President Donald Trump has officially changed his denominational allegiance. He is only the second president in US history to do so after President Eisenhower. In written interview the President Elect announced that he would join the 180,000 people who’ve left Presbyterian Church (USA) in the past four years. In a written interview with Religion News Service, Trump explained his reasoning.
“I now consider myself to be a non-denominational Christian,” Trump said to RNS. “Melania and I have gotten to visit some amazing churches and meet with great faith leaders from around the world. During the unprecedented COVID-19 outbreak, I tuned into several virtual church services and know that millions of Americans did the same.” Trump has appeared at dozen of churches across the nation.
The Mainline Presbyterian church has disputed Trump’s association and the president admits he was not a regular church attendee before his election. He has attended Pastor Norman Vincent Peale’s church for sometime and has cited Peale’s book The Power of Positive Thinking. According to a prominent evangelical supporter Trump is a “baby Christian.”
A large number of Americans think Trump isn’t deeply religious. A Public Religion Research Institute poll found that around 40 percent of Americans think the 45th president “is mostly using religion for political purposes.” White Evangelical Republicans, who voted for Trump is large numbers, see him differently. Fifty-nine percent of this demographic say the President-Elect has strong ties to faith.
Trump is one of many Americans who’ve disassociated from mainline protestant denominations. This is a significant social trend. A third of American’s identified with a mainline denomination in 1970. As of 2024, that number is slightly more than 10 percent. The Presbyterian Church (USA) has lost an average of 4.5% of its membership every year Trump was in office. The mainline denomination has gone from 3.1 million in 1984 to 1.3 million today.
Switching religious allegiance in the US is common. This includes both dramatic ‘born-again’ conversions, but also less dramatic changes such as moving from a Methodist to Baptist church after a move. The Cooperative Congressional Election Study found 1 out of every 6 Christians changed their religious identification over four years.
Around 20% of Presbyterians stopped calling themselves Presbyterian and reassociated themselves with something else—often “nondenominational.” Some have also stopped identifying with the Church at all. Many have started self describing as “none” or “nothing in particular.” ‘Nondenominational’ and Pentecostal groups have experience dramatic growth over recent years.
Dwight Eisenhower was not particularly spiritual before he was elected. He was called “a man without a church and without a faith.” But his lack of church association became a problem during the 1952 election. At the urging of Billy Graham, he was baptized into a church on his first day in office. He added the phrase “under God” to the pledge of allegiance. Eisenhower said, “Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.” He was instrumental in promoting the national prayer breakfast. The President would often mention his “a deeply felt religious faith.”