In further evidence that we're living in the Upside Down, a man who once publicly said "I have no reason to ask God for forgiveness when I have never made any mistakes," and who says his favorite book of the Bible is "Two Corinthians," has once again somehow convinced evangelical Christians that he is the Lord's Anointed One, despite his most striking claim to fame being embodying all Seven Deadly Sins in one individual.
The latest stunt by Donald Trump is the creation of a "task force to eliminate anti-Christian bias" from the United States. This plays right into the evangelicals' all-time favorite hobby, which is looking around for stuff to be outraged about. To listen to their preachers and televangelists and whatnot, you'd swear being a Christian in the United States was to risk being dragged into the Superdome, Roman-Colosseum-style, and fed to the lions. Unsurprisingly -- to people who have at least some glancing connection to reality -- the opposite is true. Just shy of ninety percent of the members of Congress identify as Christian; amongst Republican members, the figure rises to 98%. In some parts of the country you couldn't be elected as Village Roadkill Collector unless you're a Christian.
For Trump, of course, this move is not because he actually believes that Christians are being persecuted, or would particularly care if they were. As far as I've seen, Trump's beliefs can be summed up as "I'm in support of whatever gets me praise, power, and money." This is all about cozying up to evangelical power brokers like John Hagee and Mike Huckabee, and through them, to their rabid MAGA supporters. As far as the "anti-Christian bias" they're trying to eliminate, it's mostly regarding issues like requiring the Bible be taught as factual in public school classrooms, the Ten Commandments being in every governmental office building, and eliminating evil stuff like admitting we queer people actually exist and deserve rights.
The thing is, the clownish attempts by Trump and people like Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina (who recently accomplished the astonishing feat of edging out both Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene as the stupidest person in Congress) are only a smokescreen for a far darker and more insidious push toward turning the United States into a Christofascist theocracy. Trump may not have the first clue about actual Christian theology, but you can bet that people like Pete Hegseth, Russell Vought, and J. D. Vance do. Those three, and others like them, are deadly serious; given free rein, and they'd look very like the American version of the Taliban.
Fortunately for those of us who like the idea of separation of church and state, Trump has one saving grace; he has the attention span of a disordered toddler. As Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put it, "Yes, this administration is dangerous and cruel, but they are also shockingly dim and incompetent." As further evidence of this, Trump has now (by executive order, of course) created a "White House Faith Office" with televangelist and certifiable lunatic Paula White-Cain in charge. White-Cain, you might recall, has been something of a frequent flyer here at Skeptophilia, most recently because of a claim that she'd had a vision wherein "God came to me last night and showed me a vision of Trump riding alongside Jesus on a horse made of gold and jewels. This means he will play a critical role in Armageddon as the United States stands alongside Israel in the battle against Islam," and that because of this the faithful should donate their entire January salary to her and she'll make sure to pass the cash along to Jesus just as soon as she gets around it it.
In choosing White-Cain, however, Trump hasn't pleased everyone. Illustrating the general rule that for every evangelical there's an equal and opposite evangelical, some prominent Christian leaders have objected to White-Cain's prominence, one even going so far as to call her a "heretic and known false teacher who has no regard for the Gospel of Jesus Christ." Scott Ross, a Texas-based "Christian leadership coach," said, "Paula White, head of Trump’s White House Faith Office, is no Christian leader. She preaches the heresies of Word of Faith & Prosperity Gospel, both utterly opposed to authentic Christianity. Worse, she has lived a life of scandal, with multiple husbands, twisting the Gospel for profit. Arguably, this is the worst and most dangerous thing President Trump has done—putting a false teacher at the helm of faith outreach. Lord, have mercy on our country and this administration."
Even so, it's doubtful this will be enough to change many people's minds. All Trump and White-Cain will have to do is to start snarling about the evil anti-religious libs and us hellbound LGBTQ+ people running around clamoring for equal rights (if you can even imagine), and the MAGA types will pull right back together into a nice, orderly herd again.
It'll take more than this minor internal squabbling to rid the Religious Right of its paranoia.
In one way, of course, the Christians are right to be freaking out. Church attendance has been dropping steadily for twenty-five years; in 2018, for the first time ever, the number of people who state that they attend church weekly dropped below the number who say they never attend. Estimates are that Christian church attendance has been decreasing by around twelve percent yearly for the past fifteen years, and there's no sign of that changing -- regardless of any mandates via executive order.
Funny how when religious leaders embrace hate, intolerance, and bigotry, use their religion to impose their will on others, and champion a president who is a narcissistic, vengeful, spiteful serial adulterer and compulsive liar, a lot of people decide it's time to find better things to do with their Sunday mornings.
I'll add here something I've said many times; it's not that I have anything against Christianity per se. I have a lot of Christian friends of various denominations, and by and large, we get along fine. My staunchly-held opinion is that we all come to an understanding of the universe and our place within it, and the big questions like the existence of God (or gods), the role of spirituality, and the meaning of life, in our own way and time.
But if you start using your religion as a weapon, either to force your own particular subset of beliefs on others or to deny rights to people you don't happen to like, I (and many of my friends, of both the believing and nonbelieving varieties) are gonna object. Strenuously.
And if that makes you feel "persecuted" -- well, that sounds like a "you problem" to me.