The oath on two Bibles, one received as a gift from her mother, the other the famous one from Abraham Lincoln. The blessing imparted by three religious leaders, Rabbi Ari Berman, Pastor Lorenzo Sewell of Detroit and the Rev. Frank Mann of the Diocese of Brooklyn. The reference, in his speech, to feeling predestined, God’s chosen one: “My life was saved by God to make America great again”. It was permeated with religiosity, even with an almost messianic inspiration , the inauguration ceremony in Washington of Donald Trump, the 47th president of the United States. To comment and analyze the religious aspects that characterized the event and, in general, the vision of the new American president is the Professor Massimo Faggioli, historian of religions, professor of the Department of Theology and Religious Sciences at Villanova University in Philadephia (Pennsylvania (and author of the book From God to Trump. Catholic crisis and American politics (Scholé).
Professor Faggioli, is the pervasive, ostentatious, almost messianic religiosity that characterized Trump’s inauguration something particular, unprecedented in recent American history?
«Yes and no. The office of the US presidency has always been a mixture of politics and religion. Certainly, however, today there are new elements. The first: Trump has understood very well that this country is more secularized and no longer even pretends to believe in God and religion as such. It has an exchange relationship with religion, which is not at all hypocritical. It makes a brazen and brutal use of religion, without many of the hypocrisies typical of the politics of the last 50 years, since, with Ronald Reagan, religion went from being a private matter back to being a political instrument. The second element: the presidency has always claimed a divine mission on behalf of the God-blessed American nation. But what was shocking in Trump’s inauguration is that thanks to God for saving him was also directed against internal enemies, who they are other American citizens. God was once American. Today he is a Republican and, even more so, a Trumpian. Previously, when a president won he declared that God is with the American nation. Today the nationalization of God has taken a step forward, harking back to the times of the Civil War. Trump continues to declare civil war on half his country, on other Americans. In my opinion this is a new element, starting from the times of the Civil War.”
The Trump presidency, therefore, instead of uniting, tends to divide Americans.
«And he does it by putting God in the middle. In Trump’s vision, God does not unite the American nation, but must help him, the president, to defeat his internal enemies. This is all disturbing.”
What is the difference between the secularization of American society and European society?
«Secularization in America came much later than in Europe. The big difference is that in Europe secularization gave a way out to those who did not believe in God through the Enlightenment, socialism, communism and the great mass political ideologies. Instead, the secularization that occurs today in the USA is more formless and violent, it does not marry at all with the Enlightenment culture, on the contrary it is combined with theories against science, for example with anti-vax theories. And on this ground the Democrats lost, because they thought they were addressing a secularized country, yes, but in the Enlightenment, cultured, European sense. The political system is no longer made up of great cultures and mass movements that bring people together. The USA is a nation still founded on a strongly Jewish-Christian ritual and moral symbolism, but this is increasingly an empty shell. Religiosity in America has been emptied of content, but politics is still the power that receives a divine mandate. Trumpism, which is a form of political but also religious idolatry, has understood this very well, reusing religion in a more secularized country but whose underlying grammar is still religious. Trump’s inauguration was a sort of liturgy, in front of a country that is no longer believing in God. And, as Chesterton said, when you stop believing in God you can start believing in anything.”
(Reuters photo: Donald Trump’s swearing-in)
