US President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the NATO summit of heads of state and government in The Hague, Netherlands June 25, 2025. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/Pool via REUTERS
Before launching his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump didn't have a lot of contact with evangelical Christian fundamentalism.
Trump was raised Presbyterian/Mainline Protestant — not evangelical — in Queens by a Scottish immigrant mother and an American father. And religion, even non-fundamentalist Protestant Christianity, wasn't a high priority for him.
In 2016, 2020 and 2024, however, white evangelicals were a key part of Trump's MAGA base. And he gets a lot of input from them, often attacking Democrats as anti-religion even though many prominent Democrats — from Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia) to MSNBC's the Rev. Al Sharpton to Catholic former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) — are quite religious and can quote the Bible with much more detail than Trump.
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In an article published on June 25, Salon's Amanda Marcotte warns that Trump is getting a lot of input from far-right white Christian nationalists on the Middle East and explains why that is dangerous.
"The wild claims made by leaders of the Christian Right have also been in the mix: that Trump is a prophet sent by God to usher in the End Times, and that attacking Iran is necessary to bring about the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ," the Philadelphia-based Marcotte explains. "It's this delusion that (Sen. Ted) Cruz was winking at, and it was likely a powerful reason Trump decided to escalate."
White evangelical Christian fundamentalists have a complex relationship with Israel. On one hand, they believe that Jews are damned to eternal hell because they don't accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah; on the other hand, they consider themselves very pro-Israel because of the role they think Israel will play in the End Times.
"Anthea Butler, a religious studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told Salon that Cruz was referencing evangelical belief in a Biblical prophecy that war involving Israel and the larger Middle East is 'only one more step in ushering in Jesus' return," Marcotte notes. "As journalist Sarah Posner explained at Talking Points Memo, 'this movement holds that a series of prophesied events, including Jews' return to Israel and invasion by armies of foreign countries including Iran, will culminate in a bloody, victorious battle at Armageddon.'"
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Marcotte continues, "As a result, the conflict between Iran and Israel has launched a frenzy within evangelical circles, as they hope the final battle is coming and they will get to witness the End Times…. Family Research Council head Tony Perkins was one of the architects of Project 2025, the far-right plan for a government takeover being implemented by Trump's administration. He's also a big believer in this Biblical prophecy and, as Kyle Mantyla of Right Wing Watch documented, has been using his podcast to frame war with Iran as the key to bringing Jesus back to Earth."
According to Marcotte, the "pressure from Trump's evangelical base" on the Middle East "offers insight into why he is cracking."
"He almost certainly would like to leave his intervention in Iran behind," Marcotte observes. "But he can't say no to evangelicals, because he knows that he’s nothing without them."
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Amanda Marcotte's full article for Salon is available at this link.