The Transactional President: Trump Vs Religion

President Donald Trump has always enjoyed a transactional relationship with religion, cutting deals to court evangelical leaders, flip flopping on abortion, and even hawking his own version of the Bible. Of late, however, “the Donald” has taken to depicting himself as the chosen one, in his words “saved by God” from an assassin’s bullet. 

Despite three marriages, thousands of lies and countless demeaning of others, our 47th president has acquired a fervent, formidable amen corner among some Christians. Hear the words of Rev. Franklin Graham at the inauguration: “While Donald Trump’s enemies thought he was down and out, you and you alone saved his life and raised him up with strength and power by your mighty hand.”

Trump has divided the faith community just as he has divided America. The dividing line is particularly tense in the Catholic Church.

Conservative Catholics and bishops flayed Joe Biden, our second Catholic president. In words of George Weigel, ex-Seattlite and biographer of Pope John Paul II, Biden served as “cheerleader in chief for an unrestricted, unregulated abortion license.” Among many transgressions, Weigel took Biden to task for giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Cecile Richards, longtime CEO of Planned Parenthood.

But Pope Francis has spoken forcefully about Trump, notably his plans for mass deportations. Speaking to an Italian interviewer, the pontiff said: “If it is true it will be a disgrace because it makes the poor wretches who have nothing to pay the unpaid bill. It won’t do. This is not the way to solve problems.”

The pontiff’s remark has drawn blowback from the Catholic right, which lionizes papal predecessors John Paul II and Benedict XVI with pictures and quotes on social media. “I think it’s totally out of line to be criticizing a policy from afar unless you get into the weeds and details,” said theologian, ex-priest and Fox News pundit Jonathan Morris.

The country’s progressive faith leaders have been first to take on Trump while he’s on top of the world. Trump has targeted Chicago as the initial epicenter of his immigration roundup with ICE agents deploying in the Windy City.  Cardinal (and former Spokane Bishop) Blase Cupich has put out an unwelcome mat, saying: “We are proud of our legacy of integration that continues in our day to renew the city we love.”

El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz, who chairs the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committee on immigration, said last week: “If you are going to go through migrants, you’ll have to go through us.” Six years ago, Seitz escorted seven asylum seekers from Central America across the bridge into the U.S. from Juarez in Mexico.

By contrast, Vice President J.D. Vance, a Catholic convert, is a champion of the crackdown. New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, a Trump friend, gave an invocation at the inaugural, telling God: “Give our leader wisdom for he is your servant.”

The most striking religious response to Trump has been at a National Cathedral prayer service in Washington, D.C. The homilist was Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde, Episcopal Bishop of Washington, D.C.

With Trump and Vance side by side in the front pew, Budde decided to speak truth — and give advice — to power.  Said she: “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy on the people of our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in both Republican, Democratic, and independent families who fear for their lives.” Immigrants, added the bishop, “pick our crops,” “work the night shift at hospitals,” and pay their taxes while being good neighbors.

Trump did not turn the other cheek. In a rant on Truth Social, the President sneered: “The so-called bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service was a radical left hard core Trump hater . . . She was nasty in tone and not very smart.”  

It is not in the DNA of the MAGA movement to show mercy. Budde was soon showered with abuse. “Woke bishops are the new face of resistance,” declared Fox News pundit Jesse Watters. In words of Rev. Robert Jeffries, pastor of a Dallas megachurch, Budde “insulted rather than encouraged our great president.”

Budde and Trump have tangled before, notably when Trump used St. John’s-Lafayette Square Episcopal Church, across from the White House, for a 2020 photo op during Black Lives Matter demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd.

After cops and National Guard troops cleared protesters, using tear gas, Trump waved a Bible for the cameras. Budde went on the Today show to say she was “outraged” and “horrified” at treatment of demonstrators, and did a New York Times op-ed condemning use of St. John’s “as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus.” 

Donald and Melania Trump have gone to Christmas Eve eucharist at an Episcopal church in Palm Beach, the site of their marriage. But his political flock are evangelicals. He has delivered his end of the deal by naming three Supreme Court justices whose votes overturned Roe v. Wade, and by demonizing transgender teenagers.

“I’ve done a good job for them,” Trump said during last year’s campaign. He has reaped a handsome return on the investment. When a few evangelicals raised questions about Trump’s lifestyle, and the politicking of faith, they’ve been put down and told to shut up. “These anti-Trump evangelicals are morons,” Jeffries (a vocal Trump supporter) said recently. “They are absolutely spineless morons and they cannot admit they were wrong.”

Trump has done a photo op at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. He boasts that he has done more for Catholics than any administration in history — culture-warrior Catholics. He has been an “ardent champion of family values,” a Catholics for Trump website preached in last year’s campaign, while bolstering those with “moral objections to certain health services.” (Read birth contraception.)

The nation’s right-thinking Catholic bishops and laity are a MAGA movement at prayer. They’ve displayed a Trumpian demand for absolute loyalty to the party line. Those who follow their consciences elsewhere are deemed “Catholics-lite” and “cafeteria Catholics.”

Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez has condemned Black Lives Matter. When Biden took office, Gomez issued a snarky statement that the incoming president championed policies that “threaten human life most seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage and gender.” 

However, Catholic progressives have a friend in high places. Pope Francis warmly greeted Biden’s presidency and has pointedly declined to bestow a cardinal’s red hat on Gómez, who heads the nation’s most populous diocese. He did elevate Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego.

The pope recently tapped Cardinal McElroy, a champion of immigrant rights, as the new Archbishop of Washington, D.C. Francis has also refused to weaponize the sacraments. He received ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Rome while, back home in San Francisco, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone was barring Pelosi because of her pro-choice views.

Culture wars have morphed into religious strife and church-state conflict. If this seems far away from Seattle, it is coming our way — likely very soon.

Lifting an informal ban, the Trump II administration has greenlighted ICE agents to apprehend “illegals” in churches, synagogues, and schools. In contrast, during Trump I a trio of faith communities — St. Mark’s and St. James Cathedrals and Temple de Hirsch Sinai — offered themselves as sanctuaries to those being hunted. One refugee took residence at St. Mark’s.

Emotions ran high. Seattle is a sanctuary city. Both Catholic and Episcopal bishops participated in an immigrant rights march from St. Mark’s to St. James. They were joined by more than 800 people. Senior Rabbi Danny Weiner staged a forum at Temple de Hirsch with two refugees from the Holocaust.

All this is to say that a bruising battle is certain — in the streets, in courtroom and public square — if the new Trump Administration brings its crackdown here. It will be a faceoff between Peter and Caesar.