting Medicaid funds for red state rural hospitals, distorting reality beyond recognition, planting the seeds for out-of-control inflation due to tariff warfare, alienating allies, forcing religious beliefs on all Americans, etc.
Getting back to Christian Nationalism, hypocrisy or simple ignorance accounts for many “Christian” Trump voters. These folks are happy to be called Christian Nationalists. They love the idea of being associated with American traditions they do not understand and Christianity they do not practice. They wear American flags on their lapels but routinely violate the ideals of our Founding Fathers. The fact that many Trump supporters play lip service to Christianity is proven by the fact that only about 30% of self-described American Christians attend church regularly. Those who sit in their easy chairs watching slick televangelists generally lack the courage to confront real people in a church, so they live in an insular, self-confined echo chamber of television religion and conservative politics. Evangelical church attendance will undoubtedly increase in the short term (similar to increases around Easter and Christmas) as Trump puffs up the laggards and triggers the rise in Christian Nationalism. Likewise, the same people will be emboldened NOT to vaccinate their children, the wealthier ones will invest in Trump Bitcoin schemes, and they will find more elaborate rationalizations as the MAGA movement destroys America.
Other, more religious Trump supporters cherry-pick the Bible by relying on the Old Testament over the New Testament. The Old Testament was used to justify slavery before the Civil War, and it was used to justify all sorts of violence throughout history. Also, based on the Old Testament, many believe that Trump is acting like the Persian King Cyrus (600-530 BC), who protected the Jews (the chosen people of the Old Testament) after Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed Jerusalem. In Isaiah 45:4-5, Cyrus was said to be an agent of Yahweh, even though he did “not know” Yahweh. Thus, for many Old Testament Christians, Trump has a free pass to continuously act in a godless manner and still be the Christian Nationalists’ savior. Another way to describe his attraction is that it takes our “good” barbarian to keep the “evil” barbarians from overwhelming God’s people. For those focused on the Old Testament, it is not surprising that many Christian Nationalists unquestioningly agree with Trump’s simplistic eye-for-an-eye rhetoric, retribution, and revenge.
An extremist sect that started around 1975 is still flying under the radar. Unlike those Christians who focus on the theology of an eye-for-an-eye or the imminent Second Coming, a new group called the New Apostolic Reformation or the Seven Mountains Dominionism has emerged. Using extremist and perhaps fantastical interpretations of scripture, they believe God has called them to urgently recreate these seven societal institutions: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government, into their vision of a religious nation. While the rest of American society naively assumes that the American compact is based on the US Constitution and traditional American cultural assumptions, this secretive Seven Mountain group is fighting a strategic spiritual war to undermine the US Constitution and American culture. They are not waiting for the Second Coming of Christ. They seek to convert America into an Evangelical Christian nation using political action as soon as possible. Their proposed conversion will be in the form of the oppressive religious autocracies of the past (most Americans descend from ancestors fleeing religious persecutions in Europe) and the present (for example, theocracy in Iran). Among the prominent followers of the New Apostolic Reformation and the Seven Mountain Mandate are: House Speaker Mike Johnson, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Michele Bachmann, Lauren Boebert, and Paula White, spiritual advisor to Donald Trump.
One of the Seven Mountains founders, C. Peter Wagner, stated their goals succinctly as:
“Our theological bedrock is what has been known as Dominion Theology. This means that our divine mandate is to do whatever is necessary, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to retake the dominion of God’s creation which Adam forfeited to Satan in the Garden of Eden. It is nothing less than seeing God’s kingdom coming and His will being done here on earth as it is in heaven.“
Finally, end-of-the-world fanaticism sounds like one of Trump’s crazy ideas or actions (e.g., “Let’s take over Greenland,” “Let’s take over Gaza and make it a beautiful seaside resort,” etc.) to Americans outside the Evangelical camp. Unlike Trump’s almost daily irrational pronouncements, many Trump-voting Christians keep their apocalyptic thoughts to themselves. They let their barbarian’s bloviation give them cover for thinking as they do. However, most of us outside the MAGA/Fox/NewsMax bubble cannot understand or even imagine the runaway train of thought of some Christian Nationalists. We assume they are rational, down-to-earth people who believe in the America of our Founders. Don’t they wave the flag?
I knew about end-of-the-world fanaticism, but I largely discounted it. How could many Christian Nationalists be so convinced of the end times that they have given up on the founding ideals of America? Again, I asked, don’t they wave the flag and call themselves American patriots? On the other hand, it didn’t make sense that they would claim to be American patriots but accept the storming of the Capitol as a patriotic act. Then I realized that they are political hypocrites with religious fantasies and are more devoted to the imminent coming 1,000-year reign of Christian saints on earth (Revelation 20:4-6) than their fellow Americans. They pretend to believe in the US Constitution the way mafia lawyers pretend to believe in law and order. Instead of the democracy with a separation of powers our Founders envisioned, they envision an autocratic 1,000-year theocracy. I quote from a Peter Sassi article from January 20, 2025, which helps to explain some of the gaps between what these Trump-voting Christians say they believe and what they consciously or unconsciously believe:
With Revelation as a backdrop, Trump-voting Christians don’t worry about healthcare for others. They don’t welcome immigrants. They don’t care about supporting those dealing with natural disasters. Tax the poor and relieve the rich? Not really important. Adultery and lying? Not so important as long as one believes. Banning books is okay because not only do book bans decrease support of free thinking and access to public education, but they also give more power to true believers. They don’t support other’s religious beliefs but do support Israel because it needs to exist for the Final Battle to begin.
In conclusion, America now faces its most dangerous internal schism since the Civil War. Half of America implicitly believes in our country’s founding principles, while the other half is being led in the direction of burning it all down. Some MAGA manipulators have convinced many that they are being led to the promised land of a 1,000-year reign of American Christian Nationalism. I think a coalition of powerful Robber Barons, religious and patriotic hypocrites, Old Testament eye-for-an-eye zealots, seven mountaineers, and end-times fanatics has temporarily taken control of large segments of American life. This coalition appears to be a cult of anarchists, but they are not. Instead, they are a highly focused vanguard that seeks to obliterate the existing American Republic and replace it with a form of Christian Nationalism controlled by a small cadre of cynical, irreligious, wealthy MAGA supermen. These supermen are not in the least religious, but they use Christian Nationalists as their foot soldiers to gain control. In a textbook example of codependency, Christian Nationalists believe they are “using” the Robber Barons in fulfillment of the prophesied Final Battle.
In summary, the various armies of Christian Nationalists are engaging in a deadly game of hypocrisy and subterfuge. They camouflage their true selves and intentions behind the facade of the Jesus’ cross, like a deer hunter hiding in a deer blind.
What would the Founding Fathers think of America in the Age of Trump? What would Jesus think? I remain puzzled that 49.8% of American voters voted for a man who is now destroying the ideals of America’s founders and daily demonstrating his in-our-face, anti-Christian behavior.
What do you think? Is it possible to dispute MAGA’s not-so-subtle merger of the sacred with the profane? This is not the first time patriotic and pseudo-religious symbolism have been combined to control a society.