Trump’s “Christian Nationalism” Is Neither of Those Things

The president may dress himself in the trappings of patriotism and religiosity, but make no mistake: His administration is sinful to its core.

I have been reliably informed that the United States is currently governed by Christian nationalists. The term “Christian nationalism” is often used in academic and liberal circles to refer to the modern American right’s fusion of American conservatism with evangelical Christianity. In practical terms, it does little more than provide spurious biblical justifications to an authoritarian and illiberal worldview.

Manifestations abound. Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth quoted Scripture earlier this year to justify the war on Iran, which the United States is now losing. Trump and his allies hosted an under-attended event on the National Mall last month where participants took turns reading Bible verses. Government officials now use their official platforms for overtly sectarian messaging, aimed either at the public or the federal civil service.

The problem is that Trumpism these days is neither all that Christian nor all that nationalistic. The MAGA movement’s leaders, including Trump and his top lieutenants, do not appear to be guided by any recognizable Christian values. They are merely looters and wreckers.

A person’s innermost thoughts and beliefs are unknowable. That said, there is no real evidence that Trump himself is a devout Christian. It’s true that the president has said that he believes in God and that he identifies as Presbyterian. Like a growing number of Americans, he does not regularly attend church. At a 2015 event, Trump claimed he had never asked God for forgiveness of his sins, thereby missing the central point of Christianity. The following year, he famously referred to one of the books of the New Testament as “Two Corinthians,” which is sort of like hearing a Yankees fan refer to Babe Ruth as “George.”

If anything, Trump himself appears to be the living negation of Christian moral teachings. He lies, cheats, and steals with casual ease. He had extramarital affairs in multiple marriages, including one with an adult-film star whom he later paid hush money to keep quiet during the 2016 election. Almost two dozen women have accused him of sexual misconduct in various forms, ranging from harassment to rape. A federal jury concluded in 2023 that he had sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll, the New York writer, during an encounter in the mid-1990s.

Trump’s own statements on Christianity and Christian denominations have also verged towards the blasphemous. Last year, Trump mocked Catholics by suggesting that he should be elected as the next pope after Pope Francis’s death. (More recently, he attacked Pope Leo XIV by describing him as, among other things, “weak on crime.”) In April, he outraged even some of his ardent evangelical supporters by posting an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus. Trump later deleted the post amid the backlash and claimed that he thought the image, which depicted him in linen robes and with glowing hands, showed him as a doctor.

One can be a Christian and still sin, of course. But the sheer breadth of Trump’s sins, as well as their habitual nature, calls into question any commitment he might have to any personal Christian beliefs. For those close to him, however, it matters little. Evangelical pastor Mark Burns, who describes himself as one of Trump’s “spiritual advisors,” told The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner that Trump has been forgiven by God for his sins and that his misconduct “doesn’t matter in the eyes of the Lord, and apparently, it doesn’t really matter to the eyes of the American voters because they voted for him and made him president twice.”

There is also scant evidence of ethics or moral principles in the Trump administration these days, let alone Christian ones. This is an administration that has sought to ethnically cleanse the United States through mass deportations. Those who are arrested and do not agree to immediately leave the country are housed in a vast network of federal warehouses in inhuman and dangerous conditions to coerce their compliance.

A lawsuit filed last month against federal officials alleged that detainees at a warehouse in Fort Bliss, Texas, are facing “severe beatings or sexual harassment by guards, squalid living conditions, spoiled and inadequate food, spoiled and inadequate food; no meaningful programming or recreation; inadequate access to basic hygiene products such as soap, razors or nail clippers, outbreaks of disease; and limited or no access to sunlight.” The state of New Jersey is suing the private operators of a detention facility outside Newark for denying access to state health inspectors.

Those outside American borders are also suffering. When DOGE commissar Elon Musk destroyed the U.S. Agency for International Development last year, he severed billions of dollars in funding for Christian charities and other faith-based groups that........

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