(OPINION) Eight years ago, conservative Christians wondered if Donald J. Trump, who had just been elected president, would truly be their champion. They were weary, and angry, after wandering in the wilderness of the Obama years when liberal values seemed ascendant and they felt powerless.
Mr. Trump delivered. A promise to “my beautiful Christians” came true even after he left office, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the constitutional right to abortion.
Now, as Mr. Trump’s sweeping re-election victory brings them to new heights of power, they believe his return is more than an electoral mandate: they believe it is a divine one.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly invoked a religious anointing since he survived an assassination attempt in July. And when he claimed victory on Tuesday night, he did so again.
“Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason,” Mr. Trump told supporters. “And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness.”
It is a remarkable claim for a president who claimed to be a “dictator” — if only on Day 1.
While politicians have often invoked God or cited passages from the Bible to make their case, the country is entering a new landscape, one where Mr. Trump is not only the leader of the Republican Party but also the de facto figurehead of conservative American Christianity.
And as his victory sunk in, his followers looked ahead to their new horizons. “We are rejoicing!” said Jason Rapert, president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, which began in 2019 to try to expand Christian influence in government.
He called it a “Red Sea moment in America,” a reference to the Book of Exodus, in which God miraculously delivers his people to freedom. Mr. Trump’s conservative Christian coalition will have power at the highest levels of all three branches of government.
Alongside Mr. Trump in the White House, Vice President-elect JD Vance will elevate an energetic strain of Catholicism that promotes a traditionalist vision of family life.
In Congress, Mike Johnson, the current and possibly future House speaker, has placed evangelical Christianity at the center of his political vision. And the Supreme Court that Mr. Trump helped create is poised to further strengthen religious rights.
Many of his supporters saw the battle for the White House as a kind of holy war, which Mr. Trump depicted as a choice between Christianity and its enemies.
It began with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, when grievance and religious fervor fueled participants’ rage and falsehoods about the 2020 election results. At recent campaign events, Mr. Trump has claimed that the Biden administration used the federal government to target Christians specifically.
The Republican Party platform released in July promised to create a federal task force that would fight anti-Christian bias, and Mr. Trump vowed to give special access to the Christian leaders who supported him.
In particular, many saw it as a war with Christianity on one side and pluralist, feminist values on the other.
Mr. Trump’s Christian allies frequently likened Vice President Kamala Harris, his opponent, to Queen Jezebel, a biblical figure who persecuted prophets.
“As Christians, we are obligated to do everything we can to stop Jezebel from taking the throne,” Mark Driscoll, an influential evangelical pastor in Arizona, posted on social media on Tuesday. Some pastors described her as “demonic.”
Mr. Trump’s message of male power complemented the growing anger among many conservative Christians about changing gender norms and family patterns.
That anger accelerated after the #MeToo movement and the combative Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative who was accused of sexually assaulting a high school classmate.
