President Donald Trump raised eyebrows when he repeatedly invoked God in his brief address to the nation after ordering the bombing of Iran.
He closed his four-minute Sunday address by saying, “I want to just thank everybody, in particular, God. I want to just say, ‘We love you, God, and we love our great military, protect them.’ God bless the Middle East, God bless Israel, and God bless America.”
Some critics said Trump appeared insincere when referencing God in his address. Others slammed the president for saying “God bless Israel” before he said “God bless America.”
The thrice-married Trump, who grew up in a Reformed Church but rarely attends services as an adult, is not known as a religious man. However, he has made a habit of name-dropping God since entering politics a decade ago. Here are the most memorable times Trump has invoked the Creator.
‘Greatest Jobs President God’s Ever Created’
Trump promised early MAGA supporters at his presidential campaign launch on June 16, 2015, that he would be the “greatest jobs president that God ever created.” It was the first of many divine invocations during the campaign, which likely helped him carry 81 percent of the evangelical vote in 2016.
Still, Trump reminded America shortly after that he is not a typical Christian. He admitted during a Q&A that he does not ask God for forgiveness but still participates in Holy Communion.
“When I drink my little wine, which is about the only wine I drink, and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness, and I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed,” he said. “I think in terms of, ‘Let’s go on and let’s make it right.’”
Justifying Syrian Airstrikes
Months into his first term, Trump referenced God in defending a U.S. airstrike against a Syrian airbase. The strike came shortly after the regime of Bashar Assad allegedly used chemical weapons to murder 80 people, including children. Trump said such weapons should never be used on a “child of God.”
“Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the life of innocent men, women, and children,” he said on April 6, 2017. “It was a slow and brutal death for so many, even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror.”
The Infamous Bible Photo Op
The latter days of MAGA 1.0 were often chaotic, especially during Trump’s “stop the steal” campaign. One of the most memorable moments of Trump’s first term came when he marched from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church—where Black Lives Matter protesters were teargassed to clear a path for him and his top advisers—so he could briefly pose with a Bible.
Trump stared stoically and turned the Bible in various positions for photographs. This included him bobbing it up and down and, for more than 15 seconds, raising it above his right shoulder as he let news cameras record and photograph him. Asked if the Bible he was holding belonged to him, he responded that it was “a Bible,” not his own.
COVID-19 Was a Divine Challenge—That Trump Won
The COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on the U.S. economy in 2020. The economy was still struggling in August, but Trump was in spin mode as election day neared. He told a crowd in Minnesota that he created the “greatest economy in the history of the world” before the COVID-19 pandemic, and now he’d had to do it again—something he described as a test from God.
“We did it, we built the greatest economy in the history of the world, and now I have to do it again,” Trump said. “You know what that is? That’s right, that’s God testing me. He said, ‘You know, you did it once,’ and I said, ‘Did I do a great job, God? I’m the only one that could do it?’ He said, ‘That you shouldn’t say. Now we’re going to have you do it again.’ I said, ‘Okay, I agree. You got me.’”
‘Saved by God’ in Assassination Attempt
Trump’s invocations of God spiked after he narrowly survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. During his inaugural address, Trump said in the Capitol rotunda that he was “saved by God to make America great again.”
Trump parroted a similar line during a joint address to Congress, saying, “I believe my life was saved that day in Butler for a very good reason. I was saved by God to make America great again. I believe that.”
He said in separate interviews that his survival was “a miracle” and that it made him “more of a believer in God.”
Trump Urges Americans to ‘bring God Back into Our Lives’
Trump told the annual National Prayer Breakfast in February that he wants the United States to “bring religion back.” He claimed that an added dose of religion would inspire Democrats and Republicans to eat lunch together again, which he said was the norm when he was growing up.
“We have to bring it back much stronger,” Trump said of religion. “It’s one of the biggest problems that we’ve had over the last fairly long period of time.”
He added that people “can’t be happy without religion, without that belief … Let’s bring God back into our lives.”
God sent Trump to… implement tariffs?
Trump has made several references to God on Truth Social in his second term. This included him posting a black-and-white graphic of himself walking down the street on May 28 amid his tariff flip-flops. “HE’S ON A MISSION FROM GOD,” it reads. “& NOTHING CAN STOP WHAT IS COMING.”
The president has also embraced prayer in MAGA 2.0. In addition to having a rousing prayer at his inauguration, which was criticized as too over-the-top, he opened his first cabinet meeting with a prayer and signed an executive order on May 1 to establish a “Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty.”
