Donald Trump mentioned God nine times in his speech last week. Some of them were perfunctory like “God bless the United States of America,” but others were more personal. “If the events of last Saturday make anything clear, it is that every single moment we have on Earth is a gift from God.” “I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God.”
This might be a change from the guy who eight years ago was asked for his favorite Bible verse and said, “Well, I think many. I mean, you know, when we get into the Bible, I think many. So many,” and who never showed any interest in religion before he became a politician. But when you’ve been the luckiest person on the planet for 78 years (his father started giving him $200,000 a year at the age of three in a tax dodge and it went up dramatically) and then you dodge a bullet, and people have been telling you for eight years that you were chosen by God to save the country, you might just start to believe it. Well not you, but some people.
I don’t want to put too much stock into one Trump speech, but sometimes people do become true believers. Senator J.D Vance, now Trump’s VP candidate, was described as an angry atheist in his early 20s but it didn’t stick and he eventually became a Catholic. He had some concerns about the pedophilia but decided to just look at the big picture and signed up in 2019. If his religious views and his political views seem malleable, he doesn’t even seem to be able to decide if he uses periods in “JD”. When he wrote Hillbilly Elegy it was “J.D.” His Senate website uses just “JD”. His Instagram uses “JD” but his X account uses “J.D.” I compromised above and used one period. But I digress.
My point, and I do have one, is that if Donald Trump has become more religious and if he wins, it’s a bigger problem for keeping religion out of government than it was during his first term. In that term everything he did for the evangelicals and the religious right was transactional. They voted for him and he was always going to run again so he gave them the judges they wanted and signed executive orders to let federally funded faith-based groups discriminate based on their religion. If he starts to actually care about things like that and if, for example, he starts to care about whether it would be good to get more federal funds to private (religious) schools, that’s a much bigger problem. I assure you he had zero interest in what the assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education was doing from 2017-2020 but that could actually change.
I compiled a seven-page list of every significant mention of religion, faith-based organizations and schools, and even the Sabbath in Project 2025. It’s not the official policy platform of the Trump campaign, it’s just the wish list of every conservative group in Washington including hundreds of people who are candidates for jobs like the assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education. Please share it. You can pick the worst sections and post them or share the whole document. I also sent it to Congressman Huffman’s office to be included in the Democrats’ Project 2025 Resource Center but that’s designed for members and staff so we can’t share that with you.
This election is far from over. I’m pretty confident the Democratic alternative to President Joe Biden would still be the better choice for choosing new Supreme Court justices and keeping religion out of government.
Things changed a lot in three weeks. There are over three months to go. Volunteer for a candidate. House and Senate races may turn out to be hugely important in the next four years, depending on which side gets the majority. When you make phone calls or knock on doors you get a list of sympathetic or independent voters whom you’re mostly just encouraging to show up on November 5. It’s not hard. It makes a difference. In the next three months we really need to make a difference.
