Glory, Glory, Hallelujah! Only King Jesus Can Make America Great Again
Like many civil ceremonies, Trump's second inauguration mentioned God several times. But this time, it felt personal.
“We don’t do God!” Alastair Campbell, the atheist spin doctor to then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair famously said in 2003, when someone asked his Catholic boss about his faith. Campbell’s truism has become a catchphrase capturing the contrast between God talk in British and American politics.
As a Briton living in Rome watching President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, I was heartened to see that America, unlike post-Christian Britain (and post-Catholic Italy), is still “doing God,” despite the Herculean post-Enlightenment efforts to evict Him from the public square.
“I was saved by God to make America great again,” Trump said in his 30-minute inauguration speech. “National unity is now returning to America, and confidence and pride is soaring like never before. In everything we do, my administration will be inspired by a strong pursuit of excellence and unrelenting success. We will not forget our country. We will not forget our Constitution. And we will not forget our God.
“After all we have been through together, we stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history. With your help, we will restore an American promise and we will rebuild the nation that we love. And we love it so much. We are one people, one family and one glorious nation under God. So to every parent who dreams for their child and every child to dreams for their future: I am with you, I will fight for you and I will win for you. And we’re going to win like never before.”
Civil Religion
By contrast, the archbishop of Canterbury is reluctant to “do God” at secular events in Britain, even though the Church of England is the established church of the land, 26 bishops sit in the House of Lords, and the UK Parliament begins each day with prayer (most members don’t attend that part).
In Italy, the Vatican omitted “God” from a 4,000-word document on the COVID-19 pandemic in July 2020 in order to reach “the widest possible audience.”
Britons and Europeans are even more bemused by American leaders who unapologetically and enthusiastically “do God” in the public square, thanks to widespread misunderstanding of the Establishment clause of the First Amendment. They believe it requires a separation of church and state to keep the church out of state affairs, when in fact it was written to protect the church from the state.
Cynics on both sides of the Pond also scoff at mentions of “God” being sprinkled like stardust over political events. The sociologist Robert Bellah, who coined the term “civil religion” (borrowed from Rousseau) to describe the “public religious dimension” of American politics, acknowledged the cynical dismissal of a phenomenon that seems to give God “only a sentimental nod.”
As an Anglican minister, I spent years doing “civil religion” at public and national ceremonies in Britain. As chaplain to the Old Royal Naval College, I had the honor of conducting a service for Her Royal Highness Princess Anne and other royalty marking the 25th anniversary of the Falklands war.
As canon theologian at Liverpool Cathedral (arguably the world’s largest Anglican cathedral), I was immersed in services for the armed forces, the Health Service, Britain’s top judiciary, labor unions, and secular charities of every stripe.
For most people attending these services, “God” was a deist concept devoid of Christian content. Many, I suspect, were atheist or agnostic but attended such services (e.g., Remembrance Day) out of a sense of tradition and to pay their respects to the fallen soldiers.
Making the Unknown God Known
My task in presiding over services of “civic religion” was to fill the deist void with biblical truth — the Word made flesh in Jesus the Messiah. It’s what Paul did in Athens (Acts 17). I was there as an evangelist. Somehow, by all means possible, I had to preach the Gospel in a manner that would be accessible to my audience.
Hence, what thrilled me most about Trump’s inauguration (apart from his utterly unrestrained speech) was how through music and prayer, the Lord Jesus was specifically acknowledged as the God before whom “every knee shall bow and every tongue proclaim that He is Lord.”
I began getting really excited when the pianist played “For the Beauty of the Earth,” a hymn often sung at the annual Harvest Festival in English churches. The refrain explicitly thanks Jesus: “Christ, our Lord, to You we raise this, our hymn of grateful praise.”
Then followed “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” (one of my favorite hymns), based on Lamentations 3. After two chapters lamenting Israel’s utter despair in exile, the poet finally grasps the only thing left for Israel to hold on to: God’s character, shown through His steadfast love (hesed), His mercies (rakhamim), and His faithfulness (emunah) (Lamentations 3:22-23).
The Grapes of Wrath
The climax was the U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Again, cynics will dismiss the performance as a “patriotic” hymn that is part of American tradition. But consider how pregnant the verses are with theological and biblical references.
Mine eyes have seen the glory
of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage
where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning
of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
This is an allusion to Revelation 19:15: “From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations … He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.”
The last verse is often omitted from “civil religion” ceremonies, but it was resoundingly sung at Trump’s inauguration:
In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me;
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on!
For anyone coming out of the last four years who has even a flicker of the Holy Spirit living inside them, the sense that this is literally what is happening in real time in America (and from there, across the globe) was palpable.
Trump’s God Intervenes to Save
While Trump mentioned “God” four times in his address, this “God” did not seem like the “divine watchmaker” deist God who created the universe but then left it to its own devices. Rather, this God specifically intervened to save Trump.
“Just a few months ago, in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin’s bullet ripped through my ear,” he said. “But I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”
In a crescendo of rhetoric reminiscent of the book of Deuteronomy (8:7-20) where Moses warns the people against forgetting God when they become prosperous, the president thundered: “We will not forget our country. We will not forget our Constitution. And we will not forget our God.”
Trump left it to Pentecostal pastor Lorenzo Sewell to deliver the most dramatic prayer ever prayed in the Capitol’s Rotunda. In rousing African-American style, Sewell, with stunning brilliance, blended Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech with impassioned pleas for Trump and for America. Sewell prayed explicitly to God “the Father in the name of Jesus.”
Echoing the Exodus
Franklin Graham superbly reminded the watching world that the only true sovereign is the God of Israel, who is also the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: “He changes the times and the seasons. He removes kings. He raises up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.”
“We know that America can never be great again if we turn our backs on You,” Graham prayed. “We ask for Your help. And we pray all of this in the Name of the King of kings, the Lord of lords, Your Son, my Savior and our Redeemer, Jesus Christ. Amen.”
Rabbi Ari Berman of Yeshiva University — the second rabbi ever invited to pray at a presidential inauguration (following Rabbi Marvin Hier, who prayed at Trump’s first inauguration in 2017), bookended his remarks with references to the prophet Jeremiah.
Almighty God, your prophet Jeremiah walked the streets of Jerusalem and blessed its inhabitants with the Hebrew words, “Baruch hagever asher yiftach Hashem” – Blessed is the one who trusts in God. … May our nation merit the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s blessing. L ike a tree planted by water, we shall not cease to bear fruit.
Ashamed of Jesus?
Naturally, one wouldn’t expect a rabbi to end his prayer in the name of Jesus. But Catholics expressed their shock and disgust with New York’s archbishop, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, and retired priest Fr Frank Mann for omitting Jesus from their inaugural prayers.
“How dare he not speak of Our Lord Jesus as he stands in prayer for our nation,” Bishop Joseph Strickland, who was sacked by Pope Francis for being too Catholic, exploded on X. “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, He is the one true Lord for all of us, to fail to invoke Him is to fail to know the power of His Name!”
In fact, the only Christian ministers to drop Jesus from their prayers Monday were Catholic priests. Were they imitating Francis’s policy of regularly omitting the name of Jesus when he offers a blessing or prayer before a secular or multifaith audience?
Unlike Britain, America must do God. Not just any god, but the God who became man in Jesus Christ and “died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, was buried, and was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15: 3-4).
Because only King Jesus can make America great again.
Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.