Last week, Vice President Harris made her closing argument in the presidential election. Standing in the same spot in Washington, D.C., where former President Donald Trump incited the Jan. 6 insurrection, she made the case for American democracy, celebrated a joyful vision of a shared future for all Americans, and called for an end to the political chaos.
Rev. Nathan Empsall
It was a sharp contrast to what Religion News Service called Trump’s closing argument to evangelicals: vengeful, ego-driven, spiritual warfare rhetoric that stokes violence, makes blasphemous claims about God, appeals only to white evangelical voters by advancing a victim mindset, and urges us to give into our darkest fears.
This isn’t just Trump’s closing argument — it is also a bad faith campaign that fails to represent most American Christians. As we head into the final week before Election Day and prepare for what is ahead, we must be clear-eyed that Trump, his fellow MAGA candidates, and their religious right surrogates distort and twist religion for their own gain. Calling them out is not an attack on Christianity but a necessary action for the sake of democracy and the church.
For Trump, the argument to faith voters is not the Scriptural appeal to serving “the least of these” that Governor Tim Walz made during the vice-presidential debate. Instead, it is that God wants us to love and serve others. Instead, Trump and his surrogates are urging Christians to care chiefly for themselves and to vote for Trump as a holy savior who will defend our faith from an allegedly godless left.
Speaking at a rally for faith leaders in Concord, North Carolina, on Monday, October 21, Trump told the crowd that he had been anointed for a second term, claiming, “God saved me for a purpose, and that’s to make our country greater than ever before.” His son Eric made similar anointment remarks while introducing his father.
The Trumps didn’t come up with the anointment argument on their own. It first came from the televangelist and self-proclaimed “prophet” Lance Wallnau, who is also known for the “seven mountains dominion” theory that says right-wing Christians need to hold power over every single aspect of society. Wallnau’s anointment theology, first articulated in 2016, bears no resemblance to what most Christian churches teach and yet has since become mainstream in MAGA circles. Earlier this month, J.D. Vance even appeared at a stop of Wallnau’s extremist “Courage Tour” outside Pittsburgh.
Wallnau and Eric Trump also frequently appear together on the so-called “ReAwaken America Tour,” a nearly two-year tour of MAGA pastors and celebrities delivering violent threats both spiritual and physical.
Unfortunately, claiming that their candidate is a savior sent from Heaven is not the Trump campaign’s only religious argument. They are also hellbent on questioning and attacking the faith of Christians who don’t support Trump.
Appearing on a right-wing radio show before the North Carolina faith-leader event, Eric Trump claimed, “You see a constant war in this country against God, from the current administration, from the Obama administration. They really have gone after religious liberty in this country, unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.”
Then at the rally itself, despite Kamala Harris’s longtime membership at Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, the younger Trump misleadingly told the gathered faith leaders, “If Kamala Harris won’t say it, I will: We love God and we will always be a nation of faith!”
The rhetoric is part of a coordinated effort from Trump and his allies to convince white evangelicals that Christians are under attack for their faith, falsely framing the left as a godless force out to destroy the church. However, they ignore the fact that nearly every elected Democrat is a Christian, as well as past exit polls that show most non-white Christians and roughly half of mainline Protestants and Catholics opposed Trump in 2020. In reality, churchgoers are flocking to groups like Faithful America (where I work), Evangelicals for Harris, Faith in Public Life Action, Interfaith Alliance, and Vote Common Good to announce their opposition to Trump and Project 2025.
Another lie Trump and his court pastors perpetuate is election denial — which is why the Jan. 6 insurrection was wrongly cloaked in prayer rallies, Bibles, and Christian flags. This fall, as Trump simultaneously increases his Christian Nationalistic rhetoric and his calls for vengeance against political opponents, the chances of more violence are higher than ever.
Faithful America unveiled a 15-foot golden calf resembling ex-President Donald Trump in front of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, opposing the twisting of faith to attack freedom and democracy in support of Trump’s candidacy and Project 2025. (Kevin Wolf/AP Content Services for Faithful America)
None of the lies, fearmongering, or promises to be a vengeful “dictator on day one” should be considered Christian — yet Trump’s support among many white evangelical leaders appears almost unshakeable. This is why we at Faithful America protested outside Trump’s Concord faith-leader event with a 15-foot balloon of a golden calf, the Bible’s chief image of a false idol, that looks just like Trump.
But Christian voters do in fact have a choice in this election. Will we give into a message of fear, rejecting those different than ourselves as “the enemy within?”
Or will we look outwards, embracing not just those like ourselves but all our neighbors?
Will we choose violence, or love?
While the convicted ex-president promises to protect only white evangelicals who pledge their loyalty to him, Harris cites her faith as a reason to serve Americans of all faiths and none. As she explained to a CNN town hall on Wednesday night, “I was raised to believe in a loving God, to believe that your faith is a verb. You live your faith, and the way that one should do that is your work and your life’s work should be to think about how you can serve in a way that is uplifting other people, that is about caring for other people.”
My own faith is in Jesus Christ, but I also have faith that the American people will once more choose a path of love and light this fall.
The Rev. Nathan Empsall is an ordained priest and the executive director of FaithfulAmerica.org, an online community of approximately 200,000 Christians putting faith in action against white Christian Nationalism and for love, peace, and social justice.
