The federal government has released multiple recruitment videos featuring scripture verses. “What’s striking is less that the federal government is using Bible verses in its promotional videos than that the agency doing the recruiting is Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” Wehner argues. “The message the Trump administration is sending is not subtle: ICE is doing the work of God. The brutal and sometimes lethal tactics being used by a growing number of ICE agents are divinely sanctioned. Come join this holy campaign.”
This isn’t the first time in history such a thing has happened: In the 1920s, a movement emerged within the German Evangelical Church that supported Adolf Hitler. The Deutsche Christen—or “German Christians”—promoted the idea of a “heroic” Jesus, even an Aryan Jesus, who fought against the Jewish influence in German life. They were encouraged by the anti-Semitic writings of Martin Luther. “America in 2026 is not Germany in 1936; far from it. But we would be mistaken to pretend that political movements that aren’t as malevolent as Nazism can’t still advance sinister ends,” Wehner writes.
“Huge numbers of American fundamentalists and evangelicals—not just cultural Christians, but also those who faithfully attend church and Bible-study sessions and prayer gatherings—prefer the MAGA Jesus to the real Jesus. Few of them would say so explicitly, though, because the cognitive dissonance would be too unsettling,” Wehner writes. “It’s rather remarkable, really, to see tens of millions of Christians validate, to themselves and to one another, a political movement led by a malignant narcissist—who is driven by hate and bent on revenge, who mocks the dead, and who delights in inflicting pain on the powerless.”