By Jack Holmes
One thing that Donald Trump gets right is that when Nancy Pelosi claims to be praying for him it’s phony and ridiculous. There is no need to pretend you are asking The Big Man to help out your political opponent—a guy you simultaneously say, with good reason, is running roughshod over the institutions of the republic. There is no indication that God’s about to open a 72-year-old snake-oil salesman’s eyes to the beauty of compromise and democratic consensus and checks and balances. Just say you’re praying for the country, or whatever, since it seems to be a prerequisite of public service in our secular democracy—which the United States remains, for now—to exhibit pronounced religiosity whenever you get the chance.
Nowhere is that requirement more on show than at the National Prayer Breakfast, a nondenominational bipartisan kumbaya-fest that is really a power vehicle for a shadowy fundamentalist Christian organization called “The Family” with significant authoritarian tendencies. What a great microcosm of the role of religion in American politics. It’s not about Jesus, it’s about power. Anyway, the president spoke at said Breakfast this morning and, in a predictable bit of rageful subtweeting, alluded to Pelosi’s supposed advocacy for him while she’s communing with The Lord.
While Trump’s blunt-instrument qualities have proven destructive to the pillars of a constitutional republic and to the basic social fabric of the nation, they have also proven useful in exposing the empty scams at the heart of many of our political rituals. He has exposed the National Prayer Breakfast by telling the truth: that he fucking hates Democrats and anyone else who will not bend to his will. This made everyone in the room uncomfortable. You’re supposed to be doing kumbaya! Maybe all these people should admit they came for a lobbying event.
More than that, of course, Trump has exposed the Evangelical movement as a purely political vehicle for organizing White America. No group is more steadfast or enthusiastic in its support of this president as Evangelical Christians. And yet, we have to ask: what principles of Jesus Christ does Donald Trump embody? Or better: which of the Seven Deadly Sins—pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth—does he not? For God’s sake, Rick Perry called him “The Chosen One.” The fact is that he delivers judges who will cement the movement’s minority rule for decades, and maybe even overturn Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. Connecticut. In some cases, the End Times Enthusiasts like him because his particular brand of Israel advocacy could hasten the arrival of the Rapture.