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Americans are used to listening to concerning the custom of separating church and state, however the two are more and more fused in President Donald Trump’s administration.
The First Amendment, in spite of everything, along with guaranteeing free speech, says that Congress shall “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
Never in latest reminiscence have Americans seen extra prime authorities officers converse so brazenly about Jesus Christ as they did at Charlie Kirk’s memorial, which Trump described as “an old-time revival” slightly than a funeral.
It is sensible that Kirk’s funeral would function spiritual overtones: Conversion was on the core of Kirk’s conservatism, one thing praised by the nation’s assembled prime political leaders who attended his funeral, together with the president, the vice chairman, the speaker of the House of Representatives and far of the president’s Cabinet.
The podcaster Benny Johnson talked concerning the thought of “Godly government” and pointed down at Trump’s assembled Cabinet secretaries.
“God has given them power over our nation and our land,” he mentioned, including it was God who saved Trump from a unique murderer’s bullet “for this moment.”
Trump officers mentioned God is on their facet as they go after their political enemies.
“We are on the side of goodness. We are on the side of God,” White House adviser Stephen Miller mentioned in a speech that, like Trump’s, promised retribution towards an unnamed evil, although proof launch to this point suggests Kirk’s alleged murderer acted alone.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a sermon that concluded with dialogue of the Second Coming.
Vice President JD Vance, who referred to Kirk as a “warrior for country, a warrior for Christ,” recommended Americans to “live worthy of Charlie’s sacrifice and put Christ at the center of your life.”
Christian nationalism is the idea — rejected by many students — that the US was fashioned as a Christian nation and that Christianity ought to imbue its legal guidelines.
Many Trump administration actions observe by on this idea. In the times earlier than Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University, Trump delivered a speech on the privately funded Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, the place he promised to guard prayer in public faculties by forthcoming steering from the Department of Education.
“To have a great nation, you have to have religion,” Trump mentioned. “I believe that so strongly. There has to be something after we go through all of this — and that something is God.”
After that September 8 speech, Trump met with the Religious Liberty Commission he created by government motion on the Department of Justice.
Among the commission’s charges is “Exploring the foundations of religious liberty in America,” and “identifying current threats to domestic religious liberty.”
Trump labeled earlier Justice Department prosecutions of anti-abortion rights protesters exterior clinics as a type of anti-Christian bias.
Last month, NCS’s Pamela Brown profiled self-described Christian nationalist pastor Douglas Wilson, who has ties to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Wilson is predicated in Idaho, however his group has opened an outpost within the nation’s capital. Wilson, who appeared at Kirk’s “The Believer’s Summit” in 2024, instructed Brown he would love the US to be a Christian theocracy. He would additionally wish to make homosexuality unlawful.
In July, Trump’s IRS declared that pastors who endorse political candidates shouldn’t lose their tax-exempt standing.
That identical month, the Office of Management and Budget mentioned that federal staff can now carry faith into the federal office, together with promoting their religious beliefs to colleagues.
Hegseth has hosted working-hours prayer services at the Pentagon. One in May featured the pastor of his Tennessee church, which is affiliated with Wilson’s Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.
The Public Religion Research Institute has tried lately to gauge Christian nationalism and the way it’s spreading within the US. In 2024, it estimated that about 30% of Americans would qualify as both adherents of or sympathizers to Christian nationalism, according to their definition, together with a majority of Republicans.
But the parts range extensively throughout the US. About half of the folks in some Southern states like Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Alabama are both adherents or sympathizers, in comparison with solely a few third in crimson states like Florida and Texas.
In many blue states, lower than 1 / 4 of residents both adhere to or sympathize with Christian nationalism, in keeping with PRRI, which suggests a big portion of the nation additionally doesn’t share their philosophy concerning the position of Christianity within the authorities.