TRUMP TIMES: THE RISE OF THE CATHOLIC RIGHT
By John Battle, Commission Chair
The Financial Times ended the year with a major two page spread “The Ascension of the Catholic Right“. The new year copy of “Private Eye” included a Jonesy cartoon of Jesus delivering the sermon on the mount; citing “Blessed are the meek”, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth”, “Love your enemies” “Blessed are the peacemakers”. A man at the back of the crowd in a Maga hat turns and asks: “What the hell kind of Christian is this guy anyway?”
Interpreting Jesus and his Gospel has fractured the Christian traditions from the origins, leading to divisions, conflicts, splits and wars, not least in the United Kingdom’s history. The violent divisions of the Reformation and the Puritan migration to America in the seventeenth century sparked off conflicts there that are evident today. As 1960’s singer Joan Baez stressed: each claiming “God on their side“.
Christianity has long featured in polarising American society and, increasingly, its current politics. In a now more extremely and crudely binary America, Christianity is a crucial determinant and one from which Catholics are not exempt.
Catholics represent a fifth of all Americans and constitute the largest single voting block. Brian Burch, the American Ambassador to the Holy See is a personal friend of President Trump and his “Catholic Vote” organisation to help return him to the White house. 59% of American Catholics backed Trump not least as a result of geodata collected from churchgoers phones by “Catholic Vote”.
Prominent Catholics are entrenched in President Trump’s administration (a third of his Cabinet), including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Mario Rubio and Defence (“War”) Secretary Pete Hesketh and Sean Duffy (Secretary of State for Transportation).
They are not shy to claim to apply precepts of the Catholic faith as they see them to the politics of governing America today. Nor can they be crudely dismissed with the “Christian nationalists” label – who effectively want to convert Americans at the point of a sword. There are Christian nationalist currents in the Maga movement. “Dominionism” is popular among Trump supporters – particularly in the form of the National Apostolic Reformation movement which aims to “reclaim society for God and America”, leading to a “Gilead” version of conversion.
There are also the right wing institutes, think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation led by influential Catholic political strategist Kevin Roberts. Tech billionaires such as Catholic Peter Thiel of Pay Pal and Palantir is a future “survivalist” who wanted to build a “post apocalyptic” bunker in New Zealand and proposed “seasteading” – building artificial islands for survivors beyond government controls. He claimed in the FT that Trump’s second term heralds “a good apocalypse” that will “adjudicate the sins of those who govern us today”. More recently shock jock media hosts and influences such as Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes no longer speak of “Judeo-Christian” values. They dispense with the “Judeo” and insist on espousing an aggressive Christian nationalism.
But while Evangelical and the Puritan voice is loud in the Republican tradition there are also prominent and serious Catholic conservative intellectuals. Patrick J Deneen, Professor of Political Science at Notre Dame, has, since his book ” Why Liberalism Failed” published in 2018, emerged as the leading Catholic conservative intellectual, describing himself as “a Common Good conservative” rooted in Catholic social teaching. He pinpoints the liberal democratic focus on “borderlessness” as the core liberal virus breaking the interests of American workers (and voters) under a banner of neo-liberal economic globalisation. His focus is on family and local community, anti consumerist, anti monopoly and protectionist., and critical of so called “woke” ideas of race and identity politics.
Closer to home, James Orr, Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Cambridge University has been described by Vice President JD Vance as his “British Sherpa”. Professor Orr was appointed a senior advisor to Nigel Farage in October 2025. He chairs the Edmund Burke Foundation and holds strong right wing views aiming to “strengthen natural conservative principles”. He has referred to asylum seekers as “invaders” and is a member of the Free Speech Union.
In other words, as Rowan William notes in the New Year edition of the New Statesman (12 dec/ 8 Jan) US style “Christian nationalism” is slowing infiltrating the far right here through insistence on “Christian identity” as a condition of citizenship.
The idea that society should be governed by explicitly Christian principles — with government recognising the Lordship of Jesus Christ and basing law on the Ten Commandments with penalties for non-compliance — shows how once unthinkable proposals become normal.
Topics once considered fringe are now pushing mainstream politics toward fundamental questions of national identity and social cohesion. They require theo-political and prophetic deep reflection and considered compassionate and practical responses in detail.
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