To many evangelicals, Trump is not just a president but a messiah.
How did he gain such mythic power, and where will it lead?
This American strangeness around religion is attributable, at least in part, to the way the First Amendment to the US Constitution bars the “establishment” of any religion as a state-sponsored entity while protecting the “free exercise” of all religions. Combined, these two principles have helped create a two-and-a-half-century, free-wheeling culture of religious entrepreneurship and a seedbed for religious innovators, including Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam; L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology; Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Christian Science movement; and Billy Graham, global Christian evangelist.
To this list, we must now add one Donald J. Trump, reanimated president of the United States, who – though he is not personally overtly pious – has become an icon of many US Christians’ religious hopes and devotion. He has as much ridden the present-day wave of US Christian anger and fear as he has created it. But Trump is a singular figure in US history. Never before have Americans had a national political leader who was the subject of so many prophecies, elicited so many religious comparisons and inspired such fervent adoration. So what is the context around Trump’s religious appeal, and how did he come to revolutionise and radicalise a huge swathe of Christians in America?
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