As someone who grew up in a cult-like community dedicated to the teachings of a charismatic guru, I have, lately, been watching Donald Trump and getting goosebumps. With charismatic religious leaders, I have the same test that Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart used with obscenity: “I know it when I see it.” It was hard not to see it at the Pennsylvania town hall in mid-October, when Trump had a crowd watch him listen to his favorite songs for 30 minutes. This behavior spoke to a very particular symbiosis taking place between the crowd and Trump—him doing anything he wanted was a marvel, and the crowd’s love and admiration was all he needed. As he gazed into the distance, “November Rain” and “YMCA” jangling across the room, I recognized this particular energy: a religious phenomenon.
It’s hard to reconcile the ringmaster of profanity, the man who bragged about how he was so smooth with the ladies that he could “grab ’em by the pussy,” with anything sacred. But religion is fundamental to understanding Trump these days. Sure, it feels illogical that Trump—a convicted felon with a long history of public scandal, vulgarity, and crime—would ascend to the status of a divinely appointed leader. But this development aligns with a subtle, century-long trend in American Protestantism: the embrace of absolute maximalism and spectacle. The bigger the better has become the ethos for the largest congregations in America, where size matters and spectacle sells the gospel. Today, church services on Sunday for the millions of Americans who attend a megachurch often include hours of entertainment, whether a rock concert, a theatrical production, or both. Megachurches, such as the celebrity-magnet Hillsong Church, with its numerous global locations, or Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Texas, have become major influences on how this country connects with God weekly. Bigger is better. Enter Trump.
There was a time when the small symbolized the sacred in the religious life of America. Historically, intimate and simple worship was considered the proper way to connect with God. If you imagine the iconic Protestant churches of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, you conjure a spare wooden or brick space with very few bells and whistles. That’s in part because English colonists who settled in America were wary of grandness in religious settings, seeing it as an excess incompatible with true faith.
These early American Protestants had an aversion to grandness and spectacle, and in the first centuries of the nation, smallness was seen as proof of virtue and proximity to God. Early Pilgrims saw the European churches as “monstrous” and “unsavory.” In 1839, British author Frederick Marryat published a travel narrative, Diary in America, wherein he described the churches in the United States as almost absurdly little, “small even to ridicule, built of clapboards, and so light that, if on wheels, two pair of English post-horses would trot them away.” Architectural historian A.D.F. Hamlin observed in 1893 that small churches were predominant in the country and that there was a total rejection of loftiness, with large churches seen as “unnecessary and extravagant.”
Of course, there were exceptions to this: revivals. The First and Second Great Awakenings were periods of evangelical fervor that swept through the colonies. Charismatic preachers attracted massive crowds to outdoor revivals, emphasizing personal religious experience and salvation. In 1740, George Whitfield preached to a crowd of more than twenty thousand; in the 1830s, Charles Finney gathered tens of thousands. But most of those who attended returned to small churches and worship groups for their regular religious practice.
In 1839, British author Frederick Marryat published a travel narrative, Diary in America, wherein he described the churches in the United States as almost absurdly little, “small even to ridicule, built of clapboards, and so light that, if on wheels, two pair of English post-horses would trot them away.”
That idea of smallness changed with Aimee Semple McPherson. Often forgotten in our history books, McPherson was pivotal in shifting the way Americans experience church. McPherson—“Sister Aimee” to her adoring followers—was an early Pentecostal preacher, the founder of America’s first megachurch, and a pioneer of Christian mass media. In 1923, in Los Angeles, McPherson erected her Angelus Temple. The Angelus Temple seated 5,300 people for each service, and at her prime, she was ministering to fifteen thousand people a day. The Angelus Temple was so lavish that it was known in 1920s L.A. as “The Million Dollar Temple.” She showed that the miracle was in the multitudes.
The church was a city unto itself, with twenty-six departments and its own in-house theater, publishing, and media operations. McPherson was fixated on technology, and she started one of the first Christian radio stations, along with her own magazine. Like Trump, she understood that controlling the message—especially by using emerging technologies—meant she could reach her audience directly without established intermediaries interrupting and diluting that message. She was also an unpredictable impresario who infuriated her critics with her instinct for spectacle and her fuzzy relationship to truth. McPherson’s innovations marked a turning point, establishing a precedent that would influence American worship for decades to come.
But McPherson’s church was radical for more than just size; it was also about the experience of the audience. Her Sunday services were considered the best show in town—no small claim to fame during Hollywood’s jazz age. To be in the pews at the Angelus Temple meant being absolutely transported, along with the crowd, to her vivid, exciting version of the gospel. On McPherson’s stage of the church, camels, lions, and motorcycles were used to bring the gospel to life. She also created miraculous moments that would transform the lives of parishioners. She conducted faith healings and occasionally spoke in tongues. These otherworldly experiences, in which the divine physically entered and transformed the bodies of the audience, gave those gathered a sense of a prophetic happening; heaven and earth were meeting in Echo Park.
McPherson was often accused of being too worldly, or of hypocrisy, of using her beauty and sexual charisma to garner followers even as she railed against the libertine mores of the Jazz Age. She capitalized on the resentment and nostalgia of her congregants and paradoxically satisfied their yearning for a simpler time. She preached often of the old-time religion, in sappy, strident tones, dressed as a milkmaid or a nurse. She wore boxing gloves to duke it out with “Kid Satan,” and dressed up as a motorcycle cop to preach about living too fast in the modern era—foreshadowing Trump’s use of WWF wrestlers.
On McPherson’s stage of the church, camels, lions, and motorcycles were used to bring the gospel to life.
Yet for all the lip service she gave to the past, she was on the vanguard of shaping what religion would look like in the next century. While McPherson harnessed the power of radio to broadcast her message to thousands, Trump has similarly used Twitter and Truth Social to maintain direct communication with his followers. Both figures have circumvented traditional gatekeepers, creating a sense of intimacy that fosters personal loyalty and belief in their divine mission. McPherson always said she wanted the largest megaphone possible to evangelize to the world.
And like Trump, McPherson had a complex relationship with the truth. In 1926, she disappeared, returning thirty-four days later in the desert with a wild story of being kidnapped into “white slavery.” Two investigations followed, and that fall, she, her mother, her alleged lover, and a schizophrenic doppelganger all faced criminal charges in what would become the most expensive court proceeding in the city’s young history—until the Manson murders. Big spectacle, big tents, big claims, big lies. As we consider Trump as a religious figure, it’s important to understand that crowds are more than popularity—to these figures, they are a sign of divine blessings. Both Trump and McPherson reveal the power of spectacle in modern American life, where the size of one’s following is not just a measure of popularity but a proof of God’s love. In an era where media and mass gatherings shape our perception of leaders, these two unlikely figures remind us of the enduring link between charisma, faith, and politics in the American psyche. So when Trump talks about his crowds, it’s not just his love of being big league/bigly: it’s about how he is favored by God.