America Needs a Protestant Revival in Public Life — Even as We Applaud the Trump Administration’s Christian Courage

Washington, D.C.

For the first time in decades, the United States has seen a presidential administration that speaks unapologetically about God, moral order, prayer, the dignity of the family, the spiritual foundation of national greatness, and even most notably “Jesus, who would go on to offer his life on the Cross for the redemption of sins and the salvation of the world..” Whatever one thinks of Donald J. Trump personally, it is impossible to deny that his administrations have been the most overtly Christian in a generation—pushing back against the cultural secularism that has dominated Washington since the 1960s.

Under Trump, federal agencies openly used language about religious liberty, the sanctity of life, God-given rights, and the spiritual dimension of American identity. Faith-based schools and ministries received protections ignored or targeted by prior administrations. Courts shifted dramatically toward judges who respect natural law. Even the language of public speeches—God, family, nation, providence—returned to a register far more familiar to early Americans than to the coastal bureaucracies of today.

In many ways, this represents a deeply welcomed Christian resurgence. And yet, if we are honest, the resurgence feels and sounds much more Catholic rather than Protestant. This is not an attack on Catholic believers. Catholics have been bold, involved, morally serious, unafraid, and often willing to fight cultural battles when many Protestants retreated into privatized spirituality. But it raises a real historical and theological issue:
America was not founded by Catholics.
America was founded by Protestants.
And that distinction matters.

The Protestant Roots of the American Idea

The English colonies—Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, New Haven, Rhode Island—were born from Protestant convictions about self-government, covenanted community, liberty of conscience, and the supremacy of Scripture over institutional hierarchy.

The Puritans, Pilgrims, Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and later Methodists and revivalists did not leave Europe because they wanted a lighter version of the Catholic-Anglican state church system. They left because they believed:
• Christ alone is King
• The conscience cannot be coerced
• The church must be pure
• The people must govern themselves under God
• Scripture—not ecclesiastical hierarchy—is the final authority

The Protestant worldview created what would later be called ordered liberty. It birthed town governments, covenant membership, local accountability, republican structures, and the doctrine that rights come from God, not from the state and not from a church hierarchy. In other words, the American political experiment is inseparable from Protestant theology. Even Catholic scholars acknowledge this.

Tocqueville Saw This Coming

Alexis de Tocqueville, the French observer who visited America in the 1830s, made a striking observation that now rings with prophetic force. He wrote:“As long as a people is Protestant, one can say that all the different Protestant denominations will remain independent of one another. But when a religion has become a common, public interest, one tends to form a single religious authority… I have no doubt that we are heading toward a time when Catholics will be the most numerous and powerful religious group in America.” (Democracy in America, paraphrased from several sections)

Tocqueville saw what most modern Americans have forgotten:
If Protestants retreat from the public square, the vacuum will be filled. And someone will fill it.

Today, in the courts, in legal movements, in academia, in Washington staff positions, and inside much of the conservative political infrastructure, Catholics are far more represented than Protestants. Again—not a criticism, but a fact. They stepped in because Protestants stepped out. Protestants, for decades, have been:
• Invisible in public life
• Absent from law schools
• Withdrawn from the cultural institutions
• Reluctant to speak with confidence in Scripture
• Shy about claiming America’s Protestant heritage
Meanwhile, Catholics built schools, legal institutes, cultural pipelines, and robust intellectual formation. Protestants often built megachurches.

Trump Highlighted the Contrast

Many of Trump’s strongest religious allies—judicial advisors, moral policy thinkers, pro-life strategists—were Catholic or Catholic-leaning Christians. That’s a credit to their courage, but it should also be a wake-up call to the descendants of the Pilgrims, Puritans, and early American Protestants.
If Protestant principles gave birth to America, and Protestant theology shaped liberty, and Protestant churches originally formed the American conscience, then the quiet withdrawal of Protestants from public leadership becomes a cultural crisis.
Because it creates the very dynamic Tocqueville warned about:
A Protestant nation operating on Catholic structures, Catholic personnel, and post-Protestant cultural assumptions.
The result?

Christian… yes.

But not quite the America the founders imagined.

A Call to Action for Protestants

If America is to recover her spiritual backbone and moral clarity, then Protestants must reclaim their role in shaping the nation. Not as spectators. Not merely as voters. But as leaders. We need Protestants to:
• Run for office
• Enter law, media, and education
• Build institutions
• Teach history
• Influence policy
• Speak confidently about Scripture
• Rebuild covenantal communities that echo 1620, not 1962
Protestants founded this country—not through domination, but through conviction:
that a self-governing people must first be a God-governed people.

Trump’s administration, for all its flaws, reopened the door for Christian expression in public life. But it also exposed the imbalance: Catholics were ready. Protestants were not. It is time to change that. Tocqueville warned that America would drift toward Catholic dominance if Protestants abandoned the field. Consider this your summons:
Protestants — re-enter the institutions.
Reclaim your heritage.
Recover the nation your forefathers built.
America will not be saved by politics alone. But she will not be saved without Protestants standing where their fathers once stood:
In the public square, with Scripture in hand, and courage in the heart. In the name of Jesus, amen.

References

• Democracy in America – Alexis de Tocqueville

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Photo by Leonhard Niederwimmer on Unsplash