• America
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• The Guardian
• Wed Apr 16 2025

The Trump administration?s promotion of white Christian nationalists and prosperity gospel preachers to key government roles will lead to the ?further dismantling of government institutions? and the chilling of free speech, experts have warned.

Donald Trump announced the creation of an ?anti-Christian bias? taskforce and a White House Faith Office (WHFO) in February, saying it would make recommendations to him ?regarding changes to policies, programs, and practices? and consult with outside experts in ?combatting anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and additional forms of anti-religious bias?.

Both initiatives are dominated by rightwing Christian loyalists ? a stark contrast to similar faith-based efforts under Joe Biden and Barack Obama, both of whom welcomed Muslim and Sikh leaders. This has prompted concern that a specific brand of Christianity will be prioritised over other faiths and Christian denominations.

With Trump having recently been pictured being prayed over in the White House by a host of white Christian nationalists, concerns are rising about what a government influenced by those beliefs could mean. White Christian nationalists typically are anti-LGBTQ+, anti-immigration and anti-efforts to ensure racial equality, and broadly believe that America was founded as a white Christian nation and must be returned to such.

?We will see the further dismantling of government institutions. We will see an abandonment of democratic principles and a further perversion of the institutions of justice,? said Katherine Stewart, a journalist and author of Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, which explores what Stewart calls the ?antidemocratic movement? ? a mix of Christian nationalists, billionaire or super-rich oligarchs and conservative ideologues who have seized control of the Republican party, and aim to fundamentally change the US.

?Trump?s anti-Christian bias taskforce will lead to a further chilling of free speech, political opposition, and investigations of corruption. We will see public funds flowing directly to religious institutions, and the insertion of the Bible and sectarian messaging in public schools, town meetings and other places that serve religiously diverse populations. The intention is to make anyone who is not onboard with their agenda feel that they don?t belong.?

The faith office is headed by Paula White, the tongues-speaking, multimillionaire televangelist who called the Black Lives Matter movement the ?Antichrist? and said Jesus would have been ?sinful? and not ?our Messiah? if he had broken immigration law. And the other appointees to the WHFO are also Christian.

Trump appointed Jennifer Korn as deputy assistant to the president and faith director of WHFO. Korn was previously senior adviser of the National Faith Advisory Board, the rightwing, Trump-backing Christian group founded by White.

Jackson Lane will serve as deputy director of faith engagement. Lane graduated from Missouri Baptist University and was previously deputy director of faith outreach for the Trump-Vance 2024 campaign.

Barack Obama had a similar faith-based office, but his leadership notably included people of Muslim and Jewish faith. In announcing his own office, Joe Biden said that ?when Methodists and Muslims, Buddhists and Baptists, Sikhs and Secular Humanists serve together, we strengthen one another and we strengthen America,? and his office sought to include a range of religious voices, including at its 2022 United We Stand anti-hate summit.

The makeup of Trump?s faith office is so far ?not at all? representative of the various religions practiced in the US, said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor at Calvin University and research fellow at the center for philosophy of religion at the University of Notre Dame.

?It?s not even representative of Christianity in the United States,? said Du Mez, who authored the book ??Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.

?It?s a pretty narrow slice of rightwing, predominantly, but not exclusively, white conservative Protestantism. But that is the Christianity that Trump thinks of when he thinks of Christianity.?

Trump appears unlikely to reach out to non-Christians, however, and the contrast between him and his predecessors was shown in a White House post on X in March.

?The White House Faith Office and Faith Leaders from across the country joined President Trump to pray in the Oval Office,? the post read, beneath a photo showing more than a dozen people, most of them white, looking solemn behind Trump, some with their arms on his shoulders. The trophy for the upcoming Club World Cup soccer competition was next to Trump?s desk, apparently left over from a photoshoot that had, oddly, taken place a week earlier.

The Daily Mail identified all 15 of the faith leaders, and found that each of them was Christian, including some who are openly Christian nationalist. They included William Wolfe, who worked in the first Trump administration and who told the rightwing Daily Signal that he had used the March meeting with Trump to ?push aggressively? for pro-life policies.

Wolfe claimed that ?Christians were not welcome in the Biden administration or the Obama administration,? and according to the Daily Signal said mass deportations were a Christian issue.

?We actually believe it is directly related to the preservation of America as we know it,? Wolfe said.

Du Mez pointed to other figures who carry a lot of influence in the Trump administration, including Russell Vought, who Associated Press reported has ?unabashedly advanced ?Christian nationalism?. Vought, one of architects of Project 2025, the rightwing plan for Trump?s second term, was appointed White House budget director in February. It?s one of the less glamorous roles, but holds sprawling responsibilities including managing the development and implementation of the federal budget and overseeing federal agencies.

In a 2021 opinion article, Vought wrote that Christian nationalism was ?a commitment to an institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society?. That influence could extend beyond social issues, Du Mez said.

?When people hear ?Christian nationalism?, they tend to think of a narrow set of [beliefs] prioritizing Christian faith, Christian supremacy ? people tend to think of these kind of moral values issues,? Du Mez said.

?But it is also anti-woke. It is also anti-immigration, and it is also, if you look historically at the Christian right ideas of Christian America and returning America to its Christian foundations, have always been, for almost a century, intertwined with deregulationism, free market capitalism.?

Stewart warned that Trump?s appointment of Pete Hegseth to defense secretary could also be problematic. Hegseth drew scrutiny in March after it emerged he had a tattoo of what the Council on American-Islamic Relations described as ?a display of ? anti-Muslim hostility?, along with other tattoos tied to the Christian crusades. Last year the Idaho Capital Sun reported that Hegseth ?has close ties to an Idaho-based Christian nationalist church?.

Also concerning is the sheer number of people involved in Project 2025, which the Charles F Kettering foundation, a non-partisan research foundation which seeks to preserve democracy, described as ?The Blueprint for Christian Nationalist Regime Change?, who are now in Trump?s government.

?It?s not unimportant that there are some people who identify as Christian nationalists who are playing a big role in the administration,? Stewart said.

?But what?s important to understand is that the movement is driving policy, whether or not the people who are pushing that policy identify themselves as Christian nationalists or adhere to Christian nationalist ideas.

?Part of what we?re also seeing is the favoring not of Christians per se, but of a certain kind of Christianity. Trump and his people are aiming not to just work with the movement, but to shape the movement itself, to make it more faux-populist, demagogic and frankly authoritarian.?