Christian Nationalist Violence and Scams For a Such a Time as This

Lorenzo Sewell, the preacher at Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration, pumped biblical references to political violence into his prayer…

…then dumped his memecoin, leaving MAGA with nothing but their blind faith.

A week and a half into Donald Trump’s new term as President of the United States, and already we he is opening a huge concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay. Trump has signed a law that forces all non-citizens to be taken away to Homeland Security prison camps if they have merely been accused of a crime. Pete Hegseth, who has called for the murder of all Muslims and wants to make the United States a Christian theocracy, has been confirmed as Secretary of Defense. Donald Trump is taking a wrecking ball to scientific and medical research and is issuing executive orders forcing public schools to teach a false version of American history. Across the US federal government, career civil servants are being fired and replaced with people who have few professional qualifications other than absolute loyalty to Donald Trump.

At the center of the chaos and destruction from Donald Trump is the ideology of Christian Nationalism, a belief system that rejects the validity of objective reality and demands that everybody and everything in the United States submit to a draconian version of Christianity. Some Americans have a difficult time understanding the relationship between fascist political power and Christian Nationalism. They think of Christianity as something meek and mild, set apart from the crude manner and ruthless agenda of Donald Trump.

In holding to this vision of what counts as Christianity, hopeful liberals ignore what Christianity has come to mean for most American Christians. They pretend that Christian Nationalists are somehow “fake Christians”, even though the majority of American Christians now ascribe to the ideology of Christian Nationalism and voted for Donald Trump in 2024 on the basis of that ideology. While Christianity as a whole is on the decline in the USA, the ranks of American Christian Nationalists are rapidly growing.

The ideological roots of Trump’s fascism in Christian Nationalism are clear to see, if you care to look for them. The religious nature of Donald Trump’s new fascist hold on power were made clear at the 2025 inauguration. At the height of the inauguration ceremony, Christian preacher Lorenzo Sewell delivered a prayer claiming that Donald Trump was chosen by the Christian god to be President of the United States. Sewell said:

“Heavenly Father, we're so grateful that you gave our 45th and now our 47th President a millimeter miracle. We are grateful that you are the one that have called him for such a time as this.”

This wasn’t the first time Lorenzo Sewell had performed for Donald Trump. It wasn’t the first time that Lorenzo Sewell told a national audience that Donald Trump is a magically selected prophet of the Christian god. Last summer, at the Republican National Convention, Sewell told an auditorium of wealthy Republican elites:

“If you believe that Jesus still changes lives, come on, put your hands together and give our great god great glory! I believe that prayer is preventative and prayer is proactive. I believe that praying in the name of Jesus changes everything, and when we prayed for President Trump, only God knew that thirty days later, there would be a miracle by a millimeter. Only God knew that if we prayed for him during his birthday, there would be a miracle by a millimeter. If President Trump had moved one millimeter, he wouldn't have been here on Monday to talk to us about how America was going to be made wealthy again... Before I take my seat, I just got to talk to you about something called providence and something called sovereignty. God's sovereignty is his ability to be able to do what he wants when he wants, because he's God. And God's providence, it's when he does what he wants, when he wants for all of you. Did you know that President Trump was shot on 6/11, and do you know that Ephesians chapter number six, verse number 11 says, 'Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.'

So all my Democrat friends, I want to ask you one question. Do you know anybody that was the 45th president? He was convicted of 34 accounts, he raised $53 million in 24 hours and could be the 47th president of the United States in America, and he was shot one time? Do you know anybody like that? To all my friends back in Detroit who are Democrats, I'm going to ask you just one simple question. You can't deny the power of God on this man's life. You can't deny that God protected him. You cannot deny that it was a millimeter miracle that was able to save this man's life. Could it be that Jesus Christ preserved him for such a time as this? Could it be? Could it be that when we prayed for him, when he came to the roundtable in Detroit, that Jesus asked and he received that we sought him and then he found protection? Could it be that the King of Glory, the Lord God strong and mighty, the God who is mighty in battle protected Donald Trump because he wants to use him for such a time as this? If you believe that, come on and put your hands together and give our great god great glory!”

If you’re listening closely, you have noticed a phrase that Lorenzo Sewell used both at Trump’s inauguration and at the 2024 Republican National Convention: “for a time such as this”. Sewell preached last summer that “the God who is mighty in battle” chose Donald Trump “for a time such as this”, and repeated that assertion at the inauguration last week.

It’s a strange phrase, because it’s rooted in the archaic language of the Christian Bible. When Christian Nationalist preachers use the phrase “for a time such as this”, they are making a reference to a specific passage in the Bible. Specifically, this phrase is used as a reference to the belief that Christianity has a rightful claim to totalitarian political power, and that violence is an acceptable tool to achieve Christian political domination.

The phrase “for a time such as this” appears only once in the Bible, in the Book of Esther. It is spoken at the dramatic peak of the book, as Mordecai tells Esther that she has been placed through the magical powers of the god Jehovah in the court of the Persian king for no other purpose than to enact Jehovah’s political will.

Esther refused to bow down before the king of Persia, as everyone else was expected to do. Esther claimed that she could not submit to any other power than the power of the god Jehovah. This defiance resulted in a power struggle in the Persian capital, with Persian Jews on the one side, and the Persian political bureaucracy on the other.

When Esther was told that she had been placed by Jehovah as a queen of the Persian king “for such a time as this”, she took it as instruction to seize political power through a campaign of extreme violence in the name of her god. The followers of Esther hunted down their enemies, and “struck down all their enemies with the sword, killing and destroying them, and they did what they pleased to those who hated them.”

Queen Esther then impaled the ten sons of her most prominent political opponent on long poles. Following her example, the political violence spread across Persia. Esther’s followers killed seventy-five thousand more people, securing Esther’s political power through a huge bloodbath.

The lesson that Christian Nationalists take from this Bible story is that their god should have control of the government. To them, the story of the murderous rampage of Esther shows that bureaucrats in power should recognize the authority of the god of their Bible, and that if they refuse to submit, they can be righteously killed in the name of Christianity.

In liberal Christian churches, everybody skips over this story, pretends it doesn’t exist, or whitewashes it as a story in which Esther defies unjust persecution. No reasonable defiance of persecution includes the public skewering of the sons of your political opponent, however, or a nationwide campaign of political violence that results in the deaths of more than seventy five thousand people. Progressive Christians just avert their gaze from the story of Esther, though, and declare that “God is love”.

Christian Nationalist churches don’t avoid the story of Esther, though. Their preachers use the story of Esther to teach congregants, from the time they are children, that people who refuse to submit to the god of the Bible should fear his wrath. They draw a narrative arc from the Book of Esther to the Book of Revelation, promising that one day, the armies of God will slaughter those who refuse to join with Jesus.

Liberal Christians have the right to define their own religious ideology. They can and do speak out against Christian Nationalism. It is invalid for them, however, to claim that Christian Nationalism is not “true Christianity” and that Christian Nationalists are “fake Christians”.

Christian Nationalists are Christians, and they take their hateful, violent ideology straight from the Christian Bible, from the many parts of the Bible, like the Book of Esther, that celebrate political violence. It’s because of their Christianity, not in spite of it, that they are violent and hateful.

Just days before Christian Nationalists attacked the United States Congress on January 6, 2021, Doug Mastriano led an online meeting to organize the attack. Mastriano offered a prayer during that meeting in which he cited the violence of the Book of Esther as an example of what should take place on January 6. Mastriano prayed for a violent revolution in the model of Esther:

“God, we come before you in Jesus’s name and… God, I ask that you help us roll in these dark times, that we fear not the darkness, that we will seize our Esther and Gideon moments, that we will stand in the gap, that when you say ‘Who shall I send?’ we will say, ‘Send me.’… I know we are surrounded by wickedness and fear and dithering and inaction, but that’s not our problem. Our problem is following your lead… God, you’re calling forth modern day Esthers and Gideons, and I pray that you will give us the courage to do so… I pray that we will take responsibility. We’ll seize the power…”

The violent insurrection of January 6, 2021 was the Bible’s Book of Esther in action. Now, four years later, Donald Trump has brought the Christian Nationalist ideology from the Book of Esther into the White House itself, Lorenzo Sewell’s declaration that the Christian god has chosen Donald Trump to be like Queen Esther “for such a time as this”.

Sewell’s choice to repeatedly invoke this phrase from the Book of Esther, “for such a time of this”, is a dog whistle to Christian Nationalists. Most people who are not Christian Nationalists, people who have not grown up in Christian Nationalist churches that teach the Book of Esther, don’t have any idea where this phrase comes from. They think it’s just a flamboyant way for a speaker to talk about the present moment. They don’t have any clue how this biblical phrase invokes and encourages ruthless, violent political purges. Christian Nationalists know this part of the Bible. They know exactly what it means to be called forth as modern day Esthers.

Lorenzo Sewell chose this phrase on purpose, and Donald Trump approved it. That choice ought to raise alarm bells, but most Americans, including many liberal Americans, don’t perceive the threat that’s been made, because it’s been made using the language of Christianity.

Of course, to be fair, Christian Nationalism is about a whole lot more than just the righteous call to political violence. Christian Nationalism is also a tool that unscrupulous Christian preachers use to enrich themselves through financial schemes and scams.

This podcast recently covered the cryptocurrency scam through which the Christian preacher Francier Obando Pinillo cheated members of his church out of 5.9 million dollars. Now it seems that Lorenzo Sewell, the very same Christian preacher who endorsed Donald Trump at the 2024 Republican National Convention then prayed for Donald Trump to be violent like Esther at this year’s inauguration, used the attention he got through his connection with Donald Trump to run a cryptocurrency scam of his own.

At the height of MAGA attention to his performance at the Trump inauguration, Lorenzo Sewell announced the creation of a memecoin, the “Official Lorenzo” memecoin, available for sale on a range of cryptocurrency-adjacent markets. Supporters of Donald Trump rushed to invest in the Lorenzo memecoin.

What were people investing in? What was the business value of the Lorenzo memecoin?

There was no concrete value behind the Lorenzo memecoin at all. There was nothing of substance for investors in Lorenzo Sewell’s memecoin other than the irrational belief that it was worth something because Lorenzo Sewell said that it was worth something.

There was no evidence that the Official Lorenzo memecoin had worth. There was no rational plan for the memecoin going forward, other than blind faith.

Christian Nationalists showed the true value of their blind faith, rushing to buy the Official Lorenzo memecoin. They bought more than 30 million of the memecoins in two days of trading.

Then, suddenly, just as the price of Lorenzo Sewell’s memecoin seemed to be going to the moon, it crashed. It was a classic pump and dump scheme in which the price was artificially pumped up so that the insiders could then dump their memecoins. Those insiders in Lorenzo Sewell’s pump and dump scheme ran off with over a half million dollars. The Christian Nationalist dupes who bought the memecoin without knowledge of the inside trading behind it lost all of their money.

Today, the Official Lorenzo memecoin is selling for the price of two thousandths of one penny. A total of five of the memecoins have been sold today. All of a sudden, no one is buying. A lot of people are stuck with memecoin that is worth only a tiny percentage of what they paid for it. As is the case with all memecoins, there is no practical use of the Lorenzo Sewell memecoin, and it’s now financially worthless as well.

It was a scam. It was an illegal trade in an unregulated security.

Of course, Lorenzo Sewell won’t be held accountable for the memecoin scam. Donald Trump’s new fascist government is on the side of cryptocurrency and memecoin scammers. There will be no accountability.

The followers of Donald Trump, Christian Nationalism’s modern-day Esther, are being allowed to run wild.

Lorenzo Sewell is a real Christian. He preaches at a real church, filled with real Christians.

The Bible stories that fuel Christian Nationalism are not real, but the consequences of them are. People are getting hurt.

Christian Nationalism is becoming the dominant form of American Christianity, and that’s a real problem that we all need to confront.

The Lorenzo Sewell memecoin pump and dump