By S.A. McCarthy
The Washington Stand
The United States needs “more religion,” according to former President Donald Trump. On a podcast episode on Tuesday with computer scientist Lex Friedman, Trump said, “I think our country’s missing a lot of religion. I think it really was a much better place with religion. … It was almost a guide, you know, to a certain extent.” Trump added, “You want to be good to people. Without religion, there’s no real, there are no guard rails. I’d love to see us get back to religion, more religion in this country.”
In comments to The Washington Stand, Joseph Backholm, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for Biblical Worldview, said that Trump “is undoubtedly correct about that, I hope he really means it.” Backholm continued, “Os Guiness described the connection between religion and freedom well in his Golden Triangle of Freedom. Freedom requires virtue, but virtue requires religion. At the same time, religion doesn’t flourish societally without freedom.” He concluded, “So if we want a free society, we need freedom, virtue, and religion and we shouldn’t expect an increasingly secular culture will end up generating more virtue and more freedom.”
Friedman had asked Trump, “How often do you think about your death? Are you afraid of it?” The former president said that he had recently been asked the same question by a friend of his, who had a “dark” outlook on death. “I mean, you know, if you’re religious, you have, I think, a better feeling towards — supposed to go to heaven, ideally, not hell,” he said.
Trump made similar comments in July, just days after surviving an assassination attempt. “There was blood pouring everywhere, and yet in a certain way I felt very safe because I had God on my side. I felt that,” Trump recounted of the July 13 attempt on his life during the Republican National Convention. He declared, “I’ll tell you: I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of Almighty God.”
Earlier this year, Trump called on American Christians to back him in the voting booth in November, saying that November 5 will be “Christian Visibility Day.” He repeated his call to action at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference in June. Trump said that too many Christians “go to church every Sunday, but they don’t vote.” He asked, “Do you know the power you would have if you would vote? … Working side by side, we’re going to defeat crooked Joe Biden, we’re going to defend our values, and we’re going to make America great again.”
“The radical Left is trying to shame Christians, silence you, demoralize you, and they want to keep you out of politics. They don’t want you to vote, that’s why you have to vote,” Trump said. He continued, “If you vote, we cannot lose. They don’t want you to vote. But Christians cannot afford to sit on the sidelines. If Joe Biden gets in, Christianity will not be safe in a nation with no borders, no laws, no freedom, no future.” Trump has also pointed out that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, is “militantly hostile to Americans of faith.” Her record consists of everything from pro-abortion extremism to letting the FBI target American Catholics and pro-lifers.
However, conservative Christians have expressed concerns over Trump’s own positions on abortion. Although he appointed the U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Trump has adopted a more tepid stance on abortion since early this year, calling it an issue for individual states. More recently, the 45th president suggested that he might even support a pro-abortion constitutional amendment on the ballot in Florida. However, following backlash from pro-lifers, Trump did announce that he would vote against the amendment.
Originally published at The Washington Stand!
