President-elect Donald Trump‘s rise to power in the GOP has scattered traditional Republicans — generally speaking, the Bush, Cheney, Buckley, Romney types — as the MAGA insurgency has overtaken the Republican Party.
While differing on free trade limits, the value of the Pax Americana, and other key issues, perhaps the most striking difference between America First/MAGA and OG Republicans is the former’s religious underpinnings and zealotry.
The America First/MAGA contingent contains a far stronger strain of Christian nationalism, which has always found a degree of purchase in America, if never such an embrace by the leaders of government.
But like progressives, old guard Republicans remain highly wary of Christian nationalism — understanding that it was part of the founders’ Constitutional imperative that America never become such a place. The prohibition of intolerance and restrictions on religion’s influence on government are core components of the founding document — often encapsulated, albeit clumsily, as the separation of church and state.
[NOTE: See American philosopher Martha Nussbaum in Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality, an intro to which reads: “In one of the great triumphs of the colonial and Revolutionary periods, the founders of the future United States overcame religious intolerance in favor of a constitutional order dedicated to fair treatment for people’s deeply held conscientious beliefs. It granted equal liberty of conscience to all and took a firm stand against religious establishment.”]
That critical reluctance to qualify America as a “Christian nation” is now perceived to be at risk, which is why Republicans scattered at the fringes of their once conservative party are circulating some of the more controversial statements of Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.
See below, where Hegseth is concerned that progressives in America have replaced the “timeless truth” of the Bible with the (less commendable) pledge of allegiance while also replacing “the cross” with “the flag.”
Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth: “The left and progressives used allegiance to state, they used patriotism as a vehicle to untether us from timeless truth, from the Bible. The cross and the Bible were replaced by a flag and a pledge.” pic.twitter.com/jxwlxb6GRi
— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) December 9, 2024
The implication is that Hegseth privileges the Bible and the cross — on which Jesus is crucified in the New Testament — over the flag and the pledge.
“The left and progressives used allegiance to state, they used patriotism,” he says, “as a vehicle to untether us from timeless truth, from the Bible. The cross and the Bible were replaced by a flag and a pledge.”
In another instance, Hegseth says Americans are laboring under a “godless agenda” because the education system “tells the story without God woven throughout it.”
That means Americans are “untethered” and soldiers have nothing to fight for except the flag, an empty symbol of forsaken promise — in Hegseth’s estimation — instead of a soaring symbol of religious freedom and the tolerance of diverse opinion and belief.
Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth:
“You find yourself saying, ‘Well, I guess I’ll just fight for the flag and fight for America ’cause it’s a really good place.’ Yeah. But what if America’s been totally abdicated by a godless agenda, which it has today.” pic.twitter.com/EMiSTdyHZW
— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) December 10, 2024
