Civil War: Why the Christian Right wants to Dismantle American Democracy
- Alexander Lang
- Oct 2
- 9 min read
Unless you’ve been intentionally ignoring the news (or you’re heavily immersed in the conservative media ecosystem), you’re aware that the Trump administration has been actively chipping away at the democratic foundations of the United States.
Whether it’s arresting migrants and deporting them without due process or dismantling free speech by silencing dissenting voices or weaponizing the justice department to indict political enemies, the list is extensive. Apart from Nixon, we’ve never witnessed such consolidation of power by the executive branch.
These moves have pushed the United States, the world’s oldest constitutional democracy, towards autocracy and despotism. However, what’s even more shocking is how the evangelicals who voted Trump into office are encouraging him to go further.
In this article, I want to explore why Trump’s efforts to undermine democracy are being lauded by conservative evangelicals as the welcome and necessary change they’ve been praying for and anticipating for a long time.
A Peek Inside the World of Evangelical Christianity
In my post, Christian Nationalism: How Evangelical Christianity became a Political Religion, I cover how white evangelical Christianity in the 1970s became intertwined with the Republican party. This symbiotic relationship between white evangelicals and the Republican party worked well until an unexpected political phenom rose through the ranks to become President in 2008.
With the election of Obama, an existential angst set in among white evangelical Christians where, for the first time in recent memory, they perceived an imbalanced power dynamic. This is what Donald Trump homed in on with his 2016 election slogan Make America Great Again. This slogan signaled to evangelical Christians that Trump was going to return America to its former glory as a Christian nation.
Therefore, when Trump won the election, even though the odds were highly stacked against him, many evangelicals believed that Trump’s victory was God’s providence at work. Similar to George Washington’s victory during the Revolutionary War, God gave Trump the presidency because his intention was to return America to its roots, allowing the United States to reclaim what evangelicals perceive to be its true identity as a Christian Nation.
The evangelical reaction to Trump’s victory pulled back the curtain to reveal an important truth: Many evangelical Christians today, because their religious identity is so infused with politics, particularly the politics of the Republican party, are worshipping a political religion. There is no distinction between their politics and their religion. They are one and the same.
They have unknowingly confused the Christian religion with Christian Nationalism. Over the last 6 years, a shocking trend has occurred: An increasing number of people who identify as evangelical Christian have no connection to the Christian religion itself. Similar to Judaism as a cultural identity, Christianity has become a cultural identity for many who see the United States as the center of their worship.
Indeed, many evangelical churches are knowingly complicit in cultivating this cultural identity among their followers. They promote a version of Christianity that emphasizes all the elements of Christian Nationalism, while deemphasizing any teachings from Jesus that might undercut this very narrow perspective. Although this characterization does not apply to all evangelical Christians, the Christian Nationalist ideology represents a rapidly growing subset within their ranks.
The Constitutional Paradox
At the core of the Christian Nationalist identity is the belief that liberal or woke ideology has infected and corrupted the government. The so called “deep state” has infiltrated all government agencies as part of a vast conspiracy to weaponize the government against its own people. In other words, the government is not simply a broken institution, rather, the government is actively oppressing and undermining the freedom its citizens.
The often-cited “evidence” for this deep state action can be observed in a variety of settings:
Public education promoting anti-Christian, pro-abortion, LGBTQ, feminist and critical race ideologies that infect all sectors of society with DEI initiatives.
Billions of tax dollars are sent abroad under the guise of humanitarian aid, but instead fund wars, while the erosion of working-class due to illegal immigration jobs have left millions of Americans destitute.
There are many more variations of these conspiracy theories, but these three main arguments are the reason why Trump dismantled the Department of Education; handed the Department of Health and Human Services over to RFK Jr., a vaccine skeptic; and rescinded funding for USAID, reallocating billions of dollars to immigration enforcement agencies like Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
One must understand, these are not reforms in the traditional sense of the ruling party who sets the policy agenda for a 4-to-8-year period, acknowledging that, one day, the opposing party will eventually be back in power. The Christian Nationalists who voted for Trump are not interested in reform. From their perspective, the United States government is unsalvageable; so riddled with problems that it cannot be saved. If democracy is what allowed for woke ideology to infect the entire country, then the entire American experiment should be scrapped.
This might seem strange given how modern conservatives have popularized the originalist interpretation of the constitution. In short, they attempt to interpret modern constitutional issues brought before the Supreme Court by asking, “How would the original framers in 1787 understand this question?” Hence, one would assume that maintaining the integrity of the three co-equal branches of government (executive, legislative, judicial) would be of the utmost importance to the conservative justices on the Supreme Court.
Instead, nearly every lower court decision against the administration has been granted an emergency appeal by the Supreme Court where the conservative majority allows the Trump administration to proceed unabated in 21 of 23 cases, knowing the case will not be heard for months or years. At the same time, Republicans in congress have ceded their power by rubber stamping anything and everything Trump desires. These checks and balances were designed to ensure that the president could never assume the power of a king, which is essentially how Trump functions—with absolute authority.
From Democracy to Theocracy
You may have heard rumors of Trump seeking third term, even though the 22nd amendment prohibits any president from serving more than two terms. This is because Christian Nationalists have no intention of ever ceding power back to the people. From their perspective, God installed Trump into the presidency because he is the new King Cyrus from the book of Isaiah.
In order to understand the connection between Trump and Cyrus, it helps to know who King Cyrus was and why he was important to the Jewish people. King Cyrus, also known as Cyrus the Great, was the king of the Persian Empire from 559 to 530 BCE. In 539 BCE, Cyrus defeated the Babylonians, making him the ruler of the largest empire on the face of the planet.
Cyrus told his subjects that anyone who was enslaved by the Babylonians were now free to return to their homeland. The Jews, being one of those people groups, were very grateful to Cyrus for their freedom. In a very real sense, the Jewish people saw Cyrus as their savior, so much so that the first time we see the word mashiyach (messiah or, literally, anointed one) is in Isaiah chapter 45, verse one, it is used in reference to Cyrus:
Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before him and strip kings of their robes, to open doors before him—and the gates shall not be closed. (Is 45:1)
This is surprising because King Cyrus was not Jewish. Indeed, Cyrus likely had never heard of the Jewish God. But as this scripture from Isaiah implies, the Jewish God is using Cyrus to fulfill God's purposes for the Jewish people.
Evangelical Christians believe the same premise is true about Donald Trump. Although Trump is not a Christian, they believe God placed Trump in office as God’s instrument to save Christians from their oppression and to promote Christian causes such as nominating conservative justices to the Supreme Court who could uphold religious freedom and overturn Roe v. Wade.
If you're wondering why certain Christians made the connection between Trump and Cyrus, they came to this conclusion because of an interesting coincidence. When Trump was elected, he became the 45th president of the United States, and Isaiah refers to King Cyrus in chapter 45.
However, for many Christians, this connection was more than mere coincidence. It was God's providence in guiding our nation towards its destiny. Trump is no mere president. He is meant to be a king who, like Cyrus, will vanquish the foes of the Christian faith and reestablish the United States as a Christian nation. Similar to John Galt in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, Trump is going to disassemble the United States and rebuild it from the ground up.
This is why Evangelical Christians and Christian Nationalists turn a blind eye to the erosion of the democratic norms established by the constitution. Rebuilding the United States can’t happen within the confines of the Bill of Rights and the normal fluctuation of power.
If Trump is God’s instrument, then God’s will is literally being disseminated through Trump, which means Trump requires absolute authority to reshape the nation as he sees fit.
This is better known as a theocracy, or a government where divine guidance is the source of political authority, and religious beliefs are the foundation for state laws and governance, often merging the roles of church and state.
The Sad Inevitability of Civil War
What this demonstrates is how Americans occupy two starkly different realities. There are Americans, like myself, who value the democratic norms that were established by the constitution. I believe our society should debate ideas in the public sphere with the most persuasive arguments being allowed to rule the day, even if I disagree with those who win.
This is why freedom of speech is at the core of a democracy. A candidate for office must make a plea to the voters and convince them that their ideas are not only worthy of their vote, but those ideas should influence our policy. Trump was the clear winner in this past election, so he has gained that right.
What I, and many others, didn’t fully appreciate is how many of the evangelicals and Christian Nationalists who voted Trump into office have fully given up on the American experiment. They didn’t elect Trump into office so that he could represent their interests. They elected Trump into office so he could seize power and never relinquish control.
It’s not just that we are polarized and talking past each other. You can’t have a conversation with someone about preserving democratic norms when they don’t believe those democratic norms are worth preserving. The reason why so many of Trump’s supporters are turning a blind eye to his actions is because they want him to assume absolute authority.
With this information, one can easily see how, in the not-so-distant future, there will be a flash point where the United States will descend into civil war. We got a hint of that on January 6th, 2021 when Trump’s allies stormed the Capitol. Yet, during the four-year interlude between Trump’s first and second term, he managed to reshape that treasonous riot into a patriotic protest. Trump resculpted this narrative so effectively that the 10,000 people at the “Stop the Steal” rally have multiplied into millions.
Don’t believe me? What happens when Trump’s term comes to an end and he’s unwilling to leave office? Do you think his followers, who believe Trump has been placed in a position of power by divine right, will simply fold and allow Trump to walk silently into the night? No, they will keep him there by any means necessary, especially if the Democrats win the presidency in 2028 on the platform of reestablishing what Trump dismantled.
Although there are sure to be many moments of violence and protest as Trump deploys the military to democratically held cities around the United States, you can be sure that 2028 will be the breaking point. In their mind, Trump is not just the president. He’s King Cyrus. King for life. Trump has no incentive to leave and every reason to stay and his most fervent followers are willing to risk their lives to ensure that happens.
I'm certainly not the only one who feels this way. A recent New York Times poll suggests that people are becoming more concerned about civil war, while a PBS/NPR poll found that many citizens have come to the conclusion that we are so polarized that war is inevtiable. Experts have said that political violence increases when the citizens no longer feel politics are a viable means of achieving meaningful social change.
I hope I’m wrong, but the tea leaves seem to be pointing towards a violent fissure that will one day spill over into mass conlfict.
Postscript
In the meantime, stay strong, attend protests and let your voice be heard. The reason why our founders made freedom of speech part of the first amendment in the Bill of Rights is that democracy, by its very nature, allows for a plurality of thoughts and beliefs. Unlike authoritarian regimes, a democratic government is not allowed to censor its people.
The world will remember this moment, so I implore you to be on the right side of history.
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