Donald Trump on Monday urged Christian voters to participate in the 2024 election, claiming a Kamala Harris administration would restrict religious freedoms and cast itself as a protector of Christians.
At an event in North Carolina billed as an “11th-Hour Faith Leaders Meeting,” a series of conservative pastors warmed to Trump, including Guillermo Maldonado, an “apostle” and longtime Trump ally who cast the election in dangerous terms .
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“You know, we’re in a spiritual war right now,” Maldonado said, referring to the idea that Christians are waging war on the supernatural plane against dark forces that influence the real world. “It goes beyond warfare between left and right. It’s between good and evil. There is a big fight happening right now that is affecting our country and we need to take our country back.”
When Trump was introduced, Ben Carson, the chairman of the National Faith campaign for the 2024 elections, openly rejected the idea of a secular society.
“This election is about whether we are a secular nation or one nation under God,” Carson said, echoing the goals of Christian nationalists who see the U.S. as a Christian nation that must return to God.
In a meandering speech, Trump addressed the assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, drawing on the idea embraced by many Christian conservatives that God intervened to save his life.
“My faith took on new meaning on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, where I was knocked to the ground, primarily by what appeared to be a supernatural hand,” Trump said. “And I would like to think that God saved me for a purpose, and that is to make our country greater than ever before.”
He called on Christians to vote.
“You have a reputation for not voting proportionately,” Trump said. “Christians, evangelicals…but Christians and gun owners don’t vote.” The former president vowed, as he often does, to roll back the Johnson Amendment, which bans nonprofits, including churches, from endorsing political candidates.
“You’ll get that right within the first week,” Trump said.
During his time in office, he praised his decision to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which was widely condemned by world leaders as threatening to inflame tensions in Israel and Palestine. “I said, ‘We’re going to do exactly what a lot of people didn’t want me to do,’” Trump said.
Many evangelicals and non-denominational Christians view Israel as the site of end-time prophecy, and militant support for Israel is common among the Christian Right.
Trump also denounced inclusion and gender-affirming health care for transgender people and vowed to take “historic action to defeat the toxic poison of gender ideology and reaffirm that God created two genders: male and female.”
Earlier on Monday morning, Trump’s son Eric — who co-hosted the event with Carson and Trump — appeared on the Prophets & Patriots podcast on ElijahStreams, a streaming service and hub for prophetic voices on the Christian right.
“One of the things that really bothers me is, you see in this country an ongoing war against God, from the current administration, from the Obama administration,” Eric Trump said.
“They’ve really gone after religious freedom in this country like we’ve never seen before, and I don’t think you’ve ever had a greater supporter of religious freedom than under Donald Trump.”
During the phone call, Eric Trump assured his audience that “there is a hand of God on my father’s shoulder” and said an angel had saved him from the would-be killer.
According to Eric Trump, one of the minds behind the North Carolina meeting of faith leaders was Clay Clark – an Oklahoma entrepreneur and co-founder of the ReAwaken America tour, a traveling road show with a lineup of pro-Trump conspiracy theorists and charismatic Christian preachers.
Like Monday’s summit of faith leaders, the ReAwaken America tour featured figures from the New Apostolic Reformation — a movement of the Christian Right that embraces modern prophets and apostles and seeks to achieve Christian rule over society and government.
“The faith leader event will be incredible,” Eric Trump said on an Oct. 11 episode of the Prophets & Patriots show. “Clay has been the backbone of much of this event.”
Trump’s faith coalition — in which evangelicals have long played a key role — is closely linked to the leaders of a growing movement of nondenominational charismatic preachers and self-styled prophets who see Trump as a savior figure.
Last month, JD Vance appeared during a stop on Lance Wallnau’s Courage Tour — a pro-Trump tent revival that crisscrossed swing states in the months leading up to the election in an effort to shore up support for Trump.
The open association with figures like Wallnau, who has written that the US is heading towards civil war and accused Harris of practicing “witchcraft”, could be a gamble given the strong influence such figures wield among their followers – and the outrage they provoke. among the uninitiated.
