In Church, Merch, and State, Sarah Posner writes about the intersection of religion and politics in the United States. This column is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
On Easter Sunday, I received an email “alert” from the National Faith Advisory Board (NFAB), an organization led by the televangelist Paula White, a longtime friend of President Trump who is also the senior advisor to the White House Faith Office. The “alert” came six hours after Trump’s Truth Social post threatening war crimes against Iran if the “crazy bastards” did not “Open the Fuckin’ Strait.” While the NFAB email delivery might have been scheduled in advance, it nonetheless was jarring in the context of Trump’s vulgar and violent morning. “Dear Faith Leader,” it read. “This sacred weekend from the greatest platform in the free world and beyond, President Trump proclaimed the Gospel to all that could hear.” The email linked to a short video, establishing that the platform in question was not Truth Social, but the Oval Office. From there, Trump robotically read (and at some points strangely shouted) an Easter message about Christ’s resurrection. At points, he sounded like someone who was hearing about John 3:16 for the very first time.
We may be increasingly mired in a war Trump started and doesn’t know how to end, but for the NFAB, which seems to exist as a communications arm of the White House, portraying Trump as a divine leader of a Christian revival is central to every missive. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wants every American to pray for the troops “on bended knee” and “in the name of Jesus Christ,” and has cast Trump’s Iran war as a holy crusade. But for Trump’s evangelicals — who are more likely to adopt Jewish rituals and symbols as a sign of their supposed love for Israel than the crusader iconography favored by Hegseth — the real savior in the Iran war is Trump himself.