The ReAwaken America Tour, a Christian nationalist roadshow co-founded by former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, recently made a stop at the Trump National Doral Miami resort. However, two of the guests who had previously appeared at other tour stops, Scott McKay and Charlie Ward, were removed from the event at the last minute due to their praise of Hitler. Despite this, Donald Trump expressed his support for the rally. This begs the question: can the militant version of Christian nationalism, often rooted in Pentecostalism, overcome the qualms of mainstream evangelicals?
The issue at hand is not whether the next Republican presidential candidate will be a Christian nationalist, meaning someone who rejects the separation of church and state. That is a foregone conclusion in a party that is pushing book bans, abortion prohibitions, anti-trans laws, and bills authorizing school prayer and posting of the Ten Commandments in classrooms. The real question is what type of Christian nationalism will prevail: the elite, doctrinaire variety of candidates like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, or the violently messianic version embodied by Flynn and Trump?
In a recent interview with The Messenger, Trump criticized the six-week abortion ban DeSantis signed in Florida. This criticism did not sit well with many anti-abortion leaders. Enter DeSantis, who speaks the language of the religious right and checks off all their policy boxes. He will almost certainly sign a bill intended to keep trans people from using their preferred bathrooms in government buildings, including schools. The question is whether religious conservatives will care more for consistency or charisma.
For the religious following that Trump has nurtured, he is not merely a person who will put in place a specific Christian nationalist agenda. Instead, he is the embodiment of that agenda. Amanda Tyler, the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and the organizer of Christians Against Christian Nationalism, attended the ReAwaken America event at Trump Doral. She describes a type of Christian nationalist fervor that was “very much tied to the political future of Donald Trump and nothing else.”
If DeSantis treats Christianity as a moral code he’d like to impose on the rest of us, Trump treats it as an elevated status that should come with perks. That’s how he can slam DeSantis for being “sanctimonious” even as he wraps his own campaign in biblical raiment. Whoever succeeds in 2024 will preside over a Christian nationalist administration. The question is whether that person will champion orthodoxy or a cult.
