Trump’s MAGA coalition is showing cracks over religion

2025 is the year of rule by presidential fiat. Donald Trump has issued 225 executive orders during the first year of his second term in office, five more than he signed over the course of his entire four-year first term. While many of them, such as one intended to end “gender ideology extremism,” were subtly grounded in the context of America as a right-wing Christian nation, at least three of them made no bones about their intention.

The first came on Feb. 6 and established a task force to “eradicate Christian bias” from government. Another issued the following day created the White House Faith Office to enforce religious liberty protections and support faith-based initiatives. Three months later, Trump announced the formation of the Religious Liberty Commission to, in his words, “bring back religion in our country…quickly and strongly.”

Since the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, the president has often spoken of his supposed divine authority, saying, “I was saved by God to make America great again.” He isn’t alone. Vice President JD Vance has also regularly invoked Christianity, most recently over the weekend at Turning Point USA’s annual conference AmericaFest. “By the grace of God we will always be a Christian nation,” he said, dispensing with the usual “Judeo-Christian” addendum, which was telling. 

But Vance’s incorrect assertion — and the administration’s use of religion — is contentious in some Christian quarters, including the Catholic Church, of which Vance is a member.

As an American, Pope Leo XIV is obviously acutely aware of the political situation. He is unafraid to weigh in on most issues, but he is particularly agitated about the immigration policies this administration is deploying around the country, which most recently has included the targeting of Somali-Americans.

In a recent Cabinet meeting, the Catholic Vance banged on a table and shouted like a barbarian when Trump went into one of his xenophobic diatribes. In what is already a notorious moment in American political history, Vance promoted the disgusting idea that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs during the 2024 election. 

The vice president is a recent convert to Catholicism, a move that was one of many conversions in just a few short years, and some have questioned whether his religious conversion doubled as a political decision. Perhaps he doesn’t know his own church’s teachings on immigration or understand the bedrock Christian tenet of serving the poor and downtrodden. 

Leo, on the other hand, has called the treatment of undocumented immigrants extremely disrespectful and implored that they be treated humanely. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a “special message” condemning the policy, saying “we oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people. We pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement.” The pope’s decision to replace the retiring Timothy Dolan, the pro-Trump Archbishop of New York, with Ronald Hicks, a pro-migrant bishop from Illinois, underscores his intentions.

It’s not just Catholics. The Episcopal Church has been vocal in its condemnation of the administration’s treatment of immigrants. From the moment Trump signed his first immigration executive orders, it issued a statement urging “our new president and congressional leaders to exercise mercy and compassion, especially toward law-abiding, long-term members of our congregations and communities; parents and children who are under threat of separation in the name of immigration enforcement; and women and children who are vulnerable to abuse in detention and who fear reporting abuse to law enforcement.” The letter cited a long line of Biblical references to back up the appeal.

More recently, the Episcopal Church ended its four-decades-old refugee resettlement partnership with the government after the Trump administration decided to resettle white Afrikaners from South Africa while cutting off asylum claims for virtually everyone else. The church cited its commitment to racial justice as a moral imperative.

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But what of the powerful evangelical churches, which hold so much sway over the Republican Party? Unsurprisingly, some of them are going the other way. The New York Times reported that, just two years ago, Southern Baptist Convention delegates “approved a resolution imploring government leaders for ‘robust avenues’ to support asylum claimants and ‘to create legal pathways to permanent status for immigrants who are in our communities by no fault of their own, prioritizing the unity of families.’” That sounds very much like the other mainline churches and what we might have thought were common, mainstream Christian beliefs. But all that’s changed now. There was no mention of immigration at the most recent convention; it was as if the issue didn’t even exist. 

According to the Times, many local pastors are concerned for minority and immigrant members of their congregations, but they are afraid of angering their conservative, white members. Others are actively helping the government with its crackdown, while some are just avoiding the topic altogether, preferring to rail against LGBTQ+ identity. As with everything else in conservative politics, no one cares to cross the hard core MAGA supporters. And if that means that they must betray their own religious beliefs, so be it. 

But this represents yet another crack in the MAGA coalition, even if they don’t acknowledge it. As a matter of self-preservation, one might have assumed that the Southern Baptists would be supportive of Latino immigrants, especially since they are the fastest-growing group of American evangelicals, the majority of whom voted for Trump in 2024. Evangelical communities are also expanding rapidly in Latin America. Only four percent of that population identified as evangelical 40 years ago; today about 20% do. It seems short-sighted to be so hostile to a group that represents the future of the church. The Southern Baptist leadership’s unwillingness to even engage the question shows that the fault line is present and they don’t know how to deal with it. 

No matter their religion, or if they don’t subscribe to any at all, most Americans understand the concept of “[doing] justice to the afflicted and needy.” That’s called simple human decency, and it’s something no amount of executive orders can teach. That is where the real schism is happening in America today. It’s between the people who understand that and those who gleefully indulge in an orgy of cruelty and inhumanity, even while they display the trappings of Christianity and brag about their piety.

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