Pentecostal pastors laying hands on the president in the Oval Office. Prayers to open cabinet meetings. Hymn sings in the Roosevelt Room. Cross necklaces as faith-forward fashion statements. A prayer meeting at the Pentagon.
Such public expressions of faith are common among people serving in Donald Trump’s second administration, and they’re being cheered by the conservative Christians whose support was essential to returning him to office.
“Routinely, and often at Mr. Trump’s enthusiastic direction, senior administration officials and allied pastors are infusing their brand of Christian worship into the workings of the White House itself, suggesting that his campaign promise to ‘bring back Christianity’ is taking tangible root,” wrote New York Times religion reporters Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham in April.
“I haven’t seen before this level of active conservative Christian participation coming out of the White House itself,” Dias said in a 4-minute video on the phenomenon titled “The Conservative Christian Network Inside the White House.”
“Certainly, Christianity is nothing new in the White House,” she said, but Trump’s White House has done away with the broad-based approach and “compassionate conservatism” of previous presidents. “The priority and practice has ended up being working with a lot of conservative Christian pastors,” Dias said.
Faith in Jesus and Trump
Along with their faith in Jesus, Trump’s Christian team members also have faith in Trump, in Trump’s claim that he won the 2020 election, in the belief that God miraculously saved his life from an assassin’s bullet a year ago so he could return to office, and that his agenda for America is both good for America and godly, even if they have to hijack the occasional Bible verse to prove it.
In a Department of Homeland Security video released earlier this month, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent ponders Isaiah 6:8: “I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’”
The ICE agent answers, “I said, ‘Here am I. Send me.’” The musical soundtrack to the 1-minute video is a rendition of the Johnny Cash song, “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.”
Sojourners’ Tyler Huckabee pointed out the irony.
“The video rips Isaiah’s call narrative (6:1-13) out of its original context to baptize ICE’s war on nonwhite Americans. … By employing Isaiah’s words to justify their oppression of immigrants, the Department of Homeland Security illustrates Isaiah’s very point. … The prophets speak with one voice on our obligation to care for refugees and treat the immigrants among us as though they’re already part of us.”
The players
Here’s a look at just a few of the believers influencing Trump’s administration.
Paula White speaks during a Trump campaign event courting devout conservatives by combining praise, prayer and patriotism, Thursday, July 23, 2020, in Alpharetta, Ga. (AP Photo/John Amis)
Pentecostal teacher and longtime Trump confidant Paula White runs the White House Faith Office from the building’s basement. She arranges visits for conservative Christian leaders to meet with and possibly pray over Trump. Many of them then post about their visits on social media, which supports Trump’s messaging efforts.
White also serves as a senior adviser to Trump, which allows her to weigh in on administration issues and meet with federal officials.
Aside from the evangelicals who lead the U.S. Senate (John Thune) and House (Mike Johnson), the most important person for Trump’s budget-slashing agenda is Russell Vought, an evangelical who is director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Last month, Vought told a Senate committee the federal program PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, spent $9.3 million in Russia supporting abortions and gender analysis. The claim was false, but that didn’t keep some senators from voting to end PEPFAR funding, which will lead to deaths in Africa.
Russell Vought (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images)
Vought is an alumnus of Wheaton College, and he ran the pro-Trump Center for Renewing America.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says faith and church are central to his life. He once moved his family to Tennessee so they could attend Pilgrim Hill, a church affiliated with Christian nationalist pastor Doug Wilson’s Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. In May, the pastor of that church led a prayer meeting at the Pentagon at Hegseth’s request.
“Three cheers for the secretary’s bold and courageous Christian witness,” said Focus on the Family, which critiqued media coverage that raised questions about the meeting. “The idea that a voluntary 30-minute Christian prayer event at the Pentagon could be portrayed as the establishment of a ‘state religion, or a clear violation the Establishment Clause, is absurd.”
Pete Hegseth on July 4, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by James Devaney/GC Images)
Hegseth says he wants prayer services monthly in the Pentagon. He now attends Christ Kirk DC, a new Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches congregation that meets in D.C. not far from the U.S Capitol.
At last weekend’s inaugural service, Pastor Jared Longshore preached a politics-infused sermon, at one point telling the congregation, “We understand that worship is warfare,” according to Religion News Service.
Catholic culture warrior Ed Martin wears many hats in Trump 2.0:
- He’s the associate deputy U.S. attorney general.
- And he leads the Justice Department’s “Weaponization Working Group,” which critics say is little more than an office to execute Trump’s “retribution” against those her feels wronged him in the past.
- He’s not the U.S. attorney general, the position for which Trump originally nominated him. Trump withdrew the nomination following strong pushback from Republicans familiar with Martin’s bare-knuckle tactics. (Nominee Martin also failed to inform the Senate about his 150-plus appearances on Russian state media.)
Martin is an attorney who has defended Jan. 6 rioters and appointed one rioter as an adviser to the Deputy U.S. Attorney General’s Office.
In 2015, Martin was named president of the Eagle Forum and successor to its founder, anti-ERA activist Phyllis Schlafly. Unhappy with Martin’s performance, the board fired him. But Martin refused to leave for nine years as a lawsuit dragged on. It was settled recently.
Meg Kilgannon served as a senior fellow for Family Research Council before being named director of strategic partnerships in the Department of Education in May.
At FRC, Kilgannon wrote about how “America eagerly awaits the order to close down the Department of Education entirely.” On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled Trump could continue to dismantle the department and fire 1,400 of its employees.
“In years gone by, a Republican administration often struggled to simply stop the enforcement of bad regulations foisted on the country by Democratic administrations complicit in the left-wing culture war,” Kilgannon wrote. But now, “the president’s bold beginning is being magnified” by willing and capable officials.