"Historic Comeback" of Trump: A reconstruction of civil religion?

This is the picture taken after the shots rang out at Trump's rally in Bally, Pennsylvania (Wallace-Wells 2o24). After the moment close to death, surrounded by Secret Service agents, Trump raised his right fist, a powerful pose to show the proof of his life. The national flag above him against the blue sky seemed to commission Trump as the god-sent leader of America at that particular moment. This scene was so impressive that Trump succeeded in reversing his initial disadvantaged condition in the presidential election.

The picture filled with symbols, along with a series of conservative policies after Trump's inauguration, echoes the idea of "civil religion", which Bellah relied on to describe the formation of bonds among Americans. In the texts, he emphasized how the American civil religion borrowed elements from the Judeo-Christian tradition. On the one hand, the country's origin, the immigrants from England to the new continent, was linked to the Exodus in Judaism. Here, "Europe is Egypt, America, the promised land. God has led his people to establish a new sort of social order that shall be a light unto all the nations" (Bellah 1988: 104). He also introduces the case of the Civil War in the texts, one of the turning points in American history. As the leader of the North, Lincoln evoked the spirit of liberty from the Declaration of Independence and thus persisted in the war against slavery in the name of God's calling, which shaped the ideal of the civil region to be the firm standing on liberty. Moreover, the assassination of the controversial character after the success of the North, as the solidarity was still in crisis, associated him with the god-sent martyr. Hence, it provided the foundation for the established value of civil religion and glorified the president's character and missions (Bellah 1988: 105-108). These intentional associations, despite remaining differences between the civil religion and traditional religions, thus maintained the solidarity by the unified ideal and were then capable of mobilizing "deep levels of personal motivation for the attainment of national goals" (Bellah 1988: 110).

Looking back over Trump's path back to the White House now, his experiences, along with the background of his success, seemed to accord with the belief of civil religion described by Bellah. As the power and unity of the nation appeared to decline gradually, the split between parties and among their followers was further intensified. On January 6, 2021, the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., was attacked by a crowd of Trump's supporters to reject Biden's election. After his first term of presidency, as the former president, Trump was charged with four crimes at the stake of the qualification of presidential candidacy before July 2024, which made him a controversial figure, like Lincoln after the Civil War. As the indictments and doubts about the current and former presidents rose, the U.S. today somewhat conformed to what Tocqueville concluded on American jurisdiction around two centuries ago: "When the American republics begin to degenerate, I believe that it will be easy to recognize; it will be enough to see of the number of cases of political jurisdiction increases" (Tocqueville 1835: 185). 

At the turning point of the election, the assassination, like how the death of Lincoln reunited Americans from the divide, seemed to unite the Americans again under the pressure of the competition between the two parties. President Biden, along with most democrats, condemned the attempt of assassination together by claiming that "there is no place for political violence." People seemed to get rid of the rising temperature of the political debates and advocated for justice and peace rather than violent retributions. However, from today's perspective, the expected religious reconstruction of solidarity after Trump's success and inauguration wasn't sustained after the temporary consensus. In contrast to Bellah's assumed role of religious elements in national solidarity, providing Trump with religious symbolics based on the assassination attempt leads to greater friction and divide between the parties and their followers. As Trump kept imposing religious symbolics on himself, his followers, especially the religious groups, indeed deemed him a martyr, the god-sent leader of America. However, beyond his followers, the self-glorification, a reflection of Trump's personality rather than impersonal sacredness, created a larger distance between the two sides. Instead of a martyr, the followers of the Democratic Party considered him a narcissistic villain because of his deeds. The democratic politicians soon realized that the Republicans would treat the assassination as an important support for their political arguments as well, so they resumed the tension as soon as Trump started preparing for the next rally. The solidarity was thus far from being recovered, and the nation returned to the political game and divide again. 

That is a crucial real-world anomaly to Bellah's argument. The applications of religious symbolics in politics failed to reconstruct the national religion but intensified the divide. For me, this doesn't mean the complete failure of Bellah's theory, but an important supplement about the conditions when his theory is not entirely true. There is a key difference between the assassinations of Lincoln (and Kennedy) and Trump: Trump survived the event. An alive person will continue acting in their own wills and personalities. Trump kept repeating his eligible right to be elected for political purposes, which would strengthen his opponents' aversion to political opinions and values. On the contrary, regardless of one's will and personal interests, the one that passed away could allow for the glorification by everyone else for other collective benefits. Trump's survival kept the remaining personal will to manipulate the event for his personal interests, which couldn't allow for other manipulations to reconstruct the national civil religion. In that case, the assassination only succeeded in reinforcing the belief in Trump from his believers but had a limited role in bringing all of the citizens and elites together.

To sum up, the assassination attempt on Trump at the rally and subsequent effects share religious elements with the descriptions of Bellah on the religious American national belief.  Specifically for Trump, like the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, facing another threat of divide in the nation, the shooting provided him with religious elements of sacrifice among his followers, which evoked belief in the order of democracy regardless of the political parties. Nevertheless, the case indicates an important anomaly to Durkheimian focus on religions: the theories particularly focus on the impersonal aspect of the construction of social order but ignore the effect of personality during the construction. That is, along with what functionalism claims, we can indeed deify or sanctify something impersonal by providing meanings for it. However, we may not be capable of manipulating the meanings of personality in similar ways. Thus, it may potentially be the exception to the order and influence the society in an unexpected way. 

References: 

Bellah, Robert N. 1988. "Civil Religion in America." Daedalus. 117(3): 97-118.

Tocqueville, A. de. 1835. Democracy in America [Volume 1]. Indianapolis: Library Fund

Wallace-Wells, Benjamin. 2024. "The Attempt on Donald Trump's Life and An Image that Will Last." The New Yorker. July 13. Retrieved March 26, 2025 (https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-attempt-on-donald-trumps-life-and-an-image-that-will-last)