February 5, 2026
Trump
wandered into the National Prayer Breakfast like a man who’d accidentally been
scheduled for a revival service in between a rally and a grievance deposition,
and proceeded to deliver what can only be described as a theological Mad Libs
stitched together with ego, revenge fantasies, and intermittent references to
God as a kind of celestial brand sponsor.
Pastor
Paula White opened with a level of flattery normally reserved for North Korean
state television, assuring the room that Trump’s true character is revealed
“away from the cameras,” where he is apparently a humble street-ministry
benefactor quietly writing checks for the vulnerable, a story so perfectly
crafted it might as well have come with a Hallmark logo and an NDA.Then Trump
took the microphone and did what Trump always does: he turned a prayer
breakfast into a self-review, a campaign rally, and a personal therapy session
conducted in front of Congress and God.
He joked
about not getting into heaven, then immediately clarified that, actually, he
probably should, because look at all the good he’s done for “perfect people.”
This was less a confession than a preemptive Yelp review of the afterlife.
From
there, the speech lurched across familiar terrain: the fake news is mean,
Democrats hate God, elections are rigged, immigrants are criminals, windmills
are destroying Europe, and he has personally ended eight wars, saved
Christianity, revived church attendance, rebuilt the military, and apparently
achieved peace in the Middle East for the first time in 3,000 years, which is a
fascinating claim to make at a breakfast intended to celebrate humility.
At various
points he praised airstrikes as Christmas gifts, suggested pastors should be
allowed to endorse him without losing tax-exempt status (but also joked he
might revoke it if they criticize him), and described law enforcement “beating
the crap” out of criminals as part of America’s spiritual renewal. It was less
Blessed are the peacemakers and more Blessed are the poll numbers.
What made
the spectacle so grotesque wasn’t just Trump’s usual carnival of exaggeration
and cruelty dressed up in religious vocabulary; it was the room’s willingness
to treat it as normal. To applaud and pray over him as if he were a
misunderstood prophet rather than a man using Christianity as stage lighting
for authoritarian politics. Instead of a prayer breakfast, it was a political
branding exercise with hymnals.
The
question hanging over the waffles and amens is unavoidable: What does it say
about American Christianity that so many of its leaders are willing to call
this “faith”?
There is a
temptation, especially among political commentators, to treat Donald Trump’s
capture of American Christianity as just another electoral oddity, a cultural
alliance, a transactional marriage, a mutually beneficial arrangement between
power and pulpits. But that framing is way too small, because Trump is not only
cratering democracy, he is cratering Christianity. Whatever else Christianity
claims to be, a faith built on humility, sacrifice, mercy, truth, it cannot
survive indefinitely as the background music for a man who embodies its
negation. A man whose public life is a rolling pageant of cruelty, greed,
vengeance, and self-worship, now being draped in religious language like a
ceremonial stole.
The
spectacle at the National Prayer Breakfast was not merely embarrassing, it was
spiritually obscene. It is difficult enough to believe that there is such a
thing as a “White House Faith Office,” as if the divine can be bureaucratized,
as if holiness belongs in the West Wing alongside the communications shop and
the scheduling desk. But what is truly staggering is not the existence of the
office, it is the willingness of Christian leaders to treat it as legitimate
when its central function appears to be laundering authoritarian politics
through the vocabulary of God.
To invite
Donald Trump to speak at a prayer breakfast is already a kind of confession:
that the event is not about prayer, but about proximity. Not about faith, but
about access.
Then show
him reverence, to applaud him, bless him, flatter him as a champion of the
Gospel, is something darker. It has shades of V for Vendetta, that chilling
marriage of cross and state, where religion becomes a prop in the theater of
power. The hymns play, the robes are pressed, the words are holy, and the soul
has quietly left the room.
History is
full of parallels. Whenever religion stops speaking truth to power and starts
speaking power in the language of truth, it becomes something else entirely:
not a refuge, but a weapon; not a conscience, but a court.
We have
seen this before in Franco’s Spain, where Catholicism was folded into the
machinery of dictatorship, blessing the regime while dissenters were imprisoned
and silenced. We have seen it in the “German Christians” movement of the 1930s,
when churches draped the cross in nationalist spectacle and remade Christianity
into a servant of authoritarian identity rather than a challenge to it. We have
seen it in the segregationist South, where pastors quoted scripture to defend
white supremacy, turning the church into a moral shield for injustice rather
than a force against it.
In every
era, the pattern is the same: the Gospel is replaced with loyalty, the pulpit
becomes an amplifier for the state, and faith is reduced to a kind of
sanctified branding.
The
tragedy is not simply political, it is spiritual. When Christianity becomes the
chaplaincy of power, it ceases to be Christianity at all, it becomes a costume
religion for empire, a church of access, a court of applause.
That is
the great scandal here. Trump does not merely exploit Christianity, he reshapes
it in his own image, into a religion of grievance, dominance, spectacle, and
permission. Faith that once claimed allegiance to the crucified now genuflects
before the gilded.
What does
it say about American Christianity that so many of its leaders looked at this man,
this lifelong monument to ego, and decided he was the one to be prayed over,
honored, and called “the greatest champion of faith of all time”?
What does
it say about a Church that cannot recognize idolatry when it is standing at the
podium, soaking up applause?
follow me
on Substack at marygeddry.com and @magixarc.bsky.social
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