In God We Trust: Trump's Christian republic continues Crusader cause
While attending the National Prayer Breakfast on 5 February, US President Donald Trump and his Secretary of War Pete Hegseth reaffirmed their commitment to maintaining America as a "Christian nation".
Trump declared: "We're going to rededicate America as one nation under God," insisting that Americans' rights are bestowed by God. "We are endowed with our sacred rights to life, liberty and not by government, but by God Almighty himself," he said.
Indeed, as a nation of Christian believers, Trump marvelled at Americans who vote for the Democratic Party, questioning their faith: "I don't know how a person of faith can vote for a Democrat. I really don't."
If communists were the enemy of American Christianity and "democracy" during the Cold War, today it is Democrats and liberals - once active in championing the demonisation of communists - who are the enemy.
Hegseth was more forthright in his comments, which began with a reading from the Gospel of Mark. He reiterated Trump's claim that the source of rights granted to American citizens was "a loving and benevolent God, not government".
Contrary to white American liberal assertions, Trump and Hegseth are in fact maintaining an age-old American Christian commitment that no US president has ever shrugged
This "gentle" God of Christianity has long been contrasted in the Christian West with the allegedly "angry" and "violent" God of Jews and Muslims.
More directly, Hegseth proclaimed that "America was founded as a Christian nation, it remains a Christian nation in our DNA if we can keep it. And as public officials, we have a sacred duty 250 years on to glorify Him," pointing upwards, presumably to where the Christian God dwells.
As Christianity is America's genetic and biological fate, Hegseth informed the audience of his recent Christian efforts, including "a monthly prayer service at the Pentagon".
Several Democratic lawmakers condemned the event as "basically a church service with the endorsement of the United States Congress", arguing that "our founders would be horrified" and accusing the administration of a partisan hijacking of faith. Liberal advocacy groups likewise denounced Trump's "Christian nationalist" remarks as an "outrageous" politicisation of religion and an assault on America's constitutional tradition of church-state separation.
Yet contrary to white American liberal assertions, Trump and Hegseth are in fact maintaining an age-old American Christian commitment that no US president has ever shrugged.
Civil religion
Trump's commitment to the Christianity - and Christianness - of America and its values has been a hallmark of his courting religious voters since his first presidential campaign.
He is banking on this commitment as his ticket to secure a place in Christianity's heaven once he is dead. He said at the prayer breakfast: "Even though I did that and so many other things… I won't qualify, I'm not going to make it to heaven… I really think I probably should make it. I mean, I'm not a perfect candidate, but I did a hell of a lot of good for perfect people… You know, I've done more for religion than any other president."
In line with this posture, and in the tradition of all of America's Christian presidents (and all American presidents have been Christian), he affirmed: "We live the motto of our nation: In God We Trust."
The next day, the White House posted on X: "America is, and always will be, One Nation Under God."
Such slogans have been the cornerstone of America's allegedly "secularised" civil religion for more than a century. By upholding their Christian meaning as paramount, Trump follows a longstanding presidential tradition.
The motto "In God We Trust" was proposed at the beginning of the American Civil War for inscription on US coins under the administration of none other than President Abraham Lincoln. This was a time when the Union, early in the war, had suffered multiple battlefield defeats.
It was finally adopted in 1864 as an ideological weapon against the Southern Confederacy, which also thought that the Christian God was on its side. The measure introduced by Lincoln's treasury secretary to acknowledge God on the nation's currency was unanimously supported both in Congress and civil society at the time.
Lincoln, who supported racial segregation and hoped to expel all Black Americans to Africa or some other territory, remains a darling of American liberals for his role in ending slavery but not racism.
'Under God'
It was after the Second World War, and as part of American Cold War propaganda against secular communism, supported by conservatives and liberals alike, that a renewed dedication of the United States as a Christian republic took place.
President Dwight D Eisenhower launched a religious war against the Soviets, who were routinely depicted as "godless communists".
Baptised as a Presbyterian while in office in 1953, Eisenhower appointed the fanatical evangelical reverend Billy Graham as a spiritual adviser to the White House.
In fact, it was Eisenhower who established the National Prayer Breakfast, an innovation Trump lauded at this year's event as "a beautiful American tradition". Eisenhower also opened his cabinet meetings with a moment of silent prayer. As part of his anti-communist crusade, Eisenhower championed a joint resolution, unanimously passed by Congress in 1954, inserting the words "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance.
The following year, Congress enacted a law, signed by Eisenhower, mandating that "In God We Trust" appear not only on American coins, as it had since the Civil War, but also on paper currency. In 1956, Congress, with overwhelming bipartisan support, codified the phrase as the national motto of the US amid Cold War tensions, supplanting the erstwhile "E pluribus unum" (out of many, one), which had been in use since 1776.
At the height of McCarthyite terror and hysteria, when the Great Purge targeted Americans in government and private institutions for alleged "communist" sympathies, congressional support for the measure was unanimous.
Even the American Civil Liberties Union, fearing the political climate, opposed it only mutedly and did not dare bring any constitutional challenge.
In 2011, two decades after the Cold War had ended, Congress overwhelmingly passed a concurrent resolution, "reaffirming 'In God We Trust' as the official motto of the United States and supporting and encouraging the public display of the national motto in all public buildings, public schools, and other government institutions".
Weaponised religion
It was the Eisenhower administration that enlisted religion and invented anti-communist Islamist jihadism as a weapon against Soviet communism and Third World socialism, with Saudi Arabia subcontracted for the role soon after.
In both cases, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, cheered these policies.
As a result of Eisenhower's institutionalisation of Protestant Christianity, the proportion of religious Americans rose from 49 percent in 1940 to 69 percent in 1960.
Trump, however, will not be outdone by Eisenhower. He declared in his speech: "In 2025, more copies of the Holy Bible were sold in the United States than at any time in the last 100 years."
Trump's recent reaffirmation of America's Christian identity drew criticism from a number of interfaith and secular organisations
He added: "Some churches are seeing a 30 percent, 50 percent or even 70 percent increase in the number of converts. And also, the number of people going to church every week. To support this exciting renewal this morning, I'm pleased to announce that on 17 May, 2026, that we're inviting Americans from all across the country to come together on our National Mall to pray, to give thanks... we are going to do something that everyone said like, that's tough."
Trump's recent reaffirmation of America's Christian identity drew criticism from a number of interfaith and secular organisations. In May last year, Trump established a "Religious Liberty Commission" housed in the Justice Department to advise the White House.
A coalition of interfaith groups, which includes Interfaith Alliance, Muslims for Progressive Values, Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Hindus for Human Rights, filed a civil lawsuit against the Trump administration over the commission.
They argue that it unconstitutionally promotes conservative Christian nationalism - especially as its "members, consisting of almost exclusively Christians with one Orthodox Jewish rabbi, represent the narrow perspective that America was founded as a 'Judeo-Christian' nation and must be guided by Biblical principles…In President Trump's own words, the commission is part of his administration's efforts to 'protect the Judeo-Christian principles of our founding'".
The Interfaith Alliance also published a report last month detailing the Trump administration's attacks on non-evangelical religious communities, including Christians of various denominations, Jews, Muslims and their places of worship.
This is despite Vice President JD Vance's assertion last December that religious tolerance is not a secular concept but a "Christian" one.
'Little embers'
When Trump courted religious evangelical Protestant Christian voters during his 2024 election campaign, warning that "Jewish people would have a lot to do with the loss" were he not to win, he was criticised by Jewish and Catholic groups.
Still, Trump's commitment to evangelical Christianity and Christian Zionism is not necessarily more pronounced than that of the Biden administration.
While Hegseth is more ostentatious about his Christianity - sporting medieval Crusader emblems as tattoos on his body and describing Trump as "Crusader in Chief" - these are no more than flamboyant expressions of the same spirit that animated the Christian Zionist Biden, among others.
It is ironic that American Jewish groups would support Hegseth, given his White Christian nationalism. After all, on their way to Palestine at the end of the 11th century, the European Christian Crusaders, the first Christian Zionists, visited death upon Muslim, Jewish and Orthodox Christian communities alike, leaving a legacy of blood and destruction.
Yet when Hegseth was appointed secretary of war, major Muslim American organisations expectedly opposed his nomination, while pro-Israel Jewish groups and businesses, including the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce, celebrated him for his support for Israel.
The American Christian republic also guides Trump's foreign policy.
It is in the name of the Christian God, the God of America, that Trump claims to have bombed Nigeria last December "as a Christmas present". It is in His name that he boasts to have brought "peace in the Middle East, by the way, first time in 3,000 years. We have peace. They're little - little embers, but it's nothing much."
The more than 600 Palestinians Israel has killed since the declaration of the so-called ceasefire last October are "little embers", a mere sacrifice, like the Nigerians killed by Trump's bombing, offered at the altar of America's Christian God.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
posted by Satish Sharma at
13:38
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