Trump Assassination Attempt: 4 Notable Christian Dimensions

National Catholic Register, 19 July 2024

The implications of the assassination attempt will present a challenge for Christians to read the signs of the times.

The attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump Saturday has far-reaching personal and political consequences. Many commentators took it as a worrying indicator of the state of U.S. culture, or at least political culture. 

Yet beyond the personal, political and cultural, there were also notable Christian dimensions to that terrible evening in Butler, Pennsylvania. Four are worth noting.

Reading Providence

It is not unusual for any near brush with death to prompt reflections on why a life was spared, often considered to be “miraculously” spared. When prominent people are involved, that reflection is more widespread. And so, after President Trump survived being shot, the question was asked: Did God spare his life?

A very clear answer was given by many of Trump’s supporters: God saved his life. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, addressing the Republican National Convention on Monday, in a speech framed by biblical references, called Trump’s survival a “miracle” when the “devil came to Pennsylvania.” 

Providential readings of political violence go back to the first presidential assassination. Abraham Lincoln was shot on Good Friday at Ford’s Theater. Only days earlier, on Palm Sunday, Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. Famed news cartoonist Thomas Nast styled Lincoln as a Christ figure in his drawings for Harper’s Weekly — the triumph of Palm Sunday (Appomattox) coming ahead of Good Friday (the assassination). Lincoln’s death was thus presented as the providential end to a providential life.

Understandably, surviving a shooting is more often considered providential. Being hit by a bullet is always a close call; any hit could have been fatal, if only slightly altered. For Trump, it was a matter of less than an inch; for President Ronald Reagan in 1981, it was a few inches. Reagan interpreted his own survival to Providence.

“Perhaps having come so close to death made me feel I should do whatever I could in the years God had given me to reduce the threat of nuclear war,” Reagan wrote in his memoirs. “Perhaps there was a reason I had been spared.”

Author William Inboden writes that, post-shooting, Reagan had “a sense of divine mandate to bring the Cold War to a peaceful end.” 

Not long after Reagan had been shot, Pope St. John Paul the Great was shot in St. Peter’s Square. He clearly attributed his survival to God’s providence, saying that while one hand fired the bullet, another hand guided it. The assassin’s bullet had passed through his internal organs without hitting a major artery.

Trump, whose religious beliefs are not clear, was less committal.

“By luck or by God, many people are saying it’s by God I’m still here,” Trump said. “I’m supposed to be dead. I’m not supposed to be here.”

Corey Comperatore, Committed Christian

When the shots rang out in Butler, Corey Comperatore, 50, thought immediately of his family. The volunteer fireman was killed and is remembered by his sister as “a hero who shielded his daughters.”

“He was the best dad a girl could ever ask for,” wrote his daughter Allyson on Facebook. “He was a man of God, loved Jesus fiercely, and also looked after our church and our members as family.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro ordered state flags to fly at half-mast to honor Comperatore. 

The Democratic governor noted that Comperatore was an “avid Trump supporter” and attended the rally enthusiastically. Calling him the “best of us,” Shapiro spoke of a man who “went to church every Sunday. Corey loved his community. Most especially, Corey loved his family.” 

Comperatore was a trustee of Cabot Church, a Methodist congregation. 

Shapiro’s gracious words about Comperatore stood in contrast to how Trump supporters are often characterized, including — sometimes especially — Christians who support the former president. Trump supporters are frequently characterized as being not entirely respectable. They are the ones whom three successive presidential candidates spoke of as bitterly “clinging to their guns and religion” (Barack Obama, 2008), as being the “47%” who take more than they make (Mitt Romney, 2012) and most bluntly as “a basket of deplorables” (Hillary Clinton, 2016). 

Comperatore was an ordinary man of faith, devoted to his family, church and community. Comperatore’s killing was unintended, but it highlighted that a goodly part of Trump’s constituency is indeed faith-filled Americans who are the “best of us.” 

Father Jason Charron

The Trump campaign asked Father Jason Charron, a Ukrainian Catholic priest with a parish in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, to lead an opening prayer at the rally. In the early months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Father Charron courageously led a daring mission to Ukraine to rescue orphans.

Father Charron said that he didn’t know why he had been asked. Presumably the organizers knew why, and likely got what they were hoping for, as he prayed to “make our nation great again in God’s sight.”

Father Charron related his experience later that evening on the Pints With Aquinas podcast. 

It was an example of regrettable partisanship in certain Christian quarters. So fierce that Father Charron indulged in wild predictions of wicked machinations from the “godless” political left.

Father Charron said that he had a chance to speak briefly with Trump beforehand and thanked him for being helpful to Ukraine in 2017. Father Charron was likely disappointed on Monday when Trump selected Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio to be his running mate. It was Vance who said, on the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”

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