The 2024 Election is existential. It will decide if the United States will remain a democracy or succumb to some form of authoritarianism and neofascism under Dictator Trump and his MAGAfied Republican Party and movement.
The stakes of the 2024 Election are literally that high.
President Biden attempted to make this danger the centerpiece of his campaign, but for a variety of reasons — many of which were not his fault — he was not able to effectively communicate it to the American people. With the ascent of Kamala Harris, it will be her responsibility to communicate this message and then act on it in defense of American democracy and the American people.
“Democracy” is an abstract concept to many Americans. Research on civic literacy and political knowledge suggests that many if not most Americans cannot even define what “democracy” is. If they cannot even define democracy, then how can they be expected to know its value and why it should be defended?
Instead of abstract concepts and language that many people may not understand, pro-democracy Americans need to speak in clear and direct terms about what Trumpism and neofascism will mean for the day-to-day lives of the American people.
They will have their basic rights and freedoms such as freedom of speech, association, and assembly severely curtailed if not ended. The right to vote will also be dramatically restricted—voting for the Democrats may be “legal” but those votes will be suppressed if not nullified as being “fraudulent.”
The social safety net will be even more drastically reduced as corporations and the very rich pay even less (if any) taxes and have even more control over American society and the American people’s economic and financial lives and (lack of) security and future(s).
Women will not have control over their own bodies as reproductive rights and freedoms are taken away. Men who do not comply with the Trump regime’s and the American neofascist movement’s normative models of “real manhood” will also be marginalized and punished.
The rights of the LGBTQ community, Black and brown people, Muslims, Jews, and others who do not practice the “right” type of “Christian” religion will have their civil and human rights taken away. There will be mass deportations that will break up families. Birthright citizenship will be revoked for many millions of Americans. The U.S. military will be ordered to occupy major cities and other “blue” parts of the country deemed to be in rebellion or opposition to Dictator Trump and the MAGA movement.
In total, American democracy will be transformed into an Apartheid White Christian plutocracy where a very small number of rich white men who will literally be above the law will make decisions for hundreds of millions of people. This power will be justified through a form of religious politics that argues that “the Bible” and “God” have mandated the United States be ruled through “Christian” principles — as interpreted by the same small group of powerful white men. Such irrational, antirational, and magical thinking are antithetical to real democracy.
These plans and many others to end American democracy are a matter of public record and have been detailed by Donald Trump and his propagandists and agents, and in Project 2025, Agenda 47, and elsewhere.
Bradley Onishi is President of the Institute for Religion, Media, and Civic Engagement and the Founder of Axis Mundi Media. In 2023 he published, “Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism.” Onishi is also a faculty member in Religion and Philosophy at the University of San Francisco.
In this conversation, Onishi explains how Trumpism is a de facto type of right-wing “Christian” religious political movement and the ways that White Christianity has made support for right-wing extremism a litmus test for being members of that faith community and therefore real “Christians.”
At the end of this conversation, Onishi reflects on what it means to be a Christian or otherwise religiously minded in the Age of Trump and the democracy crisis, and how faith and one’s conscience should factor into one’s political decisions such as voting.
This is the first part of a two-part conversation.
Given the state of this country and the world, how are you feeling now? How are you orienting yourself?
Like a lot of people, I’m feeling hopeful. Since we spoke last there’s been a transformation in the feeling around the country regarding the presidential race and the possibilities ahead, and so I think hope is quite surprising at times, and when it’s unexpected, it feels the best. And I think that’s kind of where I am, and a lot of others are around the country.
These last few weeks here in the US have felt like years if not a decade(s). This is especially true for those of us who follow news and politics closely—or for a living. How are you managing on the day-to-day? What suggestions do you have for everyday people who may feel overwhelmed and confused by all that is going on?
I’m somebody who digests more news every day than is probably healthy, and I do that because of the nature of my work. It’s a lot. It’s often overwhelming. And I think for me, I have to find ways to incite joy in my day, whether it’s through my kids or through some other avenue. If you don’t do that, you end up in a place that is morose and in some strange way, addicted to cortisol. Joy is presence. A reprieve from what was and what might be. We need it every day, even in small doses.
The Age of Trump and the democracy crisis and ascendant neofascism are not purely “political” crises. This is a moral crisis and test for the nation. Why are so many in the news media and political class still afraid to speak in those terms?
Trumpism presents a unique challenge to American media, because Trumpism flouts every norm, every process, every expectation. The moral failings of Trump are different than those of other politicians, because on one hand, usually, those failings come in the form of scandals that erupt into public view, causing media outcry for months and months and months. We could think of Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky scandal. On the other hand, Trump’s moral failings, whether they be with Stormy Daniels or in other ways, keep coming every day, all the time, so it’s hard to pick out the exception. And for the news media, moral failings are the exception. They’re the things that happen. They’re an event, they’re a fall, they’re a misstep, and if Trump’s every day is one ongoing flouting of the moral norms of political life, then it’s hard to cover that for them, and it’s flummoxing.
“What we have now in the Age of Trump is a situation where what it means to be a Christian is adherence to political conservative orthodoxy, rather than Christian doctrinal orthodoxy.”
Additionally, though, and I think more importantly, the moral failing of Trumpism is a flouting of democracy. It’s one that says the system we have a democratic system is not the one I want as a candidate. I think of Project 2025, I think words from everyone, from Stephen Miller to Steve Bannon to Jack Posobiec to JD Vance, and so many other Trump-adjacent figures, really reflect the fact that Trumpism is about going beyond democracy to something else. I don’t think our media are trained to cover that kind of moral failing. So, when he talks about being a dictator for a day, the media doesn’t have training for covering the fact that it seems that he’s hinting at completely trespassing our democratic boundaries. Thus, we’re caught in a place where “both sides” and “balance” and “the make sure to give equal time” rule the day. There’s a real reticence to point out on a daily, ongoing, minute-by-minute basis, that the Trump campaign is a campaign based on a set of morals and a political worldview that does not align with American democracy.
What do you see as the role of religion in the Age of Trump and the country’s democracy crisis?
Religion is pervasive in Trumpism. The last nine years have shown us that being trained in understanding religious communities, traditions, and jargon is really important if we want to understand our political moment. One of the things that comes to mind for me about religion and Trumpism, and that I warn people around the country all the time, is that there are people cultivating religious impulses in MAGA spaces who are openly anti-democratic, who are openly calling for a Christian prince or a red Caesar or some form of autocrat to lead us. I read Project 2025 through the lens of the theologians and the pastors and the podcasters and the pundits who are out there telling their many tens of thousands and millions of followers that we’d be better off with a king.
How was the recent attempt on Donald Trump’s life understood within the right-wing Christian community?
The attempt on Trump’s life was responded to in a very predictable way by many right-wing Christians to be a kind of divine intervention. He was saved by God’s will — God stepped in in order to allow this man to be president. And of course, the forces of evil are stacked against former President Trump because he’s been chosen by God to be our leader. The assassination attempt was enveloped seamlessly into the narrative that these right-wing Christians tell about him. He’s chosen. The forces of evil are trying to stop him, and we are praying for him. We are supporting him, and we are doing everything possible to make sure he’s president so that God’s will can be accomplished. Trump has been appointed by the divine to be our leader. Many right-wing Christians also saw the assassination attempt on Trump’s life as being an extension of what they, quite incorrectly, imagine to be the “persecution” of “Christians” in America.
When Trump got up and yelled “Fight! Fight! Fight!” it was to them a sign of how he is the embodiment of the American founding as a “Christian nation” and is chosen by God. For them, Donald Trump has some kind of superhuman or divinely appointed power and strength.
How were Republicans and “conservatives” able to develop a brand where they are viewed, by the mass public, as somehow being synonymous with “Christian values” when their policies are generally antithetical to them?
Over the last 75 years, there has been a branding of American Christianity as the Christian Right and now as Christian nationalism. I used to ask my students on the first day of class: “Give me some examples of American Christians.” And they would all give me examples like George W. Bush or other evangelicals. We would then spend the semester talking about how in the years before World War II and even in the decade after, the brand name of Christianity in the United States was in many ways, a mainland Christianity, where the likes of FDR or the Niebuhr brothers or Martin Luther King Jr, might have been seen as the most prominent Christians in the United States.
What we’re seeing now, is leaders who have really radical right-wing views on family and reproductive rights as being representative of Christianity or supporting mass deportations of undocumented brown people. There are many who are not Christian in that way. You can be a Christian and not be this focused on other people’s bodies and families. It’s okay. There are ways that you can follow Jesus Christ and not fetishize the social order in a way that feels restrictive and downright strange.
What does it mean to be a “Christian” in the Age of Trump?
Over the last five years, conservative churches have elevated culture war issues to the level of doctrine. This means that if you want to be a Christian in many conservative churches across the country, whether they’re evangelical or charismatic, not only do you need to be willing to confess that there’s one God who is a trinity, that his son, Jesus rose from the dead, and so on and so forth, but you also need to be willing to agree that you are absolutely against abortion and/or that you would like to build a wall. You also need to not support the rights of transgender people and the LGBTQ community more broadly. What we have now in the Age of Trump is a situation where what it means to be a Christian is adherence to political conservative orthodoxy, rather than Christian doctrinal orthodoxy.
How should religiously-minded people be informed (or not) in their voting this election by their faith and questions of conscience?
On one hand, there are large swaths of American Christianity that believe that voting for Trump is the only option and that if one does not vote for Trump, they are not a Christian. There is a repeated argument that if you vote Democrat, you cannot be a Christian. For many Christian nationalists, whether they be evangelicals or Pentecostals, charismatics or Catholics, there’s really no choice to make. The choice has already been made, and if you make a different choice, then you are not simply disagreeing with the community politically, but you’re probably no longer welcome in the community.
There are people who are concerned about issues like abortion and see it as not lining up with their religious beliefs. I disagree with them, but I understand the complexities of conscience that they are facing as religious people. But we are also seeing many Christians saying, “I can’t vote for Donald Trump a good conscience because of the racism, the xenophobia, and the protofascist elements of his candidacy, but I can vote for Kamala Harris, even though there may be aspects of her platform that don’t align with my understanding of the world.” These are not easy things to navigate. I think we need to be sensitive to how people approach such difficult matters.
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