Trump turns to the prosperity gospel for fundraising efforts

Nine months into his second term, President Donald Trump sees himself as divinely chosen, a preacher for the White Christian church of MAGA. But a preacher without a flock is powerless. Polls show that many Americans see Trump and his far-right movement in prophetic, even messianic terms.

In his personal and public life, Trump violates almost every tenet of the Christian faith. But for the Christian right, this is mostly an inconvenient fact that can be explained away by the belief that God uses flawed men to fulfill his will.

In recent weeks, the president has publicly expressed his anxieties about salvation and the state of his soul. Those confessions, related in interviews and emails to his followers, are part of a grander strategy: To shore up his base in the face of political headwinds — and to raise more money from the MAGA faithful.

In a fundraising email sent last week, he added a new dimension to his sermon: Casting the MAGA cause as divine work, while promising that those who donate will receive God’s blessings.

“Since the day I returned to the White House,” Trump wrote, “I have felt the mighty hand of God guiding this movement. His Word reminds us: ‘If God is for us, who can be against us?’ The enemies of freedom thought they could break us with lies, with courts, with endless persecution — but they were WRONG. Our strength does not come from man. It comes from the LORD. Always has. Always will.”

America has had religious presidents before. Former President Joe Biden is famously a practicing Catholic. George W. Bush credits his Christian faith journey with motivating him to quit drinking. For all his personal failings, Bill Clinton has always clung to the promise of forgiveness and the process of atonement. All of these presidents, and others, have at times used their faith to communicate to the American people. 

But Trump is different. Never before has a president sent an appeal steeped in Christian nationalism, promising that “the fight to restore America’s foundation of FAITH, FAMILY, and FREEDOM is just beginning,” and requesting that, “if you can afford it, chip in and show the Radical Left that we will NEVER surrender…we’ll RESTORE the values that made America GREAT.”

But that’s not all. Trump closed his sermon-like email with a familiar evangelical pitch: By giving money, supporters will be “sowing a SEED OF FAITH into the future of our Nation.”  

“The Bible tells us faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains,” he continued. “But if you cannot give right now, I want you to know this: your PRAYERS, your FAITH, your SUPPORT are worth more than all the gold in the world. With God as our refuge, and with YOU by my side, we will SAVE AMERICA.”

To outsiders — and especially non-evangelicals — Trump’s religious appeals may sound like biblical jabberwocky, absurd and surreal. But for the MAGA faithful and much of White Christian America, such sermons and promises hold real power.

“Like Trump’s attempt to hawk MAGA Bibles for a profit, the appeal to ‘sowing a seed of faith’ also copies the tactics of the worst of white evangelical prosperity gospel hucksterism, where God is a kind of divine slot machine,” said Robert P. Jones, author and president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute.

As a master marketer and performer, Trump understands the psychology and needs of his followers and how to manipulate them for maximum effect. His sermonizing and role as MAGA preacher are extensions of that power.

“You invest your dollars — not with God directly of course but with an authority claiming to be a conduit to God — and if you have enough faith, that investment will pay out, sprouting into health, wealth, and happiness,” Jones explained. “This appeal is just another example demonstrating that there is no level below which the Trump political campaign will not stoop to manipulate his followers or raise money.”

The president’s latest email is part of Trumpism’s ongoing sacralization — casting the movement as a holy war against evil enemies, meaning anyone who resists their crusade to end multiracial democracy.

In an Oct. 2 Truth Social post, Trump proclaimed Democrats “the party of hate, evil, and Satan.” Again, this marks a distinct change in presidential rhetoric. While the evangelical followers of Presidents George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan occasionally deployed such apocalyptic language, Bush and Reagan themselves were careful to speak more ecumenically. 

Matthew Taylor, author of “The Violent Take it by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy,” explained that “a new breed of far-right evangelical leaders” is shifting “the whole tone and tenor of American evangelical discourse about politics further to the right and into overt opposition to religious pluralism and democracy.”

This change comes against the backdrop of the rise of militant White Christianity in contemporary America.

“The key thing to know about this new crop of leaders and Trump’s hardline Christian base,” Taylor said, “is that they are overwhelmingly charismatic and Pentecostal evangelicals. This surge in charismatic influence has brought about a tectonic shift within the culture and vocabulary of evangelical politics: introducing more language of spiritual warfare (angels and demons, the armor of God, combat as politics); amplifying supernatural claims about miracles and revival; mixing Bible references in with modern prophecies from charismatic leaders who claim to be prophets; and blending in messages of prosperity, health, and wealth.” 

---

Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only, written by Amanda Marcotte, now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

---

Such overtly dogmatic religious politics are antithetical to democracy and modern society because they exist outside of empirical reality; they are based on truth claims rooted in faith that facts cannot reach. These belief systems are almost always authoritarian, if not theocratic, in nature. Appeals to God as the final truth in political and social life are the ultimate conversation stopper; they make a healthy, functioning democracy that is centered on a diverse, respectful exchange of ideas all but impossible.

Katherine Stewart, author of the book “Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy,” characterized Trump’s fundraising appeal as “a pretty good example of how Christian nationalism works, why it is bad for the country, and why it has little to do with Christianity as most Americans understand the faith.”

Stewart warned that the email “calls for an earthly savior, a strongman redeemer” even as it “appears to leave no room for recognizing the humanity of the political opposition, for loving thy neighbor, seeking understanding, and the social gospel. It’s ultimately about money; this is another fleecing operation.”

With political violence on the rise, such language can also serve to further fracture an already damaged American democracy and society. “[T]he claim that God is on our side poisons the well of democracy,” Jones said. “It shatters the bonds of citizenship by conceptualizing our political opponents as enemies who are literally in league with the devil…If we are convinced that God is for us and against them, after all, what means of winning would not be justified?”

Despite such behavior — and ten years of experience covering Trump — the mainstream news media and the responsible political class continue clinging to an old and increasingly obsolete model of normal politics and consensus liberalism. The reality, though, is starkly different, one where Trumpism is a form of religious politics where faith, emotions, culture, storytelling, disinformation, misinformation and conspiracism dominate. To their ongoing puzzlement, Trump’s MAGA base will not abandon him.

But there is context for their behavior. In late September, millions of evangelical Christians in America were eagerly anticipating the Rapture — an event in which they would be transported out of their bodies and sent to heaven — to usher in the End Times. The hashtag #RaptureTok went viral. 

A recent YouGov poll asked, “If the Rapture were to occur tonight, do you think you would be more likely to ascend to heaven or to be left behind?” 46% of respondents said they would go to heaven. 18% believed they would be left behind. The remaining 36% were unsure. Other polls and research show that a large percentage of the American public — roughly 30 percent — believes that Trump’s rise to power, for better or worse, is part of God’s plan. 

For many Americans, the fact is that we inhabit a demon-haunted world, where fundamentalism and anti-rational beliefs offer not just answers, but also a sense of safety and salvation.

When asked to decode such a version of reality for those who lack evangelical context to understand Trump’s religious appeal and power over the MAGA flock, Taylor compared it to “the tropes of old-school televangelism.” In the view of evangelicals, he said, Trump has been chosen as the vessel for America’s redemption, and his personal prosperity and “political luck” are evidence of “God’s favor” on his quest.

“All of this baptizes Trump’s authoritarianism and tells his base that Trump has to crush his enemies because they are filled with demons and are trying to thwart God’s agenda,” Taylor said. “This is how you get church-going, Bible-believing Christians –– who claim to follow a sacrificial savior who taught them to love their enemies –– to hate their LGBTQ neighbors, to be terrified of migrants and ‘the Left’ and to unquestioningly support a wannabe tyrant. These are the voters who will likely never abandon Trump, because their attachment to him is not merely political; it’s religious.”