The Big Tent: Trump’s Ecumenical Path To Victory

On Thursday, President Trump returned to the National Prayer Breakfast and proceeded to give a speech that was reasonably religious in overtones.

Something fascinating about the president is that he’s been able to do things that a lot of Christian conservatives and religious Jews appreciate while maintaining a largely secular coalition.

What would appear to be a marginal increase in non-Christian affiliation inside the Republican Party is not marginal because the overall loss in the traditional religious constituency in the Republican Party is reflective of an overall loss of religiosity in the American public more generally.

Today, the majority of Republicans are religious, but an increasing percentage are not particularly religious, and it is pretty religiously diverse.

That does not mean that the Republican Party should somehow abandon the moral issues that make the Republican Party the Republican Party. That’s not my case.

My case is that making the Republican Party non-ecumenical as opposed to ecumenical is a mistake. We’ve seen this sort of move being made on behalf of some parts of the sort of the trad-Catholic Right, some of the quasi-integralists on the Right, who seem to be making a move to break up the Republican coalition by suggesting that there is a vast religious revival that is happening in the country that is going to drive Republicans to victory.

Those numbers do not exist. I wish there were; I wish there were a vast religious revival in the country and that the Republican Party was closer to its biblical moral values. I wish that were the case.

But that is not supported by the data, which is why Trump is the right president for this moment, and it’s why Republicans have to watch out for coalition building and how not to break it up.

When you talk about the increasing irreligiosity of the body politic, that is correct. That doesn’t mean that Republicans should abandon social issues. They absolutely should not.

But it does mean that the more overt you are about marginal social issues, the more you are likely to lose the Trump coalition. Trump is winning outsized shares of Christian evangelicals, Catholics, and religious people because the Left is crazy, not because he is campaigning as some sort of religious figure.

If you wish for Republicans to win, then presenting good policy with a moderate face — even if you have outsized rhetoric like President Trump — is a better path to victory than embracing the fringe positions taken by so many on X and elsewhere.

President Trump can go to the National Prayer Breakfast and give what are, at best, sort of vague religious statements. And that’s fine with people. President Trump literally joked about making it to heaven at the National Prayer Breakfast, saying:

I said, “I’m never going to make it to heaven. I just don’t think I qualify.” I don’t think there’s a thing I can do, but all of these good things I’m doing, including for religion — you know, religion’s back now hotter than ever before — but I said, “Even though I did that, and so many other things” —  I named things. I said, “I won’t qualify. I’m not going to make it to heaven.”

And the New York Times did a front-page story that Donald Trump is questioning his life and the meaning of his life. No, I was just having fun. I really think I probably should make it; I mean, I’m not a perfect candidate, but I did a hell of a lot of good for perfect people.

That last line, that he’s done a lot of things for people, is the reason he’s been elected president twice. 

President Trump says, listen, you have to believe in something. You have to have a religion in general. 

This is the American position. The American position is that Biblical values are good and that we like religious practice in this country. Freedom of religion and freedom from government intervention in religion are in the same amendment for a reason. That broad ecumenism is a winning approach for the Republicans.

And pointing out the anti-religious secularism of the Left is a winning approach for Republicans.

President Trump has the pulse of the American people on the vast majority of issues, which is why he usually takes the 80% on 80/20 issues.

Republicans need to continue to do that.