Republicans Believe They Have the Real Answer to Unity: Religion

The Republican Party’s newly embraced message of unity arrived in Milwaukee this week as a deus ex machina—emphasis on the deus part.

“God saved Trump” has become one of the repeated mantras at the Republican National Convention, with top officials on the Trump campaign endorsing the notion that only the Lord Himself prevented Donald Trump from being struck in the head by a bullet.

Even though a firefighter died at the Pennsylvania rally on Saturday, the focus among Republicans has been on the bullet that grazed the former president’s ear.

“When you have an incident like that, where but for a millimeter’s difference, we would be having a very different conversation right now,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), one of the highest priority House members for the GOP’s efforts to hold the chamber, told The Daily Beast as he made his way through a security checkpoint.

Lawler said it’s easy to see why the party has responded with so much more religiosity following the shooting.

“Of course people are going to rely on their faith in a moment like that.”

God saving Trump has been front and center all week, starting off with the perfunctory benediction in the convention hall.

“We give thanks to you [God] for keeping President Trump safe,” Pastor James Roemke said on Tuesday, adding an RNC-approved riff to a prayer from the 1978 Lutheran Book of Worship, according to Deseret News, a Salt Lake City-based publication owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Yet convention attendees have taken things a step further over the first half of the ceremonies, telling The Daily Beast they think more Judeo-Christian values in American life could help bring about the very unity they’re suddenly championing.

“I think if you have institutions that decide in states and even at the local level that they want to bring prayer back or into schools, I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who accompanied Trump in the VIP box later on Tuesday night, told The Daily Beast as he walked toward the heavily fortified perimeter around the convention area.

Still, other Republicans are all for the unity part of the messaging, but not as eager to talk about putting God in schools or using a post-assassination attempt bump for Trump’s political prospects to push more religion into secular public life.

“I believe, as most people of faith do, that the hand of God was involved in sparing the country and the former president of that incident,” Lawler said. Yet when asked about mandatory displays of the Ten Commandments in public schools—as Louisiana did in late June—Lawler quickly deflected.

“I don’t think that’s a problem in New York,” he said before walking away.

Other candidates in swing states are trying to thread the needle, touting their pro-Christian bona fides without alienating more secular voters they may need to rely upon to win.

“I’m in favor of sort of creating an environment where faith is celebrated,” Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dave McCormick told The Daily Beast as he walked up to Fiserv Arena early Wednesday afternoon.

Showing the Ten Commandments in schools, however, is something McCormick said he’s not as interested in.

“I don’t know if I would mandate faith in schools. I’m much more about school choice.”

McCormick said he’s been reflecting on how to turn the temperature down in campaign rhetoric.

“I certainly have used this as an opportunity to reinforce the kind of campaign I want to run,” McCormick said, saying he wants to “punch hard on issues” but “in a way that promotes civil discourse.”

The religion question, for McCormick, is part of what makes America so special. He pointed to the upbringing of his wife, former Trump administration official Dina Powell, as an example.

“On religion, listen, I have traveled around the world and my wife is a Coptic Christian,” McCormick said of Powell, with Coptics representing Egypt’s largest minority population.

Describing how she “came to America to practice her faith,” he said “the freedom to choose how to practice your faith” is more important than any government-dictated edicts on religion’s place in society.

Even in his world travels where he’s been to places with more of a freedom from religion approach over a freedom of religion approach, McCormick said he’d pick the religious freedoms offered in the U.S. any day.

Then there was former Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), who said the mix of unity and religious overtones has made this year’s convention more fun and upbeat than any other in the last 20 years.

Gardner said he’s not worried about an uptick in religious rhetoric costing the GOP in competitive races.

“This is the first positive feeling Republicans have had going into a convention in 20 years,” Gardner said.

And for that, thank God.