The stone rolls away. The tomb empties. Light prevails over darkness. And then, a minute later, the vitriol begins.

How does one reconcile the theological precision of President Trump's Easter proclamation—its rich imagery of redemption and resurrection—with the caustic Truth Social post that followed? The juxtaposition is not merely jarring; it's revelatory. Like a fault line running through Western Christianity, this bifurcation exposes something essential about faith in the public square: the gap between what we proclaim and what we practice has become a dwelling place for abusive power.

I find myself caught in the tension. One moment, my heart leaps at the proclamation's truth—"Through His suffering, we have redemption"—yet sinks at the misappropriation that followed in the social media post.

President Trump's Easter proclamation possesses an undeniable theological beauty. Its language—"the living Son of God who conquered death, freed us from sin, and unlocked the gates of Heaven"—echoes the ancient creeds with surprising precision. The text traces Holy Week's sacred arc from Palm Sunday through the Paschal Triduum to Easter morning with the kind of liturgical specificity that suggests careful attention to Christian tradition.

The presidential proclamation strikes at the raw nerve of Easter's central paradox, where to shine is first to suffer, where glory isn't glory until it has known blood and absence. "During this sacred week," it reads, with that formal distance of government language that nonetheless hits the mark, "we acknowledge that the glory of Easter Sunday cannot come without the sacrifice Jesus Christ made on the cross." This paradox cuts through our denominational borders like a blade through water, binding believers not in theological agreement but in the shared trembling before mystery: that what saves us must first break us, that faith persists not despite doubt but within its very shadow. We are creatures who need both the cross and the empty tomb, both the suffering and its transfiguration, both the silence and what comes after.

Franklin Graham called the proclamation "historic," noting there hasn't been "in my lifetime a president that has communicated the gospel as clearly as he has"[1]. The Christian Post described it as "a reverent reflection on the theological underpinnings of the historic Christian faith"[2]. For many Christians weary of cultural marginalisation, these words offered validation, a rare acknowledgment of their faith's centrality to American and Western identity.

Albert Mohler, one of America’s most influential evangelical theologians, delivered a striking and almost astonished commendation of President Trump’s 2025 Easter proclamation, calling it “stunningly different” and “pretty unprecedented” for a presidential statement. What truly electrified Mohler was Trump’s invocation of “Christ’s eternal kingdom in heaven”, a direct presidential acknowledgment of a higher allegiance than the United States itself, an act Mohler called “very, very interesting” and “incredibly significant,”[3] given that presidents are usually expected to extol America as the highest good.

Proclamation’s living promise, like sunlight in the wine,
Pours warmth through marble corridors where ancient echoes shine.
“Through suffering, comes redemption”-words that lift and sing,
From palms to cross to empty tomb, the sacred arc takes wing.
It sketches hope that pulses through the marrow of our days-
No darkness stands where love has crowned the world with Easter blaze.
To rise is gift and calling: trembling wonder binds, and stays.

And there it is—the other message, published mere moments later, under the same presidential banner. The words have shed the lofty rhetoric of the Easter proclamation, trading sacred imagery for a litany of personal and political grievances cast in the jarring language of spiritual warfare. This abrupt transition reveals a fundamental disconnect, a yawning chasm between the president's soaring proclamation of redemption and resurrection and the vitriolic outpouring of resentment, recrimination, and raw partisanship that follows in its wake.

The Truth Social post begins with the same phrase—"Happy Easter"—but then veers sharply away from Golgotha toward the gladiatorial arena of American politics.

The stone rolls back-light fractures darkness
into shards we weaponize against each other.
In that thin space where dawn meets doubt,
vitriol blooms like thorny crowns.
How swiftly praise turns bitter, hosanna to hatred,
the gap between worship and warfare
no wider than a tweet.
The soul divided cannot hold its center,
but reaches for the blade to dull its own bewilderment.

"Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics," it declares, before launching into a catalogue of grievances against political opponents, the judiciary, and law enforcement officials.

In the strange reality of our digital age, proclamation and profanation arrive in quick succession, like twin births from a single womb. The President declares, "HE IS RISEN!" hangs suspended for a brief moment of transcendence but is quickly drowned in the acid rain of insults that follows. How swiftly glory gives way to gall, resurrection to recrimination. "Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prison Inmates, the Mentally Insane, and well-known MS-13 Members and Cop Beaters back into our Country"[4]. Nowhere in this second message appeared Jesus, resurrection, forgiveness, or joy—the very themes that define Easter Sunday.

What fractured faith is this, that cannot sustain its own hosanna for more than a moment before retreating to the safer ground of hatred? Perhaps this is our 21st century crucifixion: the inability to dwell in wonder without the nervous compulsion to weaponise it, the incapacity to hold reverence without reaching for raging thoughts. In that single digital minute-that infinitesimal space between worship and warfare-lies the perfect image of our bifurcated souls.

Adam Kinzinger, with the weary precision of someone who has counted the silences as well as the words, notes the absence at the heart of the President’s second Easter message: not a single mention of Jesus or resurrection, only one invocation of “Lord,” and that in service to a litany of enemies-drug lords, not the Lord of life.[5]Shane Claiborne, unable to look away from the spectacle, offers a cartoon: Trump, arms wrapped around a cross, not as a sign of surrender but as a trophy, emblazoned not with Christ’s agony but with the brash, self-congratulatory “BIG BEAUTIFUL T for TRUMP!”.[6]Even the cross as an axis of hope and humility-becomes another stage for grievance and self-magnification, the empty tomb crowded out by the noise of self, the old miracle repurposed as a mirror for one person’s most persistent grievances.

The proclamation says: "Through His death, we are forgiven of our sins."The post says: Your sins are unforgivable if you're my political opponent.

Which message reflects the heart of Easter?

In digital twilight, twins are born from single source-
"HE IS RISEN!" suspended briefly,
then drowned in grievance's acid rain.
No Jesus here, just Jesus™,
branded for deployment against imagined foes.
What fractured faith is this that cannot
sustain its own hosanna for a breath
before retreating to the safer ground of hate?
The empty tomb so quickly filled
with noise of self, with nothing.

A week has passed since President Trump issued his bifurcated Easter messages-ample time, one might think, for evangelical leaders to register the dissonance. The contradiction could not be more glaring: on the one hand, a proclamation steeped in the language of sacrifice, hope, and unity; on the other, a social media broadside, replete with insults and grievances, lobbed on a day meant for resurrection and reconciliation. The faithful, or at least the attentive, must feel an itch between their shoulders, an uneasy sense that something holy was invoked and then almost immediately profaned.

Their silence is not absence but consent,
a wound festering beneath the bandage of decorum.
The hollow prayer grows thick as blood,
hope stranded on calculation's shore.
Can one spring pour both waters?
Faith becomes a funhouse mirror,
Beatitudes reduced to campaign slogans,
while somewhere Christ stands knocking
on the tomb we've sealed ourselves inside.

Yet so far, the silence from those who lavished praise on the president’s theologically astute proclamation, are silent as church mice. Not a public word, not a peep. Nothing, not even a carefully hedged question, has emerged from these pulpits and platforms about the second, more venomous communication. It is as if the proclamation and the post exist on two separate planets, or perhaps in two parallel churches: one imagined, idealised, ever on its knees; the other online, febrile, and fighting to the death.

To be fair, the president’s second post did spark indignation among ordinary Christians and mainstream commentators alike, who recoiled at the acidic tone and the abandonment of Easter’s core promise. But from the architects and amplifiers of the original celebration, those who declared the proclamation a triumph of public faith, there has been only quiet, crickets, as if the entire exchange were already consigned to some ecclesiastical memory hole.

I am, perhaps naively, still waiting. Waiting for some sign, however subtle, that the contradiction has been noticed.

Why this reticence? For Graham, whose ministry seems to thrive on culture-war binaries, Trump’s bifurcation isn’t a bug but a feature. To question the Truth Social post would destabilise the Manichean narrative: God’s champion versus demonic leftists. Mohler, the Southern Baptist intellectual, likely views the second social media post as regrettable but peripheral, the president’s “personal style” outweighing the “substance” of his policies. Both men operate within a theology of power that conflates political victory with divine favour, where a leader’s “fruit” (Matthew 7:16) is measured in judicial appointments, not Christlike character.

Their muteness isn’t absence. It’s a weaponised hush, a doctrinal drone humming beneath the veneer of stained-glass piety. Their silence doesn't merely speak-it screams, a primal howl from the void where moral courage should stand. One week after Trump's Easter bifurcation, evangelical leaders remain mute, their tongues suddenly paralysed when confronted with the question that James hurls like a stone: Can the same fountain pour forth both fresh water and bitter? (James 3:9-10), Their calculated silence reveals not prudence but capitulation-faith genuflecting before power's altar, its backbone softened to jelly.

For the Christian who look to these leaders, it’s spiritual vertigo. One moment, your soul soars at the Agnus Dei in Trump’s proclamation; the next, it’s gut-punched by his Truth Social fist. This isn’t cognitive dissonance-it’s ecclesial gaslighting. Faith becomes a funhouse mirror, Jesus’s face warped into a campaign logo, His Beatitudes reduced to attack ads.

Let’s be blunt, as if I have not been, Christianity isn’t being challenged here. It’s being consumed by party political allegiance. Tribal identity swallows spiritual integrity like a snake digesting its own tail. What emerges isn’t discipleship, but a Frankenstein faith, Scripture stitched to slogans, resurrection repurposed as retaliation.

The Greeks had a word for this fracture: schizo, split. The Latins gave us furca-a fork. This linguistic etymology reveals the ancient recognition of spiritual bifurcation-the splitting of faith from practice that corrodes authentic witness from within. When Trump issues a theologically rich Easter proclamation while simultaneously attacking opponents on social media, we see schizo-phrenia of the spirit manifest-a divided consciousness where ceremonial Christianity stands divorced from lived ethics.

What we witness in today's political Christianity is a faith with a forked tongue, speaking piety in proclamations while hissing division in practice.

It often embodies precisely what Dietrich Bonhoeffer condemned as "cheap grace" when he unequivocally denounced the German church's capitulation to Nazi politics. It's a faith split down the middle like lightning-struck oak-one eye fixed on heaven's gilt proclamations, the other deliberately blind to the Instagram invective hurled in Christ's borrowed name. Raka. The Aramaic sits in the mouth like a stone, jagged and ancient. Those who call brothers "empty-headed fool" while clutching theological parchments enact precisely what made Jesus's voice rise to that rare register of disgust. "Whitewashed tombs," he called them-not in whispered rebuke but with the forceful consonants of one who'd seen enough performance to last eternity.

This is faith split by lightning-
one branch reaching skyward, one clawing dust.
A forked tongue hisses in the sanctuary,
ceremonial faith divorced from breath and bone.
White tombs with gleaming facades
hide the slow decay of conviction.
The stone sits heavy on the tongue
while we clutch our theological parchments,
our certainties like beetles scuttling
across the surface of mystery.

The tomb's limestone façade gleams in Jerusalem sun while its cavity festers with bone and burial cloth; the bifurcation isn't theological nuance but spiritual gangrene. I wonder, sometimes, if we've confused the medium for the message-polishing the proclamation plaques while the living Word stands forgotten outside, knuckles raw from knocking, wondering why his followers recognise his syntax but not his heart. What good is Easter's empty tomb if we've filled our faith with decorative death? The divine voice that called worlds into existence now struggles to penetrate the perfectly maintained sepulchers of our selective hearing.

Is this not precisely what we are in danger of creating? A Christianity that catches camera flashes on Easter morning but hisses with venom by afternoon? A proclamation that praises Christ's wounds while inflicting fresh ones on the Other? The bifurcation isn't merely theological malaise, it's spiritual malady.

A faith split down its spine, paralysed yet still mouthing platitudes. When we bifurcate belief from character and behaviour, we don't just contradict ourselves, we deny the very gospel we claim to proclaim. Each nail driven: separation policies hammered the most vulnerable in society. Each thorn pressed: aid denied to the poor of the world. Each spear thrust: egging on dictators that mock human dignity. All while reciting elegant theology about a God who identifies with suffering.

Christ's teaching on integrity offers a path forward: "Let what you say be simply 'Yes' or 'No'; anything more than this comes from evil" (Matthew 5:37). This call for consistency—for speech and action that align rather than diverge—stands as both rebuke and invitation. It rebukes our tolerance for bifurcation while inviting us toward wholeness, toward a unity of word and deed that reflects the undivided heart that Scripture commends.

This does not require perfect alignment—we all fall short—but it does demand honest wrestling with contradiction rather than strategic exploitation of it. It asks us to question not just our leaders' bifurcation but our own willingness to accept it, to practice it, when it affirms our political identity.

Perhaps the most radical act in our fragmented age is to refuse bifurcation altogether—to insist that Easter means resurrection and reconciliation in both proclamation and practice, in both policy and personal conduct. Perhaps integrity, not influence, is the true measure of Christian engagement in public life.

What good the tomb, emptied of death
yet filled with deadly certainties?
To split belief from life
is to crucify the creed anew.
Let yes be yes-let no draw honest breath.
The question lingers in the garden-
will faith suture the wound,
or widen stains?
Christ calls toward wholeness,
not the fractured self we've come to worship.
The tomb stands empty, waiting
for us to choose between
the bifurcated god we've made
and love's more tangible presence.

The tomb remains empty. The question is whether our words and actions will remain full—full of the same love that rolled away the stone, the same mercy that transforms enemies into brothers, the same truth that sets prisoners free. In the end, what matters is not the proclamation or the post but the person we become in response to them—fractured by bifurcation or made whole by integration, divided by tribalism or united by transcendence.

The choice, as always, remains ours

References

[1] B. Gill, “WATCH: White House Easter Event with President Trump After His Holy Week Declaration - ‘HE IS RISEN!’” Apr. 2025. Accessed: Apr. 26, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://cbn.com/news/us/trump-issues-holy-week-declaration-living-son-god-plans-white-house-easter-service

[2] J. Brown, “White House staffers rise for ‘Amazing Grace’ after Franklin Graham warns against rejecting Gospel.” Apr. 2025. Accessed: Apr. 26, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.christianpost.com/news/white-house-staffers-rise-for-amazing-grace-hymn.html

[3] A. Mohler, “President trump’s proclamation on Easter - Townhall review.” [Online]. Available: https://omny.fm/shows/townhall-review-conservative-commentary-on-todays/albert-mohler-president-trump-s-proclamation-on-easter

[4] “President Trump calls out ‘Radical Left Lunatics’ and resurrects 2020 election grievances in Easter message.” Apr. 2025. Accessed: Apr. 26, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.yahoo.com/news/president-trump-calls-radical-left-112941154.html

[5] “White House defends Trump’s vitriol-filled Easter message with 1-word response. news/white-house-defends-trumps-vitriol-filled-easter-message-with-1-word-response/3816241/.” [Online]. Available: https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/ncr-voices/bishop-barrons-video-capitol-annotated

[6] M. Taheri, “Donald trump’s Easter message sparks backlash from critics. ,” Newsweek, Apr. 2025, [Online]. Available: https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trumps-easter-message-sparks-backlash-critics-2061918