Not because Donald Trump has moved towards their version of Christianity.

Rather, American Christianity, evangelical Christianity, has moved

towards Donald Trump as an increasingly authoritarian personality cult around the ex-president.

Writing in the New York Times, Michael Bender says,

quote, even more than in his past campaigns,

he is framing his 2024 bid as a fight for Christianity. One history professor at a Pennsylvania

Evangelical University told Bender the apparent effectiveness of such tactics has

made Trump the nation's first major politician to successfully separate character

from policy for religious voters.

But now, Trump is using his own brand of positive thinking

and prosperity gospel to dupe his self-proclaimed Christian

supporters into believing that he is the second

coming of Jesus himself, his own brand of the power of MAGA thinking, fusing his own perverse

messianic message into his rallies which alongside the passion of the mag of

faithful gives them a church of the cult of Trump heir including the rituals

that would seem familiar to Christian believers, hands raised in the air as a sign of

surrender and reverence to God. Except that Trump rallies, its reverence to Trump, with a one-finger

salute, a hallmark of QAnon followers, and a

nod to that movement slogan. Even though they were told to stop, you still see

them from time to time. He's also taken to ending his speeches with a sermon of sorts

proclaiming that they are one movement and one family under God. But now that he's running

for president so that he can stay out of prison, he's really

...