If you spent any time online Sunday, you probably noticed a small set piece of culture-war theater. The supposed trigger was the Biden administration recognizing Transgender Day of Visibility on March 31. Conservatives exploded in indignation. “This is an intentional attempt to insult and mock Christians across America,” claimed Mississippi governor Tate Reeves. “The timing is not coincidental,” fumed National Review senior writer Dan McLaughlin.
The timing was, in fact, entirely coincidental. Transgender Day of Visibility has taken place on March 31 for several years, and this year, Easter, whose date changes year to year, happened to occur the same day. The coincidence of timing was enough to set off a whole day’s worth of outrage chum in the conservative-news sphere. For millions of conservative Christians, fulminating at Biden’s latest secular progressive offense was incorporated into the holiday observance.
The “War on Christmas” has been such a successful event for the conservative politics industry, supplying hours of outrage fodder and fundraising chum, that it was a matter of time until the franchise would expand to Easter. But the episode is also a reflection of the slow merging of Republican politics with political Christianity, a process that has helped create Donald Trump’s quasi-religious personality cult.
In the middle of the 20th century, the separation of church and state had grown from a legal concept to a social ethos. My mom was still directed to say the Lord’s Prayer every morning in her public school, but schools had mostly stopped organizing sectarian religious observance, and public officials generally came to respect the liberal notion that the United States contained diverse religious identities and none would dominate the others.
The rise of the Christian right and its entry into the Republican Party during the Reagan era upset this balance. Right-wing religious activists like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell treated religious neutrality as a form of anti-Christian oppression, infusing the Republican Party with a newfound desire to imbue Christianity into the public sphere. By the George W. Bush administration, with its habitual invocation of divine inspiration for its governing agenda, liberal critics had grown concerned with the prospect of theocracy.
But a more precise definition of the phenomenon would be less the takeover of the state by the church than a slow subsuming of Christianity into right-wing political identity.
The premise of this belief system is that Christianity faces a mortal threat from secular liberalism. (Despite having stood trembling on the precipice of extinction for more than four decades, it has managed to survive nonetheless.) The Republican Party is the political arm and practical savior of the faith, and any enemy of the party is therefore an enemy of Christianity.
One of Donald Trump’s few areas of genuine expertise is a shrewd grasp of conservative psychology, honed from endless hours of mainlining conservative media. Trump has progressively incorporated more Christian iconography into his campaign. He has introduced prayers at his rallies, hawked Bibles, and used his social-media account to promote messages by his followers tastefully likening him to Jesus. One recent Trump post quotes a devotee writing, “It’s ironic that Christ walked through His greatest persecution the very week they are trying to steal your property from you.” Another links to an op-ed in the Washington Times (a conservative newspaper founded by Unification Church cult leader Sun Myung Moon) headlined, “The Crucifixion of Donald Trump.”
To outsiders, it seems bizarre that devout followers of Christianity (or any faith) would respect, let alone virtually worship, one of the worst human beings in America. But it all simply follows from the mistaken but fervently held belief that Christianity is fighting a losing war for its survival against liberalism.
If you hold this to be true, then right-wing politics supersedes any other manifestation of faith. Joe Biden is a devout Catholic who attends church weekly, and he issued a statement on Easter Sunday proclaiming, “Easter reminds us of the power of hope and the promise of Christ’s Resurrection. As we gather with loved ones, we remember Jesus’ sacrifice. We pray for one another and cherish the blessing of the dawn of new possibilities. And with wars and conflict taking a toll on innocent lives around the world, we renew our commitment to work for peace, security, and dignity for all people.”
As a non-Christian, this is hardly my cup of tea, and I prefer the days when presidents and other public leaders kept their religious beliefs private. Still, it presents a stark contrast with Trump’s Easter message:
HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES THAT ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO INTERFERE WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024, AND PUT ME IN PRISON, INCLUDING THOSE MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA, A NOW FAILING NATION, LIKE “DERANGED” JACK SMITH, WHO IS EVIL AND “SICK,” MRS. FANI “FAUNI” WADE, WHO SAID SHE HARDLY KNEW THE “SPECIAL” PROSECUTOR, ONLY TO FIND THAT HE SPENT YEARS “LOVING” HER, LONG BEFORE THE GEORGIA PERSECUTION OF PRESIDENT TRUMP BEGAN (AND THEREBY MAKING THE CASE AGAINST ME NULL, VOID, AND ILLEGAL!), AND LAZY ON VIOLENT CRIME ALVIN BRAGG WHO, WITH CROOKED JOE’S DOJ THUGS, UNFAIRLY WORKING IN THE D.A.’s OFFICE, ILLEGALLY INDICTED ME ON A CASE HE NEVER WANTED TO BRING AND VIRTUALLY ALL LEGAL SCHOLARS SAY IS A CASE THAT SHOULD NOT BE BROUGHT, IS BREAKING THE LAW IN DOING SO (POMERANTZ!), WAS TURNED DOWN BY ALL OTHER LAW ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITIES, AND IS NOT A CRIME. HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!
Compared with Biden’s missive, Trump’s is ironically far more secular. It begins and ends by acknowledging Easter, but you could cut and paste any holiday into that space, which uses the occasion as a pretext to draw attention to his personal grievances. Trump is observing Easter just as he observes all major holidays, secular or religious. In a sense, this deranged screed is a triumph of the ethos of separation of church and state.
But in the right-wing imagination, it is Biden who is sacrilegious and Trump who is devout. Conservative victimization has become an important aspect of Christian observance. By taking time in his Easter Sunday to marinade in narcissistic grievance, while his godless opponent merely wrote a paean to Jesus, Trump demonstrated his adherence to the authentic faith of his fellow believers.
