During the previous U.S. presidential administration (2017 – 2021), Russell Vought, a Christian nationalist born in 1976, served as the president’s director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Later, after his OMB days, he launched the Center for Renewing America which is positioned firmly in the vanguard of the Christian nationalist movement, anchored in the belief that a far-right interpretation of the Bible ought to dictate U.S. politics and public life.

        The Center for Renewing America, with its militant right-wing culture-war agenda, is based on the false belief that the United States was founded as a strictly Christian nation and must remain so. In fact, the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) appealed to “the laws of Nature and Nature’s God” and asserted that all had basic rights “endowed by their Creator.” But the document that actually enumerated and enshrined those rights, The U.S. Constitution, which became effective on March 4, 1789, lacked even those vaguely drawn references to a deity.

        As Donald Trump, now 78 years old, increasingly infuses his current presidential campaign with Christian trappings, his support is as strong as ever, among conservative Christians. When he was president from 2017 to 2021, Trump formed a political alliance with far-right Christians by giving them a six to three conservative majority on the Supreme Court. He appointed conservatives Neil Gorsuch in 2017, Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, and Amy Coney Barrett in 2020.

        Currently six members of the U.S. Supreme Court are Catholics: John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. They are all conservative except for Sotomayor. Along with these six Catholic justices, there are two Protestant justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Neil Gorsuch; and one Jewish, Elena Kagan. The most conservative members of the Supreme Court are now Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts, and Thomas.

        Trump’s supporters like to use religious lingo when promoting him. During a Trump campaign rally on March 18, 2024, in Dayton, Ohio, for example, many of the former president’s supporters wore T-shirts and hats — that were also sold at the rally — bearing religious slogans such as “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president” and “God, Guns & Trump.” 

        A key organization that is promoting the current Trump campaign is The Heritage Foundation, established in 1973. It is an activist U.S. conservative think tank based in Washington, DC. Kevin D. Roberts, born in 1974, has been the president of The Heritage Foundation, since 2021. Prior to assuming that role, he was the CEO of another conservative think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which contends, among other far right issues, that climate change does not exist.

        Roberts has a PhD in U.S. history from the University of Texas. He taught history at the college level before founding a Catholic K-12 school, the John Paul the Great Academy, in his hometown in Lafayette, Louisiana, which he led until a move to Wyoming. In Wyoming, he was the president of Wyoming Catholic College in the rural city of Lander. Roberts is a strong supporter of Donald Trump and holds Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, born in 1963, in high regard because he put Hungary on a conservative Christian path.

        Starting in 2022, the Heritage Foundation began publicly embracing national conservatism as its guiding ideology. In March 2023, it came as no surprise, therefore, that the Heritage Foundation, under Kevin Roberts leadership, established a cooperative relationship with the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based state-funded think tank founded in 2013. The Danube Institute is a center for ultra reactionary thought that gathers anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQ speakers who celebrate Victor Orbán’s “Christian Nationalist” project.

        Viktor Orbán, who has been Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010, is a close ally of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. Interestingly, Orbán met with Donald Trump in mid March 2024 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and the two men hit it off immediately. Trump heaped praise on Prime Minister Orbán. “There’s nobody that’s better, smarter, or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic,” the former president told a crowd gathered at his Florida resort. Trump added that the European autocrat is “a noncontroversial figure because he said, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it, right? He’s the boss and … he’s a great leader, fantastic leader.” Trump’s former chief strategist now in prison, Steve Bannon, once called Orbán “Trump before Trump”.

        Viktor Orbán, traveled to Florida again on Thursday, July 11, 2024, and met again with former President Donald Trump following the NATO summit in Washington. Orbán met with Trump at the former president’s beachside compound Mar-a-Lago and shared a photo of the two on social media with the caption: “We discussed ways to make peace. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”

        Orbán has been quite open about his determination to overthrow the concept of western democracy and replace it with what he has, on different occasions, called a “Christian democracy,” which is simply a variation on the theme of Christian nationalism.

        Heather Cox Richardson (born 1962), who is a history professor at Boston College and publishes Letters from an American, a nightly newsletter that chronicles current U.S. events, has become a strong critic of the Heritage Foundation’s close collaboration with Orbán, exemplified in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a plan for a right-wing takeover of the U.S. government under Donald Trump if elected president once again. Project 2025 lays out what is essentially a Christian nationalist vision for the United States, with Donald Trump as the sent-by-God authoritarian dictator.

        After the assassination attempt on July 13, 2024, Trump suggested that divine intervention spared his life. Clearly the attempted assassination has only increased the quasi-religious devotion of his followers. Then, on Monday, July 15th, Trump chose senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his vice-presidential running mate. Vance is just what the Trump campaign wants: a strong conservative Catholic and an energetic supporter of Project 2025.

        Project 2025 would strip tens of thousands of professional government workers of their civil service protections, create an army of political loyalists in government, ban abortion nationwide, set up immigrant detention camps, deport millions of people, repeal all climate safety regulations, and exact criminal revenge against reporters, judges, and Democrats.

        Heather Cox Richardson also reported on July 12, 2024, that Trump’s self-declared “Secretary of Retribution,” Ivan Raiklin (b. 1976), has compiled a “Deep State target list” of 350 people he wants to see arrested and punished for “treason” if Trump is reelected. The list includes Democratic and Republican elected officials, journalists considered to be Trump’s enemies, U.S. Capitol Police officers, and witnesses against Trump in his impeachment trials and the hearings concerning the events of January 6, 2021.

        There is nothing Christian about Project 2025 and there’s nothing Christian about Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism is an aberration that is focused on power and domination not on the way of Christ.

        I am not a pessimist but a realist. Our contemporary challenge is very real.

– Jack

 

Dr. John A. Dick – Leuven

Historical Theologian

Focus: Religion and Values in Contemporary Society

Email: john.dick@kuleuven.be