Donald Trump: Defender of Christendom?

Raymond Ibrahim, 5/2/25

Is Donald Trump on his way to becoming the world’s chief Defender of Christianity? That’s what various media have been reporting; one Fox News headline asserts that Trump is “Vowing to ‘Defend the Christian Faith.’”

These claims trace back to a White House statement released on Palm Sunday (April 13) wherein Donald Trump spoke of Jesus Christ and Easter, or Resurrection, Sunday in terms that would edify the most faithful of Christians.  A few snippets from Trump’s statement follow:

This Holy Week, Melania and I join in prayer with Christians celebrating the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ—the living Son of God who conquered death, freed us from sin, and unlocked the gates of Heaven for all of humanity….

This week is a time of reflection for Christians to memorialize Jesus’ crucifixion—and to prepare their hearts, minds, and souls for His miraculous Resurrection from the dead.

… In His final hours on Earth, Christ willingly endured excruciating pain, torture, and execution on the cross out of a deep and abiding love for all His creation.  Through His suffering, we have redemption.  Through His death, we are forgiven of our sins.  Through His Resurrection, we have hope of eternal life.  On Easter morning, the stone is rolled away, the tomb is empty, and light prevails over darkness—signaling that death does not have the final word.

Wow; whoever thought you’d hear an American president speak like that? As Evangelist Franklin Graham observed,

[Trump’s] proclamation is historic and there has not been in my lifetime a president that has communicated the gospel as clearly as he has. … He’s not a preacher but [in] this proclamation he gave one of the best sermons for Easter that many pastors will give from the pulpit. Donald Trump is not afraid of his faith. He’s not ashamed of his faith, and he’s willing to let the world know it.

For those familiar with the perfunctory proclamations of previous administrations, it’s hard to deny Graham’s logic.

As for Trump’s vow to “defend” Christianity, here is the relevant excerpt from the president’s Palm Sunday proclamation:

This Holy Week, my Administration renews its promise to defend the Christian faith in our schools, military, workplaces, hospitals, and halls of government. We will never waver in safeguarding the right to religious liberty, upholding the dignity of life, and protecting God in our public square.

Interesting; but does all this make Trump a bona fide defender of Christianity—a Defensor Fidei (Defender of the Faith), an Athleta Christi (Champion of Christ), or even a Miles Christi(Soldier of Christ)—all epithets used to describe the great heroes of Christian history?

As the author of a book called Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam—and as someone who has closely researched the historic defense of Christianity—I am, I think, rather qualified to answer this question.

A great many of the defenders I have read and wrote about were, like Trump, leaders of men—counts, kings, and even emperors. However, unlike Trump, these men were also warriors, whose defense of Christendom usually culminated with their taking to the field of battle, and often being at the very center of the fray. Many of them died fighting for the faith.

While this may suggest that Trump is not a defender of Christianity, we still have not accounted for context—for time and place. The Defenders I write of lived in a time when battle was necessary; when the enemy, in this case Muslims, were always at the gate and in need of being repulsed, sword in hand.

Our times are obviously different. Sure, Muslims are still terrorizing Europeans, but that’s not because they are invading Europe, but rather because Europe’s ruling elite are allowing them in and enabling them against the native, once Christian, population—which is a whole other bizarre topic with no historic precedent.

In America, however, which is still nominally Christian, there are few physical attacks against Christianity, which would naturally require a physical defense, the sort which the Defenders of the West historically resorted to. (There are, to be sure, many attacks on churches, which are obviously physical, but they are already illegal and have law enforcement to contend with.) In short, Christianity in America need not be defended by force because the attacks on it are not by force.

Rather, attacks on Christianity—and these are many—are insidious and subtle; they revolve around entrenched polices, practices, and conduct.

As such, a defense of equal kind and measure—not one with swords and spears—is required. And to this end, the Trump administration is delivering.

Thus, two months before his recent Easter proclamation, on February 6, Trump “signed an Executive Order establishing a task force to end the anti-Christian weaponization of government and unlawful conduct targeting Christians,” according to a White House statement:

The task force, officially known as the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias … will review the activities of all departments and agencies to identify and eliminate anti-Christian policies, practices, or conduct… It will identify and address gaps in laws and enforcement that have contributed to anti-Christian conduct… The previous Administration engaged in an egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses. President Trump will not tolerate this abuse of government and is taking action to ensure that any unlawful and improper anti-Christian conduct, policies or practices are identified, terminated, and rectified.

The allusion to the previous Biden administration is especially apt for our discussion of context and the times. The following are among the many anti-Christian measures that took place under the Biden administration,

• The Biden Department of Justice brought felony charges and obtained multi-year prison sentences against nearly two dozen pro-life Christians for praying and peacefully demonstrating outside abortion facilities.
• The Biden Department of Justice ignored hundreds of attacks on Catholic churches, charities, and pro-life centers.
• In 2023, a Federal Bureau of Investigation memo asserted that traditional Catholics were domestic-terrorism threats and suggested infiltrating Catholic churches as “threat mitigation.”
• The Biden Department of Education sought to repeal religious-liberty protections for faith-based organizations on college campuses.
• The Biden Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sought to force Christians to affirm radical transgender ideology against their faith.
• The Biden Department of Health and Human Services sought to drive Christians out of the foster-care system.

Even in the context of Easter, the Biden administration made it a point to mock Christianity: if Trump just vocally and unabashedly proclaimed Christ’s resurrection in 2025, in 2024, the Biden Administration declared Resurrection Sunday as “Transgender Day of Visibility.”

So yes, all things being equal, and in the context of the times and circumstances, Trump is a Defender of Christianity. When compared to his contemporaries, Trump’s words and deeds are arguably even more impressive than those of history’s Christian defenders, when compared to their contemporaries.

But of course that, too, is a sign of the times: almost all premodern Christians were ready to fight for their faith, meaning the overall standard bar was much higher then. Put differently, any even moderately pro-Christian stance appears as an amazing achievement nowadays, though it would have been the expected norm in yesterdays.

Donald Trump: Defender of Christendom?