Why does Donald Trump do politics in the sense of radical Christians?

Just a few days after the attack on him in July 2024, Donald Trump is on the stage of the Republican Party Congress. His left ear is covered with a thick white pavement, and he explains to his followers how he experienced the seconds after the shots in Butler in Butler in the US state of Pennsylvania: “There was blood everywhere. But I felt very safe in a certain way. Because I had God at my side. I felt that.”

Before he can pronounce the last words, cheering in the hall breaks out. So God should have been that prevented the attack, so many of his supporters are certain-especially those in the fundamental-Christian camp. These evangelicals were already at his side in Trump’s first term.

They stand for a godly life, piety, loyalty to the partner-in short: for values ​​that Donald Trump never stood as a real estate mogul and Lebemann. He has been divorced three times, has five children of three different women, is a purpose-optunist and power man. Nevertheless, many evangelicals see him no less than the Messiah, who can lead the USA to “old strength” – after Trump’s Mantra “Make America Great Again”. How does that fit together?

The relationship between Trump and the Evangelicals is characterized by contradictions. Trump knows that he needs the hardliners for his revenge campaign against the establishment that Democrats and simply all liberals, even if he is probably not particularly religious himself. Because the evangelicals make up about 15 percent of all voters in the United States. Her mass alone makes it a political power.

And this makes Trump. In this way, he encountered several projects that reflect the ideas of the evangelicals exactly. He founded a working group to combat “anti -Christian behavior” in authorities – which in the end is no less than a state denunciation office.

Most recently, his idea caused a sensation to pay American mothers up to $ 5000 bonus for the birth of every child in order to stop the decline in birth in the USA. At the same time, the evangelical side is repeatedly the demand to generally prohibit abortions in the United States.

A birth premium and a massive tightening of the abortion right – this combination has already been made in Poland. Between 2015 and 2019, the right-wing conservative PIS party ruled there with an absolute majority. The party did not refer to Protestantism, but to the Catholic Church, the ideas of the Evangelicals in the USA and that of the fundamental Catholics in Poland result in the same ideology: they want an ethnically homogeneous, white and Christian-conservative state of God. The woman on the stove, the man as a strong protector and nutrition of the family. Minorities, migrants, queer or people with an alternative lifestyle find no place in it.

The question remains, why Donald Trump should be the Redeemer that the fundamentalists long for? As the religious researcher Greg Smith explains at RTL, very few evangelicals believe that Donald Trump is particularly religious or shares her faith. But they see him a president in him who works for them. And they benefit from him that he has occupied his cabinet with believing members. Such as Vice President JD Vance. Although he is Catholic, it represents similar, strictly Christian and conservative values ​​such as the evangelicals. There are many intersections when it comes to abortion or the classic family picture.

Another point that makes Trump attractive for the arch -conservative Christians: you see the opportunity to do lobbying with him. And it obviously fruit. Like no president before, Trump pushes through his agenda (and that of the evangelical) tough – even if she entails hard consequences. This makes him a martyr for her who defends himself against the opposition of his opponents, draws rejection and does not soak away.

What unites the president and the evangelicals is the goal of their ideology: a Christian conservative, white America. To do this, they accept that Trump personally does not live their values ​​because they think more long -term than until the end of his term. Much of what Trump does – if at all – will only be turned back in decades. He is the door opener for a Christian-nationalistic and racist country.

Trump himself sees himself as chosen since the failed attack, who can only manage to form the nation according to his ideas. Or as he himself says: “God saved me to make America great again.”