Donald Trump is portraying himself as a religious savior. He says Election Day will be: …”the most important day in the history of our country, and it’s going to be Christian Visibility Day.”
Trump has repeatedly compared his criminal trials to the crucifixion of Jesus, promoted videos calling his reelection “the most important moment in human history,” and that describe him as a divinely appointed ruler.
He claims to be a holy warrior against an imaginary attack on Christianity.
He’s even selling his own version of the Bible.
Trump is playing to a rising white Christian Nationalist movement within the Republican Party.
Christian Nationalists believe that the law of the land is not the Constitution, but instead the law of God as they interpret it. Under this view, atheists and people of other faiths (including Christians of other denominations) are all second-class citizens.
Trump’s supporters are increasingly overt in their calls to replace democracy with a MAGA theocracy.
The idea that the will of voters is irrelevant because God has anointed Trump was a recurring message in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
In previous videos, I’ve highlighted how MAGA Republicans have embraced core elements of fascism. They reject democracy, stoke fear of immigrants and minorities, embrace a gender and ethnic hierarchy, and look to a strongman to lead and defend them.
The combination of fascism and Christian Nationalism is called Christofascism, a term first used half a century ago by the theologian Dorothee Sölle. Fascists rise to power by characterizing their opponents as subhuman. Christofascists take it a step further by casting opponents as not just subhuman, but actually demonic.
Framing opponents as enemies of God makes violence against them not only seem justifiable, but divinely sanctioned, and almost inevitable.
Christofascists want to strip away a wide range of rights Americans take for granted. Former Trump staffers involved in developing plans for a second Trump term have called for imposing “Biblical” tests on immigration, overturning marriage equality, and restricting contraception.
And MAGA-aligned judges are already setting their dogma ahead of the Constitution. In his concurring opinion on the case that declared frozen embryos are people, Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker cited God more than forty times and quoted the Book of Genesis and other religious texts.
Nothing could be more un-American than the Christian Nationalist vision. So many of America’s founders came here as refugees seeking religious freedom. The framers of the Constitution were adamant that religion had no role in our government. The words “God,” “Jesus,” and “Christ,” don’t appear anywhere in the Constitution. And the very first words of the Bill of Rights are a promise that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Christofascism, or any religion-based form of government, is a rejection of everything America has aspired to be — a secular, multi-racial society whose inhabitants have come from everywhere, bound together by a faith in equal opportunity, democracy, and the rule of law.
Read it on Robert Reich’s blog.
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