Politicians have long borrowed from religion the passion and the righteousness, but no other major modern figure had channeled the tension that makes Scripture endure, the desire, the wanting that gives rise to the closest analogue to Trumpism: the prosperity gospel, the American religion of winning. Trump was impious, but he didn’t reject faith. Instead, he returned it to the roots of Christian business conservatism, which is where he had been all along: Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 bestseller, The Power of Positive Thinking.
