After having repeatedly depicted the presidential election as a spiritual clash between good and evil, leading figures in the movement to remake America as an explicitly Christian nation celebrated President-elect Donald Trump’s victory as a fulfillment of God’s divine will.
Lance Wallnau, a celebrity evangelist who has spent decades calling on conservative Christians to occupy positions of power and influence over society, told followers on an election night livestream that Trump’s victory had been prophesied years ago — a key step in God’s plan to usher in a new era of Christian dominion around the world.
“There’s a different dialogue about spirituality happening in America,” said Wallnau, who had worked to mobilize Trump voters in swing states. “And with Donald Trump,” he continued, God has “given permission to take it right to the White House.”
White evangelical support for Trump has not wavered since he pledged in early 2016 while running for the GOP presidential nomination that if he were elected, “Christianity will have power.”
“If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else,” Trump continued. “You’re going to have somebody representing you very, very well. Remember that.”
Trump renewed that vow in the 2024 campaign, telling Christians they would be granted “power at a level that you’ve never used before.” He promised to crack down on acceptance of transgender people in schools and in society. And his campaign said it would create a task force focused on “investigating all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment, and persecution against Christians in America.”
While Trump, married three times and found liable for sexual abuse, might not seem an obvious fit to lead a religious movement, Wallnau and other evangelicals championed him as a flawed leader who had been anointed by God to save America from the demonic influence of Democrats. That belief took on new fervor in July after Trump survived the first of two assassination attempts.
Trump embraced that narrative in his victory speech in Florida early Wednesday.
“Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason,” he said. “And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness.”
Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
About 80% of white evangelicals backed Trump in Tuesday’s election, the NBC News Exit Poll shows. He also won an estimated 67% of Latino evangelicals, according to the poll, and 14% of Black evangelicals.
The chain of events that propelled Trump back to the White House represented a “dream scenario” for Christians leaders who have sought to portray him as God’s chosen vessel, said Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the nonprofit Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Maryland.
Taylor, who has extensively researched the role Christian Trump loyalists played in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, said he believed the view of Trump as ordained by God could give him license to take extreme actions in office.
As a candidate, Trump repeatedly spoke of seeking retribution against political opponents, including threats to jail officials who criticized him or worked to stop his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Some Christian leaders have echoed those calls. Other evangelicals hope Trump will support a national abortion ban and roll back the rights of LGBTQ people.
“He has the capacity now to claim not only a democratic mandate, but a divine mandate,” Taylor said. “And there are legions of American Christians who are primed to embrace that narrative and to provide theological, moral and spiritual cover to whatever Trump decides to do.”
Dutch Sheets, a self-described apostle who led a series of prayer rallies in the months after Trump’s 2020 election defeat in a bid to keep him in office, celebrated Wednesday in a video posted online.
Sheets told his followers that Trump’s victory would help usher in what he called a “Third Great Awakening” — what he and other believers say will be a global revival of fervent Christian faith around the world.
“The reformation will take some time, but we will get there,” Sheets said. “And Trump is a necessary part of this reformation.”
Sheets and Wallnau did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
During his first term in office, Trump and his staff welcomed Christian leaders, including Sheets, to the White House. He further earned their loyalty when the three justices he appointed to the Supreme Court helped overturn the abortion rights enshrined in Roe v. Wade.
Trump, Taylor said, may now be empowered to go further.
“I think you’re going to be seeing much more explicit advocacy of Christian nationalism and Christian supremacy from the White House,” Taylor said, noting Trump’s close connection to Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, of Louisiana, who has embraced the claim that America was founded as an explicitly Christian nation.
Johnson and others who shared that worldview were on hand for Trump’s victory speech at a convention center in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Christian singer Sean Feucht has traveled the country for years, holding pro-Trump worship rallies at state capitols and praying for Christians to win power and adopt laws based on their values. Feucht posted photos of himself in a red “Make America Great Again” hat at Trump’s campaign party. Around 3 a.m., he recorded as those gathered to celebrate Trump’s victory began to sing a classic Christian hymn.
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee
How great Thou art, how great Thou art.
Afterward, Feucht, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, shared his jubilation with hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook.
“God was exalted!” he wrote. “America was saved!”