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Hey, wouldnt you know it? The Bible, it turns out, is a deal a big deal, as it happens! Before I get into the details, let me just put down this distinctly biblical figure: $1,306,035. And get this! Donald Trump has indeed endorsed the Bible. And not just any Bible either! To be specific, he put his stamp of approval on the God Bless the USA Bible. And while the unendorsed version of that bible sold for a mere $59.99, with Trumps endorsement you could get a copy, whether of the Inauguration Day Edition, the Presidential Edition, or the Golden Age Edition, for a mere $99.99. Oh, and did I mention that those particular bibles, which also include copies of the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Pledge of Allegiance, were produced in yes! China for, according to the Associated Press, about $3 each? (And as far as I know, the president didnt put a tariff on them either.)
By the way, that million-dollar-plus figure I put in the previous paragraph represents Donald Trumps royalties on the various editions of the book on which he placed his stamp of approval, and if that doesnt give Christian nationalism a splendiferous price tag, what does? Bluntly put, dollar by dollar, it seems that, at least as far as Donald Trump is concerned, God is distinctly on his side in a big-time, money-making way. And if that isnt something to brag about, I dont know what is. Oh, and as TomDispatch regular Liz Theoharis, an ordained minister, director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice, and co-chair of the Poor Peoples Campaign, reminds us today, the president and his crew have gone distinctly Trumpian in dealing biblically with so many issues and, interestingly enough, it turns out (if theyre right) that God loves, above all else, millionaires and billionaires rather than the poor and homeless.
And with that in mind, let Theoharis tell you something about how happy our president and crew are to misuse anything biblical to make the rich richer yet and the poor even poorer. And who could possibly be surprised? Tom
You Cant Worship God and Money
Theological Abominations in Trumps America
It was a moment somewhat like this, 30 years ago, that turned me into a biblical scholar. In the lead-up to the passage of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, political and religious leaders quoted scripture to justify shutting down food programs and kicking mothers and their babies off public assistance. Those leaders, many of them self-described Christians, chose to ignore the majority of passages in the Bible that preached good news to the poor and promised freedom to those captive to injustice and oppression. Instead, they put forward unethical and ahistorical (mis)interpretations and (mis)appropriations of biblical texts to prop up American imperial power and punish the poor in the name of a warped morality.
Three decades later, the Trump administration and its theological apologists are working overtime, using Jesuss name and the Bibles contents in even more devastating rounds of immoral biblical (mis)references. In July, there was the viral video from the Department of Homeland Security, using the Here I am, Lord. Send me quotation from Isaiah commonly cited when ordaining faith leaders and including explicit references to marginalized communities impacted by displacement and oppression to recruit new agents for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, a job that now comes with a $50,000 signing bonus, thanks to Donald Trumps One Big Beautiful Bill.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseths former pastor went even further in marrying the Bible to anti-immigrant hatred by saying, Is the Bible in favor of these ICE raids? The answer is yes. He then added: The Bible does not require wealthy Christian nations to self-immolate for the horrible crime of having a flourishing economy and way of life, all right? The Bible does not permit the civil magistrate to steal money from its citizens to pay for foreign nationals to come destroy our culture.
A month earlier, during a speech announcing the bombing of Iran, President Trump exhorted God to bless Americas bombs (being dropped on innocent families and children): And in particular, God, I want to just say, we love you God, and we love our great military. Protect them. God bless the Middle East, God bless Israel, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.
And in May, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Republican congressional representatives formed a prayer circle on the floor of the House as they prepared to codify the presidents Big Beautiful Bill. Of course, that very bill threatens to cut off millions of Americans from life-saving food and healthcare. (Consider it a bizarre counterpoint to Jesuss feeding of the 5,000 and providing free health care to lepers.)
The Antichrist
And if that werent enough twisting of the Bible to bless the rich and admonish the poor, enter tech mogul Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir and the man behind the curtain of so much now going on in Washington. Though many Americans may be increasingly familiar with him, his various companies, and his political impact, many of us have missed the centrality of his version of Christianity and the enigmatic religious beliefs that go with it.
In Vanity Fair this spring, journalist Zoe Bernard emphasized the central role Thiel has already played in the Christianization of Silicon Valley: I guarantee you, one Christian entrepreneur told her, there are people that are leveraging Christianity to get closer to Peter Thiel.
Indeed, his theological beliefs grimly complement his political ones. When you dont have a transcendent religious belief, he said, you end up just looking around at other people. And that is the problem with our atheist liberal world. It is just the madness of crowds. Remember, this is the same Thiel who, in a 2009 essay, openly questioned the compatibility of democracy and freedom, advocating for a system where power would be concentrated among those with the expertise to drive progress a new version of the survival of the fittest in the information age. Such a worldview couldnt contrast more strongly with the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus demonstrates his preferential option for the poor and his belief in bottom-up strategies rather than top down ones.
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