Why the Church is More Important Than Ever in the Trump Era

The deeper reality is that God forms history through worship before He reforms cultures through policy.

Evil Never Sabbaths

Since the inauguration of President Trump in 2025, many Christians have felt a renewed sense that the cultural and political winds are shifting in a more conservative direction. There are, in some respects, genuine reasons for encouragement. Yet we cannot fall back into thinking that somehow evil takes a sabbatical. Evil never ceases to impress its claims on feeble men and women who eagerly surrender to its whims. Political momentum has never, in human history, eliminated the need for spiritual vigilance.

The Christian role is to wake up every day, whether agendas favor or disfavor us, and to put on the armor of God as if Washington, D.C., never existed. There is no law in the state capitol that can change the hearts of men. Only Jesus, the belt of truth in the human soul, can lead men to the true capital of this world, Zion, City of our God. Administrations change. Coalitions rise and fall. But Christ remains seated, ruling until every enemy is placed beneath His feet.

History Moves Toward a Greater Telos

The months since 2025 have reminded us how quickly political energy can create the illusion of arrival. Horses and chariots will always crave our attention. Spectacle always promises security. But our response is not to let our guard down. We cannot assume that Christendom has reached some destination simply because cultural trends appear to move in a direction more favorable to Christian moral instincts.

Christian history is not static. It is not nostalgic. It moves us forward to an even greater telos. We are to believe and act as if God is giving us unparalleled opportunities to proclaim Messiah Jesus to the nations, to baptize and disciple infants and children, the young and the old.

The deeper reality is that God forms history through worship before He reforms cultures through policy. The Church gathered on the Lord’s Day is not retreating from public life. She is rehearsing the future of the world. Every baptism, every preached sermon, every Eucharistic meal is a declaration that Jesus is Lord of nations, not merely of private souls.

In this sense, political moments can open doors, but they cannot create the kingdom. Only the crucified and risen Christ does that through Word, Sacrament, and Spirit-formed people.

The Garden Before Us

What we have before us is still a garden that needs tending, caring, and nurturing. Our local community is that garden. Will we give it proper care, or will we assume that political powers have already done the work for us? The danger of favorable political seasons is always spiritual complacency.

Screwtape is ever so cunning. His strategies are ever so meticulous. He seeks whom he may devour. If he cannot defeat Christians through open hostility, he is quite content to sedate them through comfort and cultural affirmation. He is satisfied if Christians become spectators of cultural victory rather than cultivators of covenant faithfulness.

But in the strength of Jesus, the church carries on her agenda independent of what happens elsewhere, since we are His workmanship, ambassadors of peace to a chaotic garden. The Church does not wait for permission to be the Church. She baptizes. She teaches. She sings. She blesses. She buries. She marries. She proclaims forgiveness. She feeds the hungry. She trains children. She announces that another King reigns.

And this is how God remakes the world. Not first through empires, but through parishes. Not first through slogans, but through sacraments. Not first through power, but through a people who live as if Jesus already rules, because He does.

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From my interview “On the Need for Christian Eloquence” with Lennox Kalifungwa