Updated Feb. 26, 2026, 8:17 p.m. ET
- Trump’s State of the Union address invoked religion several times, including through his assertion that the nation’s “destiny is written by the hand of Providence.”
- The Freedom From Religion Foundation criticized such remarks, adding to it and other organization’s criticisms of Trump for, in their view, promoting Christian nationalism.
- Experts said American presidents have long invoked religion and God in speeches but described Trump’s rhetoric as distinct and more targeted to his base.
President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address included a continued push to boost the presence of religion in American public life.
Trump is far from the first president to invoke God in the annual speech.
Former President George W. Bush, for example, said in 2003 that the “liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to humanity.” Former President Joe Biden said in 2023 that “all of us, every one of us, is created equal in the image of God.”
Presidents across the political aisle have frequently closed their speeches with variations of “God bless America.” But to some religious studies experts and advocates of the separation of church and state, the language used in Trump’s Feb. 24 speech and his administration more broadly is different.
He touted what he described as a “tremendous renewal in religion, faith, Christianity and belief in God” in the United States as of late.
The slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk was a “big part of that,” Trump said, also saying Kirk was “martyred for his beliefs” and commending Erika Kirk, who attended the event.
“In Charlie’s memory, we must all come together to reaffirm that America is one nation under God,” Trump said.
Later in the speech, he described the United States as a beacon to the rest of the world.
“And when God needs a nation to work his miracles, he knows exactly who to ask,” Trump said, going on to say the nation’s “destiny is written by the hand of Providence.”
Such sentiments resemble “an updated version of manifest destiny,” the Freedom From Religion Foundation wrote on X. The organization is one of several that have raised concerns about the Trump administration’s language and actions related to religion.
In a statement to USA TODAY, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers called Trump the “greatest President for religious freedom in modern American history.”
“Only anti-Trump activists would complain about the President touting a renewal in religious faith that is spreading across our country during his historically successful State of the Union address,” she said.
Religion necessary to ‘have a great nation,’ Trump says
Efforts to boost religion’s presence in the public square have become a cornerstone of Trump’s second term.
He established the White House Faith Office in February 2025, which replaced Biden’s White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
He later established the Religious Liberty Commission, which was sued in February by organizations representing various religious traditions that alleged an illegal lack of diversity among the commission’s members. The group is composed of “almost exclusively Christians with one Orthodox Jewish Rabbi,” according to the lawsuit.
Trump also vowed to protect prayer in public schools at a Religious Liberty Commission hearing in September, saying at one point in his speech that, “To have a great nation, you have to have religion.”
Groups accuse Trump of promoting Christian nationalism
Numerous organizations have criticized such sentiments, characterizing them as inaccurate and threatening to the First Amendment, which bars the government from establishing a religion.
Among them are the American Humanist Association, which said ahead of the State of the Union address that it anticipated “attempts to pander to Christian nationalists.”
The Rev. Paul Raushenbush of Interfaith Alliance, who is involved in the lawsuit against the Religious Liberty Commission, said in his organization’s Feb. 24 “People’s State of the Union” that the Trump administration is “the most hostile to religious freedom in generations.”
The administration, in his view, has “weaponized religion for their white Christian nationalist crusade.”
Around 3 in 10 Americans are adherents of or sympathetic to Christian nationalism, the belief that America is or should be a Christian nation, according to data published in February by the Public Religion Research Institute.
Though there were the overt references to religion in Trump’s speech, there were also “smaller, more subtle” nods to Christian nationalist sentiments through some of the people and topics he highlighted, according to Public Religion Research Institute CEO Melissa Deckman.
In condemning the Somali community in Minnesota, for example, Trump said there are “large parts of the world where bribery, corruption and lawlessness are the norm.”
“Importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders brings these problems right here to the USA and it’s the American people who pay the price,” Trump said.
The Public Religion Research Institute’s study found that around two-thirds of Christian nationalism adherents and just over one-half of sympathizers agree that “immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.”
Religious references common among American presidents
Religious language has long been present in the American political sphere, experts told USA TODAY.
President Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, for example, was “famously religious,” said Daniel Conkle, a professor of law emeritus at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law.
Barbara Perry, a professor and co-director of the Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, referenced President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address that closed with a call to “go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
President Ronald Reagan later described the United States as a “shining city upon a hill” in his 1989 farewell address. The phrase drew on a 1630 sermon by English Puritan John Winthrop, which itself was based on Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.”
Perry described such examples as “religion light,” general references to a higher power that have been common among American presidents over the years.
Trump’s State of the Union address, however, was meant to appeal to a base largely composed of white evangelical Christians, Perry said.
Conkle described a “subtle distinction” among politicians when it comes to invoking religion. Such references may be used in an effort to “bring out the better angels in people’s characters,” he said, or to “suggest that God is on our side, we know what’s right and we’re going to … use this sense of special privilege to accomplish what we want to accomplish.”
Deckman and Perry said Trump’s religious language goes beyond lip service, adding that he’s delivered more substantive wins – appointing conservatives to the U.S. Supreme Court, for example, which led to the repeal of a constitutional right to abortion– for white evangelicals than past presidents who courted the same base.
“He talks the talk, as George W. Bush did, and I would say as Reagan did and as Jimmy Carter did, but he walks the walk,” Perry said.
BrieAnna Frank is a First Amendment reporter at USA TODAY. Reach her at bjfrank@usatoday.com.
USA TODAY’s coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
