Sowers: Donald is converting some Christians into ‘Trumptians’

Donald Trump’s face has been appearing in numerous new media images. These images can be quickly found by internet searches, if you have not already seen them. In one, Trump’s face is on a person in a Superman costume. In another, his face is on a person that looks like Rambo, complete with an assault rifle and an ammo belt. In yet another example — with a religious theme — his face is on a figure of a person standing in a white robe and emitting light. The figure is surrounded by numerous persons in shadows and darkness, all on their knees and with hands folded in prayer form and looking at Trump. Another has Jesus standing behind Trump, with Jesus’ hands on Trump’s shoulders. Some published photos of flags at Trump gatherings show the words “guns, God, gold” or “bullets, Bible, beans” in some close juxtaposition with each other and images of Trump or Trump’s name.

In 2019, Mark Galli, editor-in-chief of the magazine Christianity Today (christianitytoday.com), wrote an editorial titled “Trump should be removed from office.” Unfortunately, the website is now behind a paywall, but the article and Galli were widely discussed at the time. Recently, I ran across another article, titled “Trump’s pseudo-Christianity is logical outcome of ‘America’s God,’” dated April 4. It was free at ncronline.org (the National Catholic Reporter website). It also referenced a video, titled “God made Trump.” Though I doubted the title, some internet links did show up in my search. The NCR article listed all the “anti” and bad attitudes in common with what I am now calling “Trumptianity.” Other people have also noticed some of the things I am talking about here, but some of them use the name “Church of Trump.” There are numerous questions to be asked about all this, but they are beyond the scope of this letter. However, from all I learned in Sunday school as a kid, Trumptianity does not sound anything like any Christianity that I ever knew about.

The Pew poll titled “5 facts about religion and Americans’ views of Donald Trump” also says a lot about Trump and religion. Trump is favored mostly by evangelicals but not favored at all by members of many other Christian denominations.

So, what is Trump doing? He managed to split Republicans into two camps: (1.) anti-Trump traditional and respectable Republicans (way back in 2015-16) and (2.) Trumpers (Trumpers became “stolen-election” fairy tale believers, starting in 2020). Now, Trump is converting some American traditional Christians into believers of a new and very different ideology. The traditional Christianity that I know about is Jesus-inspired and includes positive attitudes and wisdoms like “love thy neighbor” and “do unto others” and the Ten Commandments, etc. But this new Trumptianity is replacing these moral and ethical qualities with hate, blaming others, threatening others, name calling, bragging, bullying, martyrization, trickery, retribution, etc. It is all unlike anything I ever knew about traditional Christianity.

Arthur E. Sowers

Harbeson

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