A bold new global mission beckons, but the political faultlines are obvious: A yuuuge part of the “America First” ethos is internally focused, prioritizing our national self-interest above all else. That means, no more “nation building,” no more “forever wars,” and no more “making the world safe for democracy.” These GOP voters want the American government — and the American president, of course — to stop wasting our national treasure on high-minded ideological crusades, and focus like a laser beam on the American people.
They’re not exactly isolationists, but they’re not too far removed from it either.
But on the other hand, MAGA’s Christian roots were there from the beginning. (Which helps explain why 80% of evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in 2024.) And after the tragic death of Charlie Kirk, the MAGA movement and Christianity have coalesced, with evocations of Jesus, the Gospels, and Christian theology now commonplace at MAGA-aligned events.
Case in point: Vice President JD Vance’s speech at Turning Point USA.
From the Catholic News Agency:
U.S. Vice President JD Vance, America’s second Catholic vice president, laid out a distinctly Christian vision for American politics in a speech this week, declaring that “the only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been and, by the grace of God, we always will be a Christian nation.”
Speaking to more than 30,000 young conservatives at Turning Point USA’s AmFest 2025 some three months after the death of its founder Charlie Kirk, Vance called for a politics rooted in a Christian faith that honors the family, protects the weak, and rejects what he described as a decades-long “war” on Christianity in public life.
The Christian faith has provided a “shared moral language” since the nation’s founding, the Yale-trained lawyer argued, which led to “our understanding of natural law and rights, our sense of duty to one’s neighbor, the conviction that the strong must protect the weak, and the belief in individual conscience.”
A few days later, President Trump authorized U.S. military strikes on Christmas night, striking “ISIS terrorist scum” in Nigeria who had butchered Christians. Trump also promised to escalate these attacks if more Christians are targeted.
“Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!” Trump said Thursday on Truth Social.
“I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was. The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes, as only the United States is capable of doing.
“Under my leadership, our Country will not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper,” he continued. “May God Bless our Military, and MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues.”
Pardon the (awful) pun, but MAGA is at the “cross”-roads. (I’ll see myself out.)
It’s too early for polling data, but I suspect Trump’s strikes in Nigeria were well received within the MAGAverse, even though, in the strictest sense, it probably wasn’t an “America First” policy.
Instead, it was a new spiritual mission: The United States of America, global defenders of Christendom!
And that’s an intriguing political development. Potentially, it’s a game-changer.
Because the American people have always been fascinated by grand spiritual missions. We went from being “endowed by our Creator” during the Revolutionary Era to Manifest Destiny just a few decades later. From the early 1900s through the mid-2010s, it was one national mission after another: “Making the world safe for Democracy.” “The war to end all wars.” Stopping Nazism. NATO and the Cold War. The War on Terror. Bringing peace and democracy to the Middle East.
That all stopped in 2016, when then-candidate Donald Trump prioritized an “America First” agenda that internalized our mission, focusing less on moral conflicts and more on pragmatic concerns. Instead of isolating the Islamists in Qatar and Saudi Arabia who had bankrolled terror campaigns against Christians, Jews, and “infidels,” Trump welcomed them in, sought common ground, and did more to bring peace to the Middle East than any president in U.S. history.
Without Trump’s approach, the Abraham Accords would’ve been a pipedream. It required a pragmatic touch, not a moral line in the sand.
Most of the time in politics, pragmatism is more effective than moral absolutism.
Trouble is, pragmatism isn’t very exciting. It’s spiritually empty, because it’s based on realism, not a moral call-to-arms.
Moral missions stir our passions; they’re an easy PR sell, because they appeal to our emotions, and emotional arguments (especially moral outrage) are the most effective way to move the needle in politics.
Pragmatism appeals to our sense of logic and realism. (Yawn.) That’s significantly less motivating.
All this sets the stage, where reorienting the MAGA agenda to becoming the new global defenders of Christendom will likely be a winning issue for Republican candidates. It’ll be a VERY powerful PR message on the 2028 campaign trail, particularly during GOP primaries.
But it’s not without risk.
If you’re an “America First” voter who’s frustrated with high prices and hates wasting money on foreign aid, foreign conflicts, and foreign entanglements, it’s unclear how happy you’ll be when your tax dollars are used to protect Nigeriens — or any other non-Americans.
It’s not unreasonable to interpret “America First” as contradictory with such a mission.
If those voters switch sides and pull the lever for the Democrats in 2026 and 2028 (or, more likely, simply don’t vote at all), the Republicans will lose in a landslide. We need “all hands on deck” to win.
There’s also the problem of demographics: Over the past few decades, tens of millions of American people have turned their back on Christianity.
This story ran today on Axios — “The Great Unchurching of America“:
The U.S. is undergoing its fastest religious shift in modern history, marked by a rapid increase in the religiously unaffiliated and numerous church closures nationwide.
[…]
By the numbers: Nearly three in 10 American adults today identify as religiously unaffiliated — a 33% jump since 2013, according to the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).
- That’s quicker than almost any major religious shift in modern U.S. history, and it’s happening across racial groups, an Axios analysis found.
- About four in ten Americans ages 18 to 29 identify as religiously unaffiliated (38%), an increase from 32% in 2013, PRRI said.
[…]
Zoom in: Around 57% of Americans today seldom or never attend religious services, a jump from 40% in 2000, per a recent Gallup survey.
- An unprecedented 15,000 churches are expected to shut their doors this year, far more than the few thousand expected to open, according to denominational reports and church consultants.
Which means we have a smaller universe of Christian/religious voters to activate. In PR terms, there are fewer fish in the pond.
But that doesn’t mean a pivot to defending global Christendom wouldn’t pay political dividends. Arguably, this spiritual attrition would work in our favor, because MAGA’s emotional argument would have greater urgency: Our back is against the wall, and we’ve gotta fight TODAY to save the soul of America!
In spite of — or, perhaps more accurately, because of — Christianity’s decline in American life, there’s an intriguing new mission for MAGA to champion. Of all the under-the-radar political stories of 2025, this one is probably the most underreported and underdiscussed, yet potentially the most consequential.
And depending on what happens next, it could redefine U.S. foreign policy for at least a generation.
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