Is Donald Trump in the process of founding a new religion? At first glance, the question may seem completely absurd: the time of the Reformations, to borrow the title of Pierre Chaunu’s famous work, has long since passed; not everyone can be a Henry VIII; and Stormy Daniels has little in common with Anne Boleyn. And yet, some do not hesitate to pose the question directly, as evidenced by a June 2025 article in Vox. The omnipresence of Christian theology in the statements of the president and his supporters is disconcerting. It naturally leads one to take the question more seriously, all the more so since it is often overlooked. In the following paragraphs, we will attempt to show why, far from being a secondary element, religion is a central element for anyone who wishes to understand the MAGA movement and the Trump administration.
We can begin by looking at the multiplicity of Trump’s avatars. Traditionally, American politics associates its presidents with tutelary figures: already in the time of the Revolution, George Washington was first celebrated as a new Joshua for his military talents, before being presented as an American Moses for his legislative accomplishments. Subsequently, these two biblical figures became recurrent in American politics. In the case that concerns us, however, other tutelary figures are invoked to praise Trump. From the very beginning of his first term, his Christian supporters identified him as a new Cyrus. This reference was meant to appeal to Americans who feel abandoned by the government, even as foreigners are allegedly favored. Trump’s presidency, for them, thus constituted a kind of symbolic revenge through the mythical figure of the Persian king. Another figure from the Christian tradition is also mentioned: the Emperor of the Last Times, an apocalyptic character taken straight from the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius. Finally, the major reference figure is King David, evoked as early as 2015 in connection with Trump and even more so after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, since David, according to the Book of Samuel, also escaped several assassination attempts orchestrated by King Saul.
The explanation for this profusion of biblical references is quite simple: in all three cases, Trump is compared to a figure who has sinned greatly. Cyrus is a pagan. David ordered that Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, be placed in the front line of battle so that he would be killed. And the Emperor of the Last Times is described as “like a man roused from sleep after drinking too much wine.” Despite being sinners, however, these different figures have one thing in common that makes them as interchangeable as untouchable: they were chosen by God and are His favored instrument. Thus, Cyrus enabled the Jews’ return to Judea to rebuild the Temple; David significantly expanded the territory of Israel; and the Emperor of the Last Times will drive out the Ishmaelites and gather all Christians into a universal kingdom, before returning his crown to God in Jerusalem. Trump himself has never hesitated to present himself as the Chosen One. He has also loudly proclaimed that God spared him in the Butler attack and that his survival was a true miracle. In short, at the heart of MAGA propaganda, references to these three biblical figures are recurrent.
The explanation for this profusion of biblical references is quite simple: in all three cases, Trump is compared to a figure who has sinned greatly. Despite being sinners, however, these different figures have one thing in common that makes them as interchangeable as untouchable: they were chosen by God and are His favored instrument.
In addition, the MAGA movement has developed a powerful religious iconography. Trump has always shown an incredible fetishism for his hair. He recently relaxed water-saving regulations regarding showerheads, supposedly out of concern for his hair. This is nothing new: as early as 2016, some journalists had already noticed this, even insinuating that he may have taken inspiration for his hairstyle from…King David. Of course, this is only one example among others. The billionaire likes to pose in prayer, preferably in group settings. Making use of a photo of Trump praying in the Oval Office, accompanied by his religious advisor Paula White and a dozen “Christian leaders” placing their hands on the president’s shoulders, the evangelical media outlet The Christian Post published an article with the triumphant headline: “Faith is more important than ever before!” The president has no limits when it comes to iconography. In the weeks following Pope Francis’s death, Trump shared on his Truth Social account a fake AI-generated image depicting him wearing a white cassock, the papal tiara, and a pectoral cross. The photo shocked Catholics, but once again, the president managed to draw attention to himself at little cost, in a religious context. Just like the biblical references, religious iconography plays a major role in Trumpian propaganda. It attests to the president’s definitive victory over the leadership of the traditional Christian right, who had expressed many reservations during his first rise to power in 2016.
It is undoubtedly in the domain of eschatology that the MAGA movement finds its specificity.
But it is undoubtedly in the domain of eschatology that the MAGA movement finds its specificity, something Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor have highlighted in an article exploring the innovative concept of “end-times fascism.” Trump and his supporters played with a wide variety of apocalyptic motifs throughout the 2024 election campaign, which was disconcerting, at least for outside observers. One especially recalls the dark picture of the United States painted by Trump. Reprising classic tropes of the far right, the country appeared in a state of advanced decadence, threatened as much by legions of internal enemies as by hordes of foreign invaders, criminal and degenerate. In a New York Times article, dated October 2024, Michael Gold attempted to summarize Trump’s apocalyptic tendencies and highlighted some recurring themes: in the hands of the Democrats, the country was heading toward destruction and an economic bloodbath. Worse, World War III loomed. Moreover, Armageddon—that is, the Book of Revelation’s great eschatological battle between the forces of Good and Evil—was imminent, both on the economic and on the immigration front. This was supposed to be the case in Detroit, for example, if the Democrats were to win.
As for his Democratic opponents, Trump used well-oiled apocalyptic rhetoric to denigrate them. The object of his nearly unbearably violent discourse was his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris. In an article published in the New York Review of Books, Irish journalist Fintan O’Toole recalled, among other things, that the billionaire had constantly portrayed her as the Whore of Babylon, in reference to Chapter 17 of the Book of Revelation. It was because of her and the Democratic Party’s immigration policy, Trump declared without blinking, that murderers were coming into the country. She was said to have “blood on her hands.” Finally, during one of the last rallies of the campaign in New York City, a Trump supporter even identified her as the Antichrist while waving a crucifix on stage.1 This shows to what extent apocalyptic rhetoric was instrumentalized in the 2024 presidential race: the candidate and his entourage were well aware that the country has always shown a unique sensitivity to apocalyptic narratives.
The tone shifted abruptly after the election. During the period between the result and the billionaire’s second inauguration, his supporters changed their tone: it was no longer about denouncing the apocalyptic dangers of a potential Democratic victory, but about proclaiming the return of the golden age. This golden age is often thought of as a pagan theme from Antiquity, and one spontaneously thinks of Hesiod, Virgil, or Horace. This is a serious mistake! The history of Christianity is haunted by the idea of a golden age to come, which would correspond to the Parousia, the return of Christ to Earth. This is precisely what the great specialist on the subject, Jean Delumeau, wrote when he gave the definition of millenarianism:
Millenarianism, the expectation of a kingdom here on Earth that would be a kind of regained earthly paradise, is, by its very definition, closely tied to the notion of a vanished golden age.2
Trump and his supporters remember this well and, throughout the two-month interregnum, constantly reaffirmed their faith in the return of the golden age. It was to a golden age that they referred again and again throughout the early months of Trump’s presidency. Each time the situation began to get tougher, he repeated this refrain—before the West Point cadets in late May 2025, and then in Pittsburgh before the steelworkers of US Steel, even though the company had been acquired by the Japanese company Nippon Steel. After the airstrikes on Iran, the president once again presented himself as the savior of the entire world. He boasted of having eliminated a mortal threat to Israel, thus reconnecting with the Christian Zionism of his first term. Overall, millenarianism and messianism play a central role in the communication strategy of Trump and his MAGA supporters.
The history of Christianity is haunted by the idea of a golden age to come, which would correspond to the Parousia, the return of Christ to Earth. Trump and his supporters remember this well. It was to a golden age that they referred again and again throughout the early months of Trump’s presidency.
To complete this overview, one must also speak of the links between conspiracy thinking and religion. The connections between MAGA and the far-right conspiracy movement QAnon are self-evident. During the billionaire’s first term, under the benevolent gaze of the administration, QAnon had free rein to spread its lies. In 2020, Trump refused to denounce the movement’s conspiratorial ideas, among which were the unbelievable pedophilia accusations of “Pizzagate.” After Trump’s 2020 defeat, QAnon threw its full support behind the defeated president and played an important—if not decisive—role in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. In 2025, QAnon is again on the rise, which is giving the president some cold sweats: indeed, QAnon followers are demanding action on the Epstein files, which clearly puts Trump in a difficult position. Yet QAnon ideology seems to align perfectly with that of MAGA, especially at the religious level: as researchers Nicolò Miotto and Julian Droogan note in an article in Critical Sociology, “the conspiracy theory develops, strikingly, on a Christian dualism that depicts a battle between the forces of Evil, led by the Devil, and those of Good, supported by God and his chosen one.” In this perspective, Trump takes on the figure of the Messiah. These are key elements that help better understand the interactions between conspiracy theories and eschatology—between the QAnon base, whose transformation into a religious movement is well documented, and evangelical Christians, whose theology is centered on the Apocalypse and the End Times.
Only after connecting all these elements can one recognize the obvious: MAGA is essentially a religious movement. Religion is, of course, not the only tool for understanding its inner workings, and we must not neglect to analyze the Trump administration and its actions on other levels—political, geopolitical, sociological, and economic.3 However, failing to take theological questions into account would be a serious error, central as they appear to be to MAGA ideology. Can we then speak of a new religion? Likely not yet. We do not yet see the emergence of a true cult or ritual practice, though certain elements are beginning to surface: the image of a man kneeling before the president during a religious ceremony on May 1 is striking, so evocative is it of the proskynesis of Alexander the Great. However, a mutation of MAGA in the direction of a proper religion would hardly be surprising.
Only after connecting all these elements can one recognize the obvious: MAGA is essentially a religious movement.
- Here we have a fine example of the survival of the Antichrist myth. As Eugen Weber noted in Apocalypses et millénarismes, Prophéties, cultes et croyances millénaristes à travers les âges, Fayard, 1999, 11.36 (epub): “An apocalyptic figure had no trouble crossing over from the medieval period to impose itself upon the modern era, where it still endures: that figure is the Antichrist. Far from occupying a major place in the New Testament, the Antichrist is above all a deceiver—or, as Richard Emmerson defined him, a diabolical parody of Christ.” ↩︎
- Jean Delumeau, Une histoire du Paradis, tome 2, p.15. He elaborates on his thinking a bit further on p.17: “In Christianity, millenarianism must be defined as the belief in a coming reign of Christ and his elect—this reign being expected to last a thousand years, understood either literally or symbolically. The advent of the millennium was conceived as occurring between a first resurrection—that of the elect already deceased—and a second—that of all other men for the purpose of their judgment. The millennium must therefore be inserted between the time of history and the descent of the ‘Heavenly Jerusalem.’ Two periods of tribulation will frame it. The first will see the reign of the Antichrist and the trials of the faithful of Jesus, who, along with him, will triumph over the forces of evil and establish the kingdom of peace and happiness. The second, shorter, will witness a renewed unleashing of demonic forces, who will be defeated in a final battle.” ↩︎
- Maya Kandel, Une première histoire du trumpisme, Gallimard, 2025. Maya Kandel’s work is interesting in this regard, as it offers major insights into the importance of foreign policy within Trumpism (see especially p.83). However, the absence of a chapter truly dedicated to religion is regrettable, especially given that the author notes that “the place of religion represents a break with American history” (p.152). This “oversight” perfectly illustrates the evident lack of interest within the scholarly community for religious questions. ↩︎
Joël E. Schnapp is a French historian, holding a PHD in Modern History from the University of Paris-X Nanterre. He is a research associate at University of Grenoble and a specialist of Apocalyptic Traditions in the Renaissance and the Christian Polemics against Islam. He published in 2017 a book called Prophéties de fin du monde et peur des Turcs au XVe siècle: Ottomans, Antichrist, Apocalypse. In 2023, he published an essay called Chroniques de l’Antichrist: Crises et Apocalypses au XXIe siècle, in which he reflects on medieval apocalytic traditions applied to contemporary history. He has also written numerous articles for Le Monde, Le Média, Le Nouvel Observateur, Le Point and Lundi.am.
