At the RNC, convention-goers see the hand of God in Trump's survival

When Cory Mills reflects on last weekend’s attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, he thinks of the exact moment the bullets were fired: 6:11 p.m.

And he links that time to a Bible verse calling for worshippers to "put on the armor of God" in the face of evil.

“Go read Ephesians 6:11,” the Florida Republican congressman told a crowd of GOP Wisconsin delegates Wednesday, “and you will understand exactly why he has been saved and why we continue to move forward.”

“I truly believe,” Mills added, “that what saved President Trump was divine intervention.”

References to divine providence and God’s will have been a common thread throughout the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week. Elected officials, delegates and other attendees frequently make such allusions when referring to Saturday’s shooting at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania that left one man dead and saw Trump’s right ear grazed by a bullet.

Some have suggested that the “hand of God” spared Trump for a particular reason as he seeks to return to the White House in a race against Democrats’ presumptive nominee, President Joe Biden. The references are not necessarily new for a party that has tied itself to faith and portrayed its leader as a messiah-like figure. But the comments made in Milwaukee this week have been more frequent and at the forefront of conversations surrounding the shooting.

“God spared President Trump from that assassin because God is not finished with him yet,” Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders told Republicans in Fiserv Forum Tuesday night. “And he most certainly is not finished with America yet either.”

The religious undertones in crept into the city before the convention officially kicked off. On Sunday, one day after the assassination attempt, the conservative, youth-focused nonprofit Turning Point held a prayer vigil at Zeidler Union Square park.

Vigil attendees heard from pastors and state elected officials who proclaimed God was with Trump the day of the shooting. They waved Trump flags and signed a board emblazoned with the words “Get Well Soon” that stood next to a giant photograph of Trump’s face, which was laid flat on the park grass.

“May God continue blessing all that you do for us,” one note read.

“You are loved! You are anointed — Blessings to you — Thank you,” another message said.

The woman who created the board said she intended to deliver it to the former president.

One pastor, Kevin Vigneault of Lakewood Baptist Church in Pewaukee, told the park crowd that Trump was "created in the image of God," and Vigneault later prayed for Biden's salvation. Biden is a devout Catholic and was attending Mass the Saturday of Trump's shooting.

And Wisconsin Republican state Rep. Chuck Wichgers, of Muskego, said: "We have been warned not to let politics become our religion, our faith — and to let Christianity guide our politics."

“If you do not support Trump for president,” Wichgers said, “what are you supporting (sic) is contrast to the message that he’s delivering. He’s putting himself out there against those people that are guiding and ruling you that aren’t with God.”

Those same themes persisted throughout the convention with nearly every speaker who addressed the shooting.

“Proverbs 28 reads: ‘The wicked flee, though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion,’” Lara Trump, Trump’s daughter-in-law and the RNC’s co-chair, said in a speech Tuesday. “And that truly epitomizes Donald Trump. He is a lion.”

Trump, too, referred to God in a post on his media platform Truth Social the morning after the shooting.

“...it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening,” Trump wrote. “We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness.”

While the religious rhetoric has dominated Republican talk in Milwaukee, leading Democrats caution against the mix of religion and politics.

Quentin Fulks, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said this week he saw no issue with people believing God had a role in protecting Trump from the would-be assassin. But he suggested the idea of divine intervention should not be used as a reason to justify policies that deny people “bodily autonomy,” referring to abortion.

“I won’t knock down anybody saying that they believe that God is the reason,” said Fulks, when asked about Republicans linking God to Trump’s survival. “But I think that God can’t be a reason to continue to double down on divisive things that are going to hurt many other people.”

Still, Republicans see God’s intervention in Saturday’s shooting.

The Secret Service says the shooter’s bullets were fired at approximately 6:15 p.m. on the east coast. And other estimates put the time at about 6:12 p.m.

But for Mills, the Florida Republican, 6:11 p.m. works just fine.

“Let us understand that it is always darkest before the light,” Mills said Wednesday morning. “We will rise like never before. But we must don the armor of God.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: At the RNC, convention-goers see the hand of God in Trump's survival