President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement are turning America into a Christian nationalist society, warned Congress’ only lawmaker to openly not believe in God. Even worse, he added, many anti-Trumpers are working with MAGA to cover this up.
“Former Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois [and a member of the Jan. 6 committee], was very cleareyed that Fox News would jump on this and try to use it to disparage the entire report,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) told The New York Times’ Annie Karni on Sunday. He was describing how the Jan. 6th investigators determined a clear link between Christian nationalism and the insurrection but refused to highlight it in their report. “But he suggested that with enough of a disclaimer — and by explaining that telling this story is important, doing it in a way that’s clear you’re not trashing Christianity, you’re just being honest about the radicalization and mobilization and the ethos of this riot — there was a way to do that.”
He added, “It’s deep-sixed. Drafts were not kept. That’s another mystery here. I don’t know if that was the chaos of rushing to finish this report or if there was a deliberate, ‘don’t leave incomplete work product’ edict. Nobody had copies.”
Huffman also argued that, regardless of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s ineffectiveness at governing, the powerful Republican has been extremely successful in elevating Christian nationalism to new heights in American political life.
“If you judge him by, ‘Has he advanced the cause of Christian nationalism?’ he’s been wildly successful,” Huffman told Karni. “He elevated the Congressional Prayer Breakfast into Statuary Hall; he instituted a new National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance where members go over to the Museum of the Bible and repent for national sins like abortion.”
Huffman continued, “He allows a pastor he is close with to bring hundreds of pastors multiple times a year to hear a whitewashed version of American history that is rampant Christian nationalism. People need to understand that as incompetent as he is at governing, he has been powerful and very effective in advancing this Christian nationalist movement.”
He concluded, “After Republicans passed the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill,’ Johnson did an interview in the chapel and claimed he had been down on his knees praying every day. He said the passage of this bill was God’s will and God’s plan. There are so many of these things, each of them standing alone might feel like not much. But when you take it together, I feel that the wall of separation is in real trouble.”
Huffman is far from the first to report on Trump’s Christian nationalism. In May, Vox’s Christian Paz reported that “the religious right has been ascendant during the second presidency of Donald Trump, and they’ve harnessed his disdain for rules and norms to blur the lines between church and state. Inside the White House, the secretary of defense has framed the war in Iran and American military action abroad as sanctioned and guided by God. Outside the government, this alliance between church and state often skirts near the edge of outright idolatry. Conservative pastors are erecting golden statues of Trump (but insisting it does not mirror the infamous golden calf of the Old Testament). They’re extending their hands over the president in prayer after comparing him to Jesus and standing by him, with some mild criticism, after he cast himself as an AI-slop Messiah.”
In December, it was reported that a high-ranking official in the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development was hanging a flag associated with both Christian nationalism and the Jan. 6th coup attempt from her office in the Capitol building. Meanwhile, speaking to this journalist for Salon Magazine in March, Dean Caivano, an assistant professor of political theory at Lehigh University and author of “A Politics of All: Thomas Jefferson and Radical Democracy,” emphasized that American founding fathers like Jefferson wanted science rather than religion to govern American political life.
“His ’empire of liberty’ offered the potential to dismantle the artificial hierarchies inherited from the past and imbue all aspects of life with the promise of freedom and happiness,” Caivano said in 2024. “Although this idealized image of a free and harmonious American society is undeniably marred by the institution and legacy of slavery, overlooking the role of education and science as prerequisites for freedom and equality diminishes our ability to assess the historical and contemporary limits of American democracy critically.”