Reversing the “weaponization of Christianity”: How “religous freedom” can be used to fight Trumpism

Donald Trump’s role as the country’s first white president is obvious and omnipresent. He campaigned on white identity politics, racism and nativism. As compared to his racism and White identity politics, Trump’s “Christian” faith is likely more befuddling if not unbelievable to those who do not follow politics closely.

Trump’s version of Christianity is performative and strategic. Trump, in both his public and private life, has repeatedly demonstrated by his behavior and values, that he violates almost every tenet of Christianity (as well as human decency and morality more broadly). He embraces cruelty, violence, greed, avarice, selfishness, revenge, lying, lust and dissembling. In total, Trump appears to worship power and himself instead of God and Jesus Christ.

At their core, Trump’s “Christian” values are defined by his transactional relationship with the Christian right, and specifically White Christian nationalists, a group he has promised to elevate to supreme power in the country if they gave him what he wants: their votes, money and control over many tens of millions of people. The bargain was extremely fruitful for both sides: a majority of White Christians voted for Trump (again). With his return to the White House, Trump is poised to make White Christianity (better described as White Christian authoritarianism) the de facto official state religion of the country, with all of the power and privilege(s) that comes with it.

The Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush is the president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance. An ordained Baptist minister, he works with affiliates, networks and leaders in Washington, D.C. and across the country to forge powerful alliances among people of diverse faiths and beliefs to build a resilient, inclusive democracy and uphold religious freedoms. He hosts the weekly podcast and radio show “The State of Belief”, distributed by Religion News Service, holding weekly conversations with inspiring spiritual leaders, civic exemplars, artists and activists. Rev. Raushenbush previously served as senior vice president of the Auburn Seminary and as the founding and executive editor of HuffPost Religion. 

In this conversation, Rev. Raushenbush reflects on his fears and finding hope in this time of uncertainty with Trump’s imminent return to power and what they will mean for marginalized communities and others deemed to be “the enemy within.”

He explains how the Age of Trump and the rise of authoritarian populism and MAGA are also a moral crisis made possible by how the right-wing spent decades capturing and distorting “morality, “God” and “Christianity” to advance its antidemocratic agenda and the culture of cruelty.

At the end of this conversation, Rev. Raushenbush offers a model of how Christians, members of other faith communities, and people of conscience more broadly, can be partners in defending American democracy and civil society from some of the worst assaults on civil rights, freedom and human dignity that Trump’s administration and his allied forces have promised and threatened on “day one” and beyond.

This is the first of a two-part conversation.

How are you feeling given Trump’s election and what that will mean for the country’s democracy and civil society?

I am feeling determined. I do have moments of fury. I am also experiencing some fear.

I am a gay man with a family. Right now, nothing feels safe and secure. There is a great level of vindictiveness against the LGBTQ community right now. We are being targeted. Ultimately, as a society, we’re in a fraught moment where it’s unclear what will happen with Trump taking power. With all that said, there are moments of encouragement too. There are many people, really good people, who are inspiring me. For all of the bad things that will happen with Trump’s administration, and all that it means for many targeted communities, this could also be a moment of opportunity. A moment to build alliances for mutual aid, support and positive change. Like many people, I am experiencing so many different emotions all at the same time.

How are you processing the existential danger that comes with being a member of a targeted group in the Age of Trump?

Trump and the rise of illiberalism, intolerance and all that goes with it, have created a permission structure for cruelty on a massive scale. Of course, this involves overturning civil rights laws that protect marginalized groups. But there is also the day-to-day fear of being targeted for just trying to live and doing basic human things like holding your partner’s hand in public. I live in a part of country where there is supposed to be all this tolerance and safety for gay people — yet all it takes is one second for something bad to suddenly happen.

I know that you are familiar with the work of James Cone, who was one of my professors at Union Seminary. His work on Black Liberation Theology and the Black Freedom Struggle greatly informed my own work and thinking about the liberation of LGBTQ people and how all these liberation struggles intersect. This moment of crisis and uncertainty with Trump’s election and the rise of the MAGA movement has brought to the forefront many questions of faith and what it means to be a Christian.

I am very suspicious of many of my fellow Christians right now, given how many of them evidently support Donald Trump and his authoritarian populist movement. There is a long tradition of people using my faith to terrorize others. So, one of the things I do as a minister and as a leader of an interfaith organization is to try to make it clear in my talks and other work that religion is not automatically or necessarily good. Religion has been the source of much evil, which we can chronicle throughout our history. In America, we’re in a moment where religion is again being used as a pretext for subjugation and discrimination. White Christianity, especially white right-wing Christian fundamentalism, is such a deep and important current within the MAGA movement and today’s “conservatives” that I think even many people who are working in mainstream politics don’t really understand what’s happening. This weaponization of Christianity is very dangerous to the country and our freedoms.

Given your religious training and political work, how do you reconcile or confront the Age of Trump and America’s democracy crisis as a moral crisis? This is far from being “just” about “politics.”

If a person is not able to correctly describe the fundamental immorality of what is happening right now and what is about to happen — with the assaults on the rights of the LGBTQ community, undocumented people, women, the poor and other marginalized and vulnerable communities — then they have lost their sense of what morality actually is.

When the government is restricting a person’s rights to control their own body and other freedoms of personhood, then that is immoral. Sterile discussions about policy can mask the moral injury that is being done there. We need to develop a language that embraces morality questions and seeks moral clarity. That language is needed to explain to the public how public policy and politics can cause direct harm to real people and to their lives and happiness. This extreme right-wing movement that we are up against is very skilled at co-opting the language of “morality” and “God” and “Christianity” to do things like ban books, or force a certain type of prayer in schools.

People of conscience, who believe in the Constitution and the separation of church and state and the American democratic tradition, need to find ways to undermine how the right-wing has distorted and weaponized the language of “morality, “God,” and “Christianity” for their own purposes. The origins of the crisis, embodied by the rise of Trumpism and the current version of the Republican Party, go back to the rise of the so-called Moral Majority in the 1980s under Reagan.

Thinking about the Black prophetic tradition, what does it mean for Christians and other people of conscience to bear witness in this moment? To speak truth to power? And yes, to also engage in corporeal politics?

Witnessing means showing up and saying what’s true. Witnessing is something that my organization encourages people to do in their local communities to push back against the Christian Nationalists who are trying to take over school boards and libraries, for example. Those of us who are Christians and reject Christian Nationalism must witness and speak boldly and make it clear that Christian Nationalists do not represent our faith or the version of Christianity, Christian ethics and Christian love that we believe in. One of the ways that the Christian Nationalists win is if we leave a vacuum for them to fill.

An integral part of witnessing in the Christian faith also involves sharing what God has done for you in your life. Applying that model of witnessing in a democracy means demanding that your government does not get to mandate a state-sponsored or official religion or place one religion above others. It means refusing to allow the government to impose some “patriotic” education program or try to erase history because it makes white people and other dominant groups uncomfortable.

One of the reasons the Interfaith Alliance was started was in direct reaction to the Christian Right’s claim to speak for Christianity in America. The myth that America was founded as a Christian nation is central to the project of course. The Christian right is just one strain of religion in America. They most certainly, for example, do not represent the Black liberation tradition or other more progressive understandings of the Christian faith. 

The 2024 election has been described as the “anxiety election.” As public policy and other experts have pointed out we can document empirically how Trump’s proposed policies will negatively impact the life chances and life outcomes of many millions of people in this country — and around the world. The dread and fear are palpable. I have been talking to friends who are mental health professionals and they have told me how they are overwhelmed by the number of new and returning clients that they are seeing since the election. 

How are faith leaders, especially those who are involved in pastoral care on the day-to-day, managing right now? 

This is a challenging time. Given all the rage, anger, uncertainty and the extremely polarized and divided society we are living in right now, our spiritual communities are experiencing that too. Faith communities can be sources of great comfort and hope, but they can also be very stressful. The faith leaders I am in contact with are having a difficult time dealing with all of this. So many people are in pain right now — and have been for a long time even before this election season.

Faith communities are going to be critically important as Trump returns to the White House and we face the range of damaging and harmful policies he is going to enact. Faith communities have the potential to be spaces for resisting and organizing in defense of these assaults and trauma. This will be a time of challenge, when religious communities can leverage their power to show up for one another, stand against mass deportations and/or attacks on Black and brown people’s lives and defend civil rights and the social safety net. Faith communities play an important role, as they have historically in this country, in caring for people.

“Religious freedom” has been frequently used as an excuse to engage in discrimination — most recently, for example, against the LGBTQ community. But religious freedom can also be used as a way of pushing back against the powerful forces Trump commands. We can make clear that it’s our congregation’s right to house undocumented people. To support and aid LGBTQ people. To support abortion access.