Protect him from all evil as he undergirds our nation with the firewall of our Judeo-Christian value system. Fulfill Your purpose in his life.”
—Prayer given in the oval office, March 23, 2025, by Rev. Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, one of several evangelical pastors who laid hands on President Trump, a repeat of a ceremony at the start of his first term. The President appeared to be earnestly participating.
Shortly after, podcaster Todd Starnes attacked those who question Trump’s Christianity and the motives of those who regard him as a national savior: “The ‘Christians’ complaining about Christians praying over President Trump in the Oval Office are not Christians.”
Last year, just before the Iowa caucuses, a television add proclaimed: “And on 14 June 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said: ‘I need a caretaker.’ So God gave us Trump,
“God said I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, fix this country, work all day, fight the Marxists, eat supper, then go to the Oval Office and stay past midnight at a meeting of the heads of state. So God made Trump,”
When the similar group of Christian Nationalist preachers held a laying-on of hands ceremony in 2017, the Reverend Robert Jeffress, a Texas Southern Baptist preacher, told Trump, “Mr. President, we’re going to be your most loyal friends.”
Among all the voices protesting Medicaid Cuts, using government agencies to punish opponents, indiscriminate roundups of immigrants, the dismantling of government agencies and programs helping the poor with food and medicines, and—most recently—the burning of hundreds of thousands of pounds of food that could have kept thousands of African children alive, where are these preachers?
The silence of these pious ministers is thunderous.
Is THIS a President whose words and actions show he wants “to advance an agenda of righteousness and justice, truth and love?”
Is this President—who has jerked everybody around on the Epstein matter, who has deported people to nations far away from their own, who reportedly is jamming people into Florida cages, and who has cut Medicaid payments—undergirding the nation “with the firewall of our Judeo-Christian value system?”
Is he fulfilling God’s purpose?
Let’s hear it, preachers. Tell us, God, that what we are seeing and getting—of which we have only scratched the surface in the lists above—fulfilling your purpose?
Tell us, most loyal friends, why you aren’t saying anything about all of this? Do you believe a loving God is rooting for Trump to do all of the mean, cruel, unfeeling, un-loving things to others?
Can you watch what has happened since you prayed for him and still believe God “assigned him…appointed him (and) anointed him for such a time as this?”
Do you really believe his acts and statements truly represent our Judeo-Christian value system? Was Jesus a lying bully?
Is not Donald Trump exposing the falseness of the proclamations of pious faith leaders such as yourselves?
And what is it you have faith in?
Who’s not a Christian, Mr. Starnes—those who seek to serve others or those who seek power to serve themselves?
A lot of us are praying these days but not for Trump; for our country.
I lost a good friend this week, a gentle man who celebrated sixty years in the ministry just a few weeks ago with what became his last sermon. The Reverend John Bennett dedicated his life to social justice and told an interviewer a few years ago, “My guideposts as I move forward in my life and ministry are Micah, Chapter 6, verse 8. ‘Do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God,’ which is to walk in solidarity with all who hurt.”
And how did he hope others would remember him?
“He was a gentle and passionate man, on fire for social justice, rooted in his deep faith.”
I will take one John Bennett for 500 of those who would lay hands on Donald Trump.
(photo credit–Facebook)