by Rodney Kennedy

Rodney Kennedy has his M.Div from New Orleans Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Louisiana State University. He pastored the First Baptist Church of Dayton (OH) – which is an American Baptist Church – for 13 years, after which he served as interim pastor of ABC USA churches in Illinois, Kansas, New York, and Pennsylvania. He is now a full-time writer, and lives in Louisiana. His eighth book, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit, was the focus of this righting america interview. And for Kennedy’s most recent sermons and articles, see theprogessivepreacher.com.  

Is MAGA a cult? My first inclination was to use a bit of paralipsis (a way of saying two things at once): “I’m not saying MAGA is a cult, I’m just saying there’s cult-like ideas and actions prominent in MAGA.” Such a strategy would be disingenuous on my part. I would be using the favorite misleading trope of the demagogue. 

If labeling MAGA as a cult is more than shameless name-calling, and it is in fact a cult, then our inquiry has other questions to address. Why has this idea gained such popular support? Why are millions around the country tempted to support the president? These are questions that matter, and they matter for reasons that extend all the way to the issue of American democracy itself.

This is an investigation, not an inquisition. Therefore, I have chosen to use comparison as my primary argumentative strategy. I will compare Trump/MAGA to Jim Jones/converts. The argument is simple: Jim Jones’ movement was a cult. Comparing MAGA to Jones’ movement determines whether or not MAGA is a cult.

If we agree cults are dangerous and anti-democratic, and I think most Americans do, then we want to understand what happened in a historical cult that enabled one man to rise to power and lead an entire group of converts to a tragic ending. 

It’s important, therefore, to see, when it comes to MAGA, if there really is another cult under construction, and not just fling that accusation at any group we dislike. 

And maybe MAGA is merely a loose collection of unhappy Americans, each convinced he or she is right. As David French puts it, “After all, when you’re absolutely certain that you’re right — that the policies you advance will defend liberty and defend justice — then isn’t zealotry called for?”

Maybe MAGA is just an amalgamation of mistrustful, angry and frustrated voters who are disillusioned with the establishment, and who have watched too many campaign ads portraying the Democrats as demons, haters of America and destroyers of faith. 

That said, correspondents are writing long articles insisting MAGA is a cult. Nick Cattogio’s Dispatch column on Ken Paxton’s victory over John Cornyn in the Texas GOP Senate primary argues “Republican voters are …. Hellbent on purging incumbents in primaries: They are in their Jonestown phase. Disappointed in Trump’s economic failures yet psychologically unable to hold him (or themselves) accountable, they’re coping by turning more radically cultish and flogging heretics like Cornyn, Thomas Massie, and Bill Cassidy instead.”

The paradigmatic tragic cult in American history is Jim Jones and his followers. Jim Jones has been dead for almost 50 years. It seems wise to remind ourselves of this fact given the continued use of his movement in our politics. Jim Jones and “cult” are twinned in our memory. While people may not know the historical details, the mention of Kool-Aid, cyanide, Jonestown and suicide are still prevalent in our language. “Drinking the Kool-Aid” is still hurled at those we wish to discredit and remains a well-used trope of derision in our politics. 

Jimmy Kimmel made fun of Marjorie Taylor Greene: “Here’s a woman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who didn’t just drink the Kool-Aid, she chugged it. I mean, she drank all the Kool-Aid. And not just the regular flavors like Close the Borders and The Election Was Stolen.”

The phrase to drink the Kool-Aid has three meanings:

• To accept foolish and irrational ideas as truth. 
• To commit suicide 
• To demonstrate unquestioning obedience or loyalty.

Unquestioning obedience is in itself a kind of political suicide. Blind obedience includes membership in the tribe and deference to its leader. The followers abdicate judgment to the leader. Belief and obedience are almost automatic. Followers accept and believe that the past was as the leader portrays it, that the present is as he depicts it, and that the future will be as he predicts it. And they follow without hesitation his prescriptions for action.

MAGA abdicates personal critical thinking for a cult-like level of commitment, an allegiance to an authoritarian leader and blind obedience to the leader. MAGA submits to Trump’s authority. In this regard, it acts like a cult. 

Jim Jones’ Cult 

Jim Jones was a charismatic preacher with a stormy and controversial professional career. Jones carefully developed a pattern of speaking unceasingly of the “enemies.” As a skillful evangelist, Jones made real an array of enemies within the lives of his converts. 

His movement, rooted in suspicion, mistrust and fear, especially of the government, the FBI and the CIA, was defined by paranoia. The movement evolved from a church to a political movement. 

Jones started claiming he was God. Not satisfied being a servant of God, “God’s anointed,” Jones claimed he was God. He claimed, “I came as the God to eliminate all your false Gods.” 

Jones vividly pictured himself as a God invulnerable to death. “You have never seen anyone shot down before your eyes and heal themselves. I, yet I have done it. I’m the only God you’ve ever seen, with blood gushing out of his chest, who, after the nurses put their fingers in the bullet holes, just wiped his hand across his chest, and closed him. Your God is one of the people. He is the instrument of all you’ve ever desired, all that freedom embraces., all that justice embodies, all that sensitivity involves. This is what your God is.”

During a sermon, Jones would take the Bible and throw it on the floor and shout, “Too many people are looking at this and not at me.” All eyes, all attention, all adoration had to be on him. He was the ultimate authority. 

Jones was a preacher of questionable character. He resorted to tricks (demagoguery) to influence converts: he frightened and manipulated his followers; the espoused religious values at variance with Christian faith but called it Christian; he proclaimed political ideals contrary to the American system; he preached hatred; he made empty promises. The focus of the movement was on Jones as the divine one, the Chosen One, the anointed one. He was the ultimate authority, the ultimate source. 

Do Trump and MAGA check all the boxes of the cult form? Our task becomes investigating whether or not he is another Jones-like figure, playing his evil tunes, luring people down the Jonestown road. If, as his critics insist, Trump is deeply flawed and a clear and present danger to democracy, all Americans should want to know and act in democratic ways to make sure MAGA never evolves into a powerful cult with the capacity to destroy democracy. 

Charismatic Leader ✓

Trump is a powerful charismatic leader. Charismatic leadership requires complete acquiescence and submission from all followers. It is a relationship of pure hierarchy because it can withstand an extraordinary amount of disconfirming evidence (that the leader is a serial liar, a sexual pervert, not a good person, does not have the character to be president, is out of his depth, makes emotional decisions which are bad) by simply rejecting them. Any admission of a flaw on the part of Trump would destroy the relationship. Therefore dissent can’t be allowed. 

Multiple Exigencies ✓

Trump is a genius at exigency marking: immigrants, the “Deep State,” the Justice Department, Democrats, communists. The Trump “Enemies Factory” churns out enemies as needed. 

Trump successfully made the federal government, the Judiciary, Congress, civil service and the media enemies of the people. The CIA and the FBI were enemies. Scapegoats were firmly established within a framework of paranoia, distrust and suspicion. Even scientists and historians have been cast as “the enemy.” Trump sees as many “enemies’ in the academy as Senator McCarthy saw communists in Hollywood. 

Trump’s shifting collection of enemies changes with the political winds. For almost a decade, immigrants have been Trump’s enemy du jour. Yet in his July 3 and July 4^th speeches, he recycled an old enemy – communism. He mentions communism 13 times in the two speeches designed to celebrate America’s 250^th anniversary of independence. Trump raised from the dead his long-time personal attorney, Roy Cohn, who was McCarthy’s lead prosecutor in the campaign to root out all communists.  

MAGA keeps standing by their man even through his disastrous architectural destruction of the White House and grounds. The reflecting pool has become the defining trope of Trumpism. And MAGA keeps drinking the Kool-Aid even though it has turned green in the pitcher. 

The Authoritarian Threat to Democracy  ✓

The real danger is that Trump’s magical potion has poisoned American trust in democracy. Democracy itself is in the crosshairs of a warring MAGA. Trump has injected his magical potion with deep mistrust and suspicious. The government is seen as working against the people. Historians, scientists, government workers, military generals and admirals, election officials, the judiciary, the media, the television networks, universities, the health care system, the hurricane watchers, the environmentalists – all lumped under the label of “Don’t trust.” 

According to Trump logic, the system has been poisoned by the Democrats with election-stealing, wokeness policies, waste, moral decay and chicanery. And Trump intends to clean up the corruption. And he believes he has the right to use any means to prevent the enemy from victory. And MAGA keeps drinking the Kool-Aid. At least 60% of Republicans, against all reason and evidence, still believe the 2020 election was stolen. 

David French, in a New York Times op-ed, “Is America’s MAGA Wing Giving Up on America?,” raises the question of the future of democracy. Timothy Snyder warns of the danger of tyranny. James Miller asks, Is Democracy Possible? Anne Applebaum writes of the “twilight of democracy.” Cornel West, in Democracy Matters identifies three dogmas threatening democracy: free-market fundamentalism, aggressive militarism and escalating authoritarianism. American historian David Blight warns, “It is time to see the real enemy – a long-brewing American-style neo-fascist authoritarianism, beguilingly useful to the grievances of the disaffected, and threatening to steal our microphones midway through our odes to joy.”

Faith in democracy is shaken in the USA. According to a Yahoo News-YouGov poll nearly half of Americans (55% Democrats, 53% Republicans and 49% overall) believe the US is “likely to cease to be a democracy in the future.” Thomas Edsall says, Trump’s “MAGA movement shows no signs of abating.” 

Sean Wilentz, prizewinning author of The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, asserts, “We’re on the verge of what Hamilton in ‘The Federalist’ called government by brute force.” 

In other words, MAGA renders all publics precarious. 

A God Complex ✓

It’s worth asking: does Trump think he’s God? Or is he simply riding the wave of religious zeal in MAGA to take political advantage? After the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump said, “I’m supposed to be dead.”  Four days later he said, “I’m not supposed to be here.” And he added: “But something very special happened. Let’s face it. Something happened.” “It’s … an act of God.” In his victory speech in November, 2024, he claimed, “God spared my life for a reason. In his second inaugural address, he asserted, “I was saved by God to make America great again.”  “It changed something in me,” he said in his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton in February. 

Trump seems personally convinced by the evangelical campaign to make him God-like. Professor of philosophy at the University of New England, David Livingstone Smith, said, “Trump is a sacred leader. His evangelical followers often refer to him as a ‘savior’ or ‘anointed one’ chosen by God.”

Conclusion

Even when all the ingredients for making a cult are present, it still may not be a cult. Having the ingredients for gumbo and making a good gumbo are not the same.

MAGA contains all the ingredients for making a cult, but falls short. It is on the road to Jonestown but lacks the twisted will necessary to take the final step. Too much narcissism, too much unmitigated desire for power and too much insistence on being right about everything holds them in check. The vices of MAGA will save them from suicide; their virtues have all been eaten away by the moths. 

MAGA is still dangerous. It is a conviction and a freedom. MAGA refuses to tolerate the age of liberal tolerance. They have rebelled against it while swearing on the Bible they are not racists or sexists. They have been granted, by Trump, the freedom to act on their conviction. They claim they are holy, reasonable and honorable people. They are acting in clarity to restore Western civilization and American Christianity. They are starting a New Order of things, which is actually the old order of white male supremacy. 

MAGA turns out to be Americans stuck in the 1950’s who are unable to transition to the 21^st century. Probably not a cult, but dangerous as hell.