WASHINGTON (RNS) — If U.S. investor and hedge fund supervisor Scott Bessent is confirmed as President-elect Trump’s treasury secretary, he will likely be solely the second overtly homosexual cupboard secretary (after present secretary of transportation Pete Buttigieg) and the primary Senate-confirmed overtly LGBTQ+ individual to serve in a Republican administration in any capability.
However Bessent may broach a lesser-known boundary: If accredited by the U.S., he can be the primary energetic French Huguenot to serve within the cupboard in centuries — perhaps ever.
Bessent, who lives in Charleston, South Carolina, attends town’s French Protestant (Huguenot) Church of Charleston, the one energetic church left within the U.S. that’s related to the Protestant custom whose members largely arrived within the British American colonies on the run from the French king’s persecution within the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. U.S. members slowly amalgamated into Presbyterianism and different Protestant denominations centuries in the past.
Reached for remark, a church official stated solely that “it’s an thrilling honor for our fellow church member, Mr. Bessent, to be thought-about for such an essential publish in President-Elect Trump’s cupboard.”
Bessent’s peculiar non secular distinction suits properly with the eclectic non secular make-up of Trump’s top-level nominees, amongst them pastors, Catholic converts and one who owes his non secular rebirth to a e-book by a Swiss psychiatrist. Lengthy related to conservative Protestants, Trump has chosen to guide his second administration alongside a broader illustration of faiths than his first time period.
Based on the Deseret Information, businessman Howard Lutnick, nominated to run the Division of Commerce, is Jewish, however Trump has chosen fewer Jews than in 2016.
Most robustly represented are Catholics, reminiscent of Vice President-elect JD Vance; Sen. Marco Rubio, Trump’s selection for secretary of state; Lori Chavez-DeRemer, nominated for labor secretary; Sean Duffy, chosen for secretary of transportation; and Linda McMahon, who may oversee the Division of Training.
At the very least two members of the group — McMahon, whose husband, Vince, achieved fame for his promotion {of professional} wrestling, and Vance — are converts to Catholicism. Rubio’s non secular historical past is a little more advanced: Raised Catholic, his household additionally briefly grew to become members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints within the Nineteen Seventies.
“My mom desperately wished to offer her children a healthful surroundings,” he informed Christianity Immediately in 2012. “We had prolonged relations who had been and stay energetic members of the LDS church, which does present a really healthful surroundings.”
Sen. Marco Rubio speaks at Catholic College of America on Nov. 5, 2019, in Washington. Video screengrab through CUA
Rubio can be identified for frequenting Christ Fellowship Church, a Southern Baptist megachurch in Florida. In his 2012, “An American Son: A Memoir,” he attributed the choice to a want for his household “be a part of a healthful, family-oriented church.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who’s slated to run the Division of Well being and Human Providers, comes from some of the famously Catholic (and Democratic) American households: His uncle, John F. Kennedy, was the primary Catholic president. RFK Jr. has spoken typically of his Catholic upbringing and through the marketing campaign was featured in a pro-Trump advert produced by the group CatholicVote.
However in an interview with Sage Steele, Kennedy signaled his personal relationship to the church could also be sophisticated. “My relationship with God belongs to me, and … I don’t must report back to a priest or my Catholic religion,” he stated. Requested how Catholicism influenced his emotions about his two divorces, he referred to church instructing as “knowledge of the ages” however concluded, “morality is sophisticated.”
Chatting with Catholic outlet EWTN earlier this yr, Kennedy stated he wandered from religion whereas hooked on heroin for greater than a decade, however after a “non secular awakening,” he now prays “just about all day.” In a video referred to as “My Journey Towards God,” he traces his non secular shift to “Synchronicity” by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, citing Jung’s concept that “it’s irrelevant if there’s a God up there or not,” however “should you consider in a single, your probabilities of residing a more healthy life, and restoration, are higher.”
The instructing, Kennedy stated, spurred him to consider in God as a result of it might assist him together with his personal restoration.
Protestants are removed from absent from Trump’s cupboard. Along with Bessent and Trump (who recognized as Presbyterian for many of his life earlier than calling himself nondenominational Christian in 2020), Susie Wiles, Trump’s selection for chief of workers, was described by Politico as a “soft-spoken Episcopalian”; Kristi Noem, tapped to run the Division of Homeland Safety, attends Foursquare Household Worship Heart in Watertown, South Dakota; Doug Burgum, the potential secretary of the inside, has stated his Methodist upbringing “sustained” him after dropping kin. Douglas Collins, who may function secretary of Veterans Affairs, is a Baptist.
Scott Turner, the previous soccer participant nominated to run the Division of Housing and City Growth, serves as an affiliate pastor at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas.
“Two issues that my mother and father taught me: My mom taught me find out how to have an amazing religion within the Lord Jesus, and my father taught me an amazing work ethic,” Turner stated on a Prestonwood Christian Academy podcast in October.
Probably the most headline-grabbing Protestant of the bunch is navy veteran and Fox Information anchor Pete Hegseth, who sports activities a tattoo on his bicep studying “Deus Vult,” a rallying cry for the crusaders of the Center Ages. Hegseth attends Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship in Tennessee, a church affiliated with a denomination often called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Church buildings, co-founded by Doug Wilson, the controversial Christian nationalist pastor in Moscow, Idaho.
Hegseth not too long ago informed podcaster Sean Parnell he moved to Tennessee “particularly” so his youngsters may attend Jonathan Edwards Classical Christian Academy, a classical Christian college of the kind popularized by Wilson. Hegseth informed Parnell that in enrolling his youngsters on the college he hoped his youngsters would “develop into future tradition warriors.”
Whereas selling his e-book “Battle for the American Thoughts” — a piece heralding classical Christian schooling co-written with David Goodwin — Hegseth stated on one other podcast that he believes the “complete premise of our nation is predicated on Judeo-Christian values” and stated public schoolchildren are unable to debate advantage adequately as a result of they will’t learn the Bible in school. He informed yet one more podcaster that the U.S. was a “Christian nation,” however that left-leaning forces “chipped away” on the nation’s non secular foundations.
Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., administers the Home oath of workplace to Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, throughout a ceremonial swearing-in on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 3, 2019, through the opening session of the 116th Congress. (AP Photograph/Jose Luis Magana)
Tulsi Gabbard, nominated to be director of nationwide intelligence, grew to become the first Hindu elected to Congress in 2012 and took her oath of workplace on her private copy of the Bhagavad Gita. Gabbard’s mother and father have been related to the Science of Identification Basis, a controversial group with ties to the Worldwide Society for Krishna Consciousness. Gabbard has additionally been accused of supporting Hindu nationalism, a characterization she vehemently rejected in a 2019 Faith Information Service editorial whereas she was operating for president, calling the allegation “non secular bigotry.”
Onetime tv character and failed Pennsylvania Senate candidate Mehmet Oz is also confirmed because the administrator of Medicare and Medicaid. Oz, who has referred to as himself a “secular Muslim,” has stated that in his youth he aligned his non secular views with Sufism, a mystical sect of Islam, as a rejection of each his father’s strict adherence to a standard type of Islam and his mom’s adherence to the secular imaginative and prescient of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of recent Turkey.
The religion affiliation of some Trump nominees is unclear. Secretary of Vitality nominee Chris Wright has stated little publicly about his religion. Pam Bondi, the previous Florida lawyer common who may find yourself operating the U.S. Division of Justice, as soon as co-wrote an editorial on non secular freedom with Pentecostal pastor Paula White, Trump’s closest non secular adviser, however Bondi has not made her personal custom express. Whereas not apparently a member, Bondi has taken half in marketing campaign fundraising occasions related to the Church of Scientology.
Even much less clear is how the non secular variety of Trump’s cupboard will likely be mirrored in how he governs. Will he nonetheless be guided by his dependence on evangelical Christians, which led him in his first time period to appoint a rash of conservative Catholics who would overturn Roe v. Wade. Or, together with his final marketing campaign over, will his fascination with the politics of religion move away?
