A man holds his hands out and prays during the memorial service for right-wing activist Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., on Sunday.ADRIANA ZEHBRAUSKAS/The New York Times News Service
Not long ago, American religious conservatives eschewed politics, partly because it was distasteful, partly out of conviction that contemporary, earthly worries soon would be overtaken by the onset of the Messianic Age.
Those days are over now, even if this may not be the end of days.
The prominence of scriptural references by secular political figures at the memorial service on Sunday for right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, the presence of Christian language in recent Republican rhetoric, and Donald Trump’s increasing use of devotional images – and his repeated desire to win not only a Nobel Prize but also a place in Heaven – all these are clear indications of a dramatic turn toward religious themes in American politics, especially in conservative circles.
This phenomenon, which has burst on the American political scene with astonishing force and speed, actually is the culmination of a slow process that, against enormous initial resistance in evangelical circles, was set in motion a half-century ago.
Before the 1979 establishment of Reverend Jerry Falwell Sr.’s Moral Majority and the 1988 presidential campaign of the Reverend Pat Robertson, whose second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses placed him ahead of frontrunner vice president George H.W. Bush, religious conservatives kept a safe distance from partisan politics. Many didn’t even vote – a circumstance Mr. Kirk once called a “five-alarm fire” for the Trump campaign.
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Clergy were, to be sure, deeply involved in the abolition, temperance, and civil-rights movements and ministers and priests often offered strong partisan sermons. But American presidents – even the two born-again chief executives, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush – have employed religious language sparingly, usually in pleas for national unity or in sober moments of national challenge.
Abraham Lincoln, who never joined a church, sprinkled his Civil War-era speeches with Biblical allusions. In Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s message at the beginning of the Second World War’s D-Day invasion of Europe, he said, “Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.” Recent presidents often call for God’s blessing for American troops and end their speeches with the ritualistic phrase “God bless the United States of America.”
The use of religion by Mr. Trump and many contemporary conservatives is of a far different character, however.
The day after the prayer-and-politics memorial service for Kirk, the President distributed a fundraising message with a striking religious theme. “Since the day I returned to the White House, I have felt the mighty hand of God guiding this movement,” he said. “The Bible tells us faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains. And together, our faith will move American back to GOD.”
Mr. Trump asked supporters to “chip in and show the Radical left that we will NEVER surrender. And together, with God, we’ll RESTORE the values that made America GREAT.”
By Tuesday, Mr. Trump, further merging MAGA with the Magnificat, was transforming the podium of the General Assembly of the United Nations into something of a pulpit.
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He addressed – actually, dressed down – world leaders in the manner that the preacher Jonathan Edwards used in his famous 1741 “sinners in the hands of an angry God” sermon in Northampton, Mass., and implored, “Let us protect religious liberty, including for the most persecuted religion on the planet today – it’s called Christianity.”
Vice-President JD Vance noted at the memorial service that he had packed away his religious reluctance and “talked more about Jesus Christ in the past two weeks than I have my entire time in public life.” This phenomenon represents another of the occasional Great Awakenings in American life. It is also a great departure from the time, nearly three-quarters of a century ago, when the adoption of “in God We Trust” as the national motto and the insertion of “one nation under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance that pupils recite at school, prompted enormous controversy.
In fact, many of the references to faith in modern American politics have been about how religion shouldn’t matter, with John F. Kennedy arguing that his Catholicism should be irrelevant in the 1960 election, and Mitt Romney making much the same point about his Mormonism in the 2012 election.
Though FDR mobilized religious conservatives in the 1930s, and though every president since Dwight Eisenhower has joined the National Prayer Breakfast, the political dogma for decades among evangelicals was to keep the pulpit and the public square separate.
“Even into the 1970s the accepted wisdom was that politics was dirty and we didn’t get into politics because we were waiting for Jesus to return,” said Randall Balmer, a Dartmouth College religion professor reared in an evangelical environment. “There was a very strong apocalyptic sentiment that Jesus was coming back at any time, so there was no reason to waste time on social amelioration.
“The old mantra was ‘Jesus, come quickly,’” he continued. “Now the mantra is, ‘Take your time, we’re doing fine, we have political power, our kids are getting into good colleges, and we’re not in any hurry to get out of here.’”
That change began with Mr. Falwell, who turned against the Southern Baptist deacon Mr. Carter to embrace Ronald Reagan in 1980, and Mr. Robertson, who stepped deeper into electoral politics eight years later. He built a campaign organization in Iowa and his followers basically took over the Iowa Republican Party. “He did what the standard Republican did,” said Barbara Trish, a political scientist at Iowa’s Grinnell College.
“That reluctance to get into politics is gone,” said Danny Carroll, who lobbies the Iowa legislature for the Family Leader, a Christian ministry that engages with state government. “Christians now have found a way to accommodate involvement in government and political office with their faith.”