Official White House Photo/Shealah Craighead
Donald J. Trump prepares to board Air Force One in New Jersey, 2019.
When the dust had settled from the 2016 presidential election, many of us were stunned to learn that, according to the Pew Research Center, 77 percent of white evangelicals had voted for Donald Trump, a vulgar sexual predator who seemed to personify everything that religious communities are supposed to reject.
Routledge
But, according to André Gagné, a professor of theological studies at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, and the author of American Evangelicals for Trump: Dominion, Spiritual Warfare, and the End Times, our shock reflected a lack of understanding of the neo-charismatic movement that has rapidly overtaken some Protestant denominations in the United States.
Gagné centers the book on one thread of Pentecostalism, the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), which the late theologian C. Peter Wagner—Gagne quotes him at length in the book—said is aimed to “rally those who want to see revolutionary theonomic Christianity in our time.”
In other words, it’s a type of Christian nationalism that requires what NAR calls the “Seven Mountains Mandate,” a plan by biblical literalists to dominate all facets of society, including the arts, business, education, family life, the military, and politics. “The objective,” Gagné writes, “is to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth.”
American Evangelicals for Trump: Dominion, Spiritual Warfare, and the End Times
By André Gagné
Routledge, 136 pages
Release date: December 1, 2023
That Trump has been deemed capable of orchestrating this feat—incredible as it seems—rests with a statement by Pentecostal author and speaker Lance Wallnau that went viral in 2016 in evangelical circles. The missive dubbed Trump “God’s chosen one” and likened him to the Persian king Cyrus the Great. According to Gagné, Cyrus was a pagan king who, despite numerous personal flaws, was politically effective, invading Babylon, freeing the Jews, and helping to finance the rebuilding of the destroyed temple in Jerusalem.
As President, Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017—a major goal of NAR—thrilled this evangelical constituency, who remained confident he would champion their other domestic interests, including banning abortion, sex education, and marriage equality; restoring prayer and teaching creationism in schools; and allowing evangelicals the so-called religious freedom to discriminate against members of the LGBTQ+ community.
At the crux of all of this is power: who has it and who wants it. Trump was deemed the primary conduit to provide evangelicals with the access to power they craved. Dozens of churches and Christian organizations, including the Congressional Prayer Caucus, the U.S. Spiritual Prayer Network, and the Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network, lined up to support Trump, whom they viewed first as God’s anointed candidate and then world leader. As adherents of the “prosperity gospel,” which sees material wealth as proof of God’s love, Trump was deemed supremely blessed. He had a successful reality television show, he won a competitive Republican primary, and he was an internationally recognized entrepreneur.
But they knew his ascendance to power wasn’t guaranteed, so they deployed prayer and money to smite his enemies, many of whom belonged to the Democratic establishment. This provided evangelicals the means to both support Trump and oppose the devil.
“If a party is under the influence of a spirit that can’t celebrate American prosperity, it means that it is under demonic influence and opposed to the divine plan for the United States,” Gagné writes, quoting Wallnau. “It has become an enemy of God.”
While Gagné avoids predicting where NAR’s politics might be headed, American Evangelicals for Trump confirms that Trump remains the group’s preferred presidential candidate in 2024—never mind the numerous indictments and ongoing litigation facing the former President.
Will any of Trump’s legal woes or behavior matter to evangelicals? Likely not, Gagné says, because evangelicals view human foibles as less important than a devotion to God’s “plan.”
Gagné concludes that “Trump-Cyrus would be the instrument of divine chaos chosen to break the status quo and lead American society, fulfilling God’s will for the nation.”