How Donald Trump is making religion great again

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The astir iconic photograph of Inauguration 2025 whitethorn beryllium the Tech Bros — Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Tim Cook — accompanying President Trump astatine Washington’s St. John’s religion for Sunday services.

It was a stark opposition to President Biden’s conspiring successful 2021 with Big Tech to censor dissent connected COVID laboratory leaks and lockdowns.

And portion derided arsenic opportunist obedience by simple-minded critics, the iconic infinitesimal whitethorn bespeak a profound inflection constituent successful American culture.  

The tech titans were successful afloat plaything connected January 20th erstwhile Meta main Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Jeff Bezos attended religion services arsenic portion of Donald Trump’s inauguration. Getty Images

As starring British historiographer Tom Holland argues, the West’s unparalleled occurrence implicit the past 3 centuries is straight attributable to religion – successful particular, the Protestant Reformation of the 16th period and the earlier Hebrew prophets that helped pass it

It was the Reformation that singularly unshackled the communal antheral from the medieval tyranny of monarchs and Roman popes which, successful turn, led to the Western concepts of liberty and idiosyncratic rights connected which the US was modeled. 

The Reformation’s “the archetypal shall beryllium past and the past shall beryllium first” egalitarian conception of idiosyncratic liberty, argues Holland, birthed modernity: The enlightenment, the technological and concern revolutions, the French and American revolutions, abolition of slavery and civilian rights movements and astir each different enduring thought that lifted humanity retired of poorness and oppression which had been ubiquitous since antiquity.  

But since the 1960s, religion has been nether onslaught by the pseudo-intellectual secular theologians of the module lounge near who argued that organization religion was anachronistic, sectarian, patriarchal, oregon different oppressive. 

Anti-colonial intelligence Franz Fanon was a forefather of our existent anti-Western left. Wikipedia

As intelligence descendants of Franz Fanon and Herbert Marcuse — forerunners to the anti-Western near — these academics unsheathed caller pedagogies of deconstructionism (getting escaped of aged ideas and institutions) not dissimilar Chairman Mao’s effort to escaped mid-century China of the “four olds.” 

This secular liturgy yet formed the ideological ground of the post-modern progressive left: unafraid borders are masquerading bigotry; a caller multibillion-dollar for-profit manufacture selling irreversible gender-altering drugs and surgeries to minors, often without parental consent oregon proper technological backing (notwithstanding a cleric’s caller chiding of Trump), is someway enlightened; adjacent accidental indispensable beryllium replaced with adjacent results among individuality groups (“equity”); and that the astir persecuted and slaughtered taste number successful past — Jews — should person nary refugee, ancestral homeland due to the fact that they are excessively “white-adjacent.”

Little of this abided by the communal consciousness of Americans, nor withstood empirical scrutiny.  But, arsenic some myself and sociologist Musa al Gharbi person detailed, these luxury beliefs served to heighten the societal superior of self-dealing intelligence elites that pushed them.  

The progressive “purge” of halfway Western beliefs reminds galore of Chairman Mao’s actions during China’s Cultural Revolution, according to reports. AP

The decline of religion besides coincided with the breakdown of trust successful institutions, the emergence of taste nihilism, the dissolution of the family, polarization, and melodramatic increases successful isolation, anxiety, and intelligence disorders. 

And this is the decadence that writer Ross Douthat identifies arsenic a marker of taste exhaustion and civilizational decline. And it’s what fuels overmuch of Trump’s populism. 

Happiness adept Arthur Brooke reports that 60% of achromatic progressive women nether 30 person immoderate signifier of intelligence disorder. 

Social scientist Jonathan Haidt documents however the caller woo-wooism of post-modernism, individuality narcissism, and societal media addiction is rewiring young minds and accelerating wide unhappiness and dysfunction.

Donald Trump is positioned to usage religion arsenic a instrumentality for nationalist reconciliation, critics believe. AP

Two days aft the St. John’s service, President Trump held a property league with AI CEOs connected the Stargate inaugural — a $500 cardinal associated effort to pb America’s preeminence successful the AI gyration and harness its powerfulness to cure crab and different diseases and to wide amended the quality condition.

Thus, a perchance profound transportation betwixt St. Johns and Stargate. 

Since World War II, President Kennedy’s moonshot successful the 1960s, and the warfare connected crab successful the 1970s, these kinds of nationalist aspirational moments of communal intent person been acold and fewer betwixt successful our progressively secular, individualist, what-can-my-country-do-for-me culture. 

The cardinal question past is whether the iconic “take maine to church” infinitesimal astatine St. Johns represents a genuinely redemptive opening towards ecumenical values that built the West.

Washington’s St. John’s Episcopal Church, wherever Trump and the tech chiefs congregated for services. Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

If Trump tin present specify his restoration imaginativeness of American values to beryllium inclusive alternatively than exclusive, past its gestation tin commencement a taste realignment arsenic important arsenic the governmental realignment of the 2024 election.  

But the occurrence depends connected whether its ethos is genuinely e pluribus unum — a shared acceptable of values alternatively than the sectarian identity-focused theology of the left. And portion elites connected the near whitethorn recoil, voters connected the near and close some thirst for a much cohesive assemblage and nationalist purpose. They are exhausted by tribalism.  

If the St. John’s infinitesimal does successful information portend a instrumentality to the Reformation values of hard work, community, communal purpose, and adjacent opportunity, past a caller bipartisan statement tin emerge. Secure borders are cardinal to immoderate ideology arsenic it helps solidify cohesion and spot successful the polity.  

Social scientist Jonathan Haidt suggests the existent tide of wokeness is rewiring young minds for misery.

A existent authorities of adjacent accidental and merit volition incentivize the pick to emergence to the apical careless of heritage, arsenic Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned. Safe streets assistance the slightest among us.

A muscular defence volition deter each sorts of atrocious actors from doing precise atrocious things to tons of innocents connected the planetary stage. Populism tin pb to shared revival if it’s approached successful the close way.  

Although seemingly disparate successful purpose, the 2 events — St. John’s and Stargate — whitethorn beryllium important connected dots connected a roadworthy to a caller and epochal taste moment.  

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