Posting an image of himself as Jesus, making apocalyptic threats against Iran and criticizing Pope Leo XIV gave faith leaders and political strategists plenty to condemn about President Donald Trump during a recent symposium hosted by Yale Divinity School.
Speakers at the Public Theology and Public Policy Conference also included Christian nationalism experts such as journalist Katherine Stewart and Robert P. Jones, president of Public Religion Research Institute.
Many took aim not only at the president but also at the Christian nationalists who have supported his ongoing war in Iran and his policies targeting the poor, hungry and immigrants.
“These Christian fascists have abandoned their religion, its values, even its greatest commandments.”
“These Christian fascists have abandoned their religion, its values, even its greatest commandments. They have replaced the Gospels’ call to love with animosity and hatemongering. What they are doing has nothing to do with the gospel,” said Obery M. Hendricks Jr. a visiting scholar in religion and African diaspora studies at Columbia University.
That movement is not without precedent, as world history and numerous examples in Scripture demonstrate, he added. “Ahab’s false prophets engaged in idolatry because they elevated their own interests above the dictates of their ancestral faith. The Bible and religion were simply vehicles for serving their own interests. In effect, they worshipped their own desires.”
Obery Hendricks
And as for the pressing question of whether Trump is an antichrist, Hendricks said: “An antichrist, according to First John, is anyone who lies against Christ and acts in ways opposite to the teachings of Christ yet does so in the name of Christ. They are enemies of the gospel, and they want to make all of us bow at the altar of their twisted ideology.”
Other speakers said that certainly describes Trump, a notorious nonbeliever who used profanity to threaten Iran with hellfire and extinction on Easter morning and is admired by those who claim to follow Christ.
While his base seemed to have no problem with that, there was stiff resistance from evangelicals when he posted an image of himself as Jesus on social media. Then Trump’s rambling social media attack against Pope Leo and his anti-war comments also caused shockwaves among many MAGA Catholics.
In fact, Trump’s anti-Vatican diatribe of Leo, and the pope’s courage in rejecting it, earned the pontiff some new supporters in the U.S.
William Barber
“We need the moral courage to stand where Pope Leo stood this morning when he said, ‘I am not afraid. I do not fear the Trump administration.’ I ain’t Catholic, but this morning, he’s my Pope,” said Bishop William Barber, a civil rights activist and founder of Repairers of the Breach.
“We’re really in a crisis of civilization and a war on divinity itself — whether we even still believe in inalienable rights from a creator, or if rights are determined by who has the most votes at a particular time and who has the biggest gun and the biggest mouth and the most corporate media,” Barber said.
Americans opposed to President Trump and his staunch evangelical loyalists cannot just sit by and watch how it all plays out for Christianity, democracy and the nation, PRRI’s Jones said. “Our faith has been hijacked and put toward what I would call an apostate Christianity. Faith traditions are not self-protecting. If we don’t want a faith that puts people in concentration camps, then it is up to us to put a different faith into the world.”
“Our faith has been hijacked and put toward what I would call an apostate Christianity.”
Jones referenced PRRI research that has consistently found an openness to the use of violence to achieve political aims among those who support the president: “Nearly half of Christian nationalism adherents said political violence may be morally justified in order to save the country. Once Trump was elected, that number came down — but this is not a principled pullback. It is a pragmatic one. They simply think they no longer need it.”
The tendency was found to be especially pronounced among faithful churchgoers, Jones said. “White Christians who attend religious services more often hold more — not less — extreme views on these issues. Those who attend church weekly or more are twice as likely to be Christian nationalists as those who seldom or never attend.
“In the end, all we have is our humanity and a sense of responsibility for each other. We must shoulder the terrifying realization that we are the only ones who can determine whether the raw materials in our hands will be fashioned into swords or plowshares.”
One way to resist is to know the Scriptures better than the Christian nationalists currently running the nation, said Ched Myers, a biblical scholar and author of Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy: Luke’s Jesus and Sabbath Economics.
“The cosmology of greed is rooted in privilege and insular solipsism, and it is rife today among the billionaire bros who anchor Trump’s plutocracy,” he said. “Our ancient parables unmask such solipsistic disparity and plutocracy as the harbinger of personal and political death.”
Yvette Flunder
Bishop Yvette Flunder of City of Refuge United Church of Christ in Oakland, Calif., said the situation shouldn’t have taken anyone by surprise.
“The underground inevitability has been going on for years — the determination among those who use religion as a weapon,” she said. “This has happened many times to justify racism, homophobia, slavery and weaponized God against justice.”
Jewish people are not exempt from political idolatry, in this case around the nation of Israel, said Ariel Gold, a Jewish activist and organizer with Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
Ariel Gold
“Despite thousands of years of intense Torah study and prayer, we as a Jewish people have again replaced our faith in God with the worship of an idol — a nation-state. The problem with idolatry is that it channels something real into something that cannot hold it. It convinces us that more bombs, higher walls, will make us safe,” she said.
“There is no us and them. There is no immigrant versus citizen, no straight versus gay, no Jew versus Arab. As Dr. King taught us, it is systems, not people, that we must confront.”