Donald the Christian. Catholic consternation over Trump’s interview with Douthat

“Where will I go when I die? Well, I’m a religious person, so in theory I’ll go to heaven.” That was Donald Trump’s reply to Ross Douthat, who was interviewing him for the programme “60 Minutes” on Sunday. Douthat asked him if he really believed he was destined for heaven. “I hope so. I don’t want to go to hell,” was his reply. At that, the interviewer seized the opportunity to ask the president whether he, like Erica Kirk, would be willing to forgive his enemies. The wife of the MAGA activist, who was killed just over a year ago on a university campus in Utah, had done so. What’s more, she did so from the stage of the stadium in Phoenix where the funeral was being held. Trump was present there, but said something quite different from the widow: “I hate my opponents and do not wish them well.” Douthat’s question: “Suppose you die and find yourself in the afterlife, and that to enter heaven you simply have to feel love and forgiveness towards James Comey, Nancy Pelosi and anyone else you’ve hated over the years. Do you think you’d be capable of that?” Answer: “In that case, I wouldn’t be being true to myself, would I? I mean… if I told you, ‘Sure, I could forgive them’, that would be the easy answer. I’ve regarded them as extremely dishonest people, terrible people, very harmful to our country. I love our country far more than I could ever love any individuals, and people like that.” “So the answer is no?”, asks the interviewer. “The answer is no. I want to be honest: no.” “Even before God’s judgement?” “No, I think they were truly awful people; I don’t like them; I might even dare to use the word ‘hate’: yes, I hate some of my enemies. I think they were terrible.”

Rod Dreher, a hyper-conservative Christian and former friend of J.D. Vance, could not believe what he had heard: “My God. My God. The pettiness and hatred that dwell in this man’s heart. He is literally a character from Dante’s Inferno. Despite having received so much from life, he hates his enemies more than he fears God,” he wrote on X. Edward Feser, a traditionalist Catholic philosopher, added to the criticism: “It is truly a very grim affair. It is not only at odds with the teaching of Christ, who warned: ‘For if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses’. This stance falls even below the moral conception of pagan philosophers such as Aristotle, who wrote: ‘The magnanimous man [...] harbours no grudge, for it is unworthy of a magnanimous man to remember the wrongs suffered at the hands of others, especially insults; rather, it is in his nature to overlook them’. I feel great sorrow for Trump, who does not seem to realise how dangerous this bitterness could be for his immortal soul. He needs our prayers’. Dreher added that a truth emerged from the responses, one that was finally acknowledged: Donald Trump is the president of the post-religious right. Ten years ago – it was 1 March 2016, at the start of the primaries that would take the tycoon to the White House that November – Ross Douthat tweeted: “If you don’t like the religious right, wait until you meet the post-religious right”. A concept he would revisit several times, in articles and interviews. His argument was clear: the Christian tradition is not the bane of conservatism; on the contrary, it acts as a moral check on what might happen if that obstacle were not there. 

Meanwhile, it prevents love for one’s own little circle (however small or large it may be) from automatically giving rise to hatred towards others, in a primitive logic that divides the world into friends and enemies, with no middle ground. Religion, moreover, also has the merit of tempering the excesses of an overly vigorous conception of maintaining social order, always reminding us that individual freedom must be guaranteed above all else. With the collapse of these certainties and the disintegration of the glue that held America together (religion), the void has been filled by a nationalism devoid of traditional religious ethics. Joshua Mitchell, a lecturer in political theory, anticipated this in Il Foglio years ago: if, in the 1960s, Americans ‘wanted to be Christians, they had to stop being tribal. They could no longer, to use today’s language, invoke their “identities” and be content with doing just that. Precisely because they were Christians, equality was important’. Today, little or nothing remains of this, and Douthat had realised this precisely by observing the rise of Trump, who at the time was regarded as one of the many figures from political satire who occasionally announce their intention to stand for election. ‘Take heed,’ he wrote: ‘if the religious right collapses, what comes next will be no better. Quite the contrary. It will be a right devoid of inhibitions and “lofty” principles. A political discourse based on race and identity, closed communities and order will take hold.’ The prophecy has been partially fulfilled, because the new right has certainly retained its religious references, particularly amongst the evangelical base. Kirk’s funeral is a perfect example of this, with its extra-large crucifixes and rosaries brandished like rifles with bayonets. But it is all style; behind it lies a lack of theological foundation and an ethical core. Which seems to have re-emerged in the opposing camp, amongst victorious Methodist leaders in Kansas and former Presbyterian seminarians conquering Texas.