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This post is the fifth in “MAGA and Masculinity in 2024,” a series that examines the societal fallout from right-wing hypermasculinity — and the people fighting its toxic messaging by positively redefining what it means to be a man. You can read the first post here, the second here, the third here and the fourth here.
“I need somebody with arms strong enough to wrestle the deep state and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild.”
That creepy line comes from a video called “God Made Trump,” which Donald Trump has shared in the past and did so again Wednesday. It’s essentially an ad that portrays the Republican presidential nominee as God’s gift to Earth.
As Phoebe Jones wrote for California’s Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey earlier this year, the video — which plays on Paul Harvey’s “So God Made a Farmer” speech — shows how Trump and the Christian nationalist movement he leads are steeped in toxic notions of masculinity:
While Harvey depicts the farmer as a humble caretaker of essential land, and as a quintessential neighbor and family figure, “God Made Trump” depicts Trump as a dominating messianic figure divinely chosen to “fight the Marxists” and “strong enough to wrestle the deep state.” The narrator compares Trump to a shepherd and the American people to a “flock” whom Trump has come to earth to defend by divine ordination. Comparisons of Trump to a messiah who exemplifies hegemonic masculinity are not new, but this video is a recent high-profile and stark example of this comparison being used to get him re-elected.
At one point, the ad literally says God needed a man who cares for the flock, as if to reiterate God’s purported preference. Trump has leaned into this kind of messianic masculinity with some of his recent rhetoric.
And evidence suggests that all of this is likely to appeal to Trump’s base, given the conservative movement’s evangelical beliefs and arcane ideas of manhood and masculinity. A Public Religion Research Institute poll from September, examining the connection between authoritarianism and Christian nationalism in the U.S., found that nearly 7 in 10 Republicans think society has become too soft or feminine.
The poll also found Christian nationalist “adherents” or “sympathizers” were more likely than others to agree with these statements:
- “In a truly Christian family, the husband is the head of the household and his wife submits to his leadership.”
- “Society is better off when men and women stick to the jobs and tasks they are naturally suited for.”
- “The truest vocation that any woman can attain in this life is to be a wife and mother.”
Today’s fiercely Christian conservative movement in the U.S. has become a hypermasculine cult of personality with Trump at the helm. He has permitted Christian men to cloak their desires for domination and power in religiosity — and is even selling Trump-branded Bibles.
And men in this movement have made hay with their shamelessness, openly promoting misogynistic policies like bans on abortion and trying to end no-fault divorces (along with discouraging abused women from divorcing their partners).
This hypermasculinization of the American church has coincided with a perhaps predictable trend. As The New York Times reported last week:
For the first time in modern American history, young men are now more religious than their female peers. They attend services more often and are more likely to identify as religious.
My suspicion is that this is a byproduct of MAGA masculinity pervading American Christianity — and crowding out young women who, given the choice, don’t want to suffer underneath it.