Michael Whatley, the Trump-backed Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in North Carolina, has made it his “mission” to “get more men and women of faith into the public square.”
Whatley’s own church, however, has repeatedly clashed with the Trump administration over the past six months, as its national leader has embraced a reputation as a bulwark of “resistance” to the president’s agenda.
In a recent op-ed for Religion News Service, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Rev. Sean Rowe, wrote that the church is experiencing a “long-overdue reckoning” on its proximity to political power.
Rowe also said that what was “once the church of the Founding Fathers and presidents” is today “less known for the powerful people in our pews than for our resistance to the rising tide of authoritarianism and Christian nationalism emanating from Washington, D.C.”
For Whatley, that might have made for uncomfortable reading.
Now chair of the Republican National Committee, having led the North Carolina Republican Party, he said in a 2023 podcast interview it was “a personal mission of mine” and “a really big deal” to get people of faith into politics.
He added that he serves as the treasurer for his church, and previously served as a senior warden on the vestry.
But even that church has taken stances seemingly at odds with Whatley’s embrace of Trump.
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Gastonia describes itself as “a progressive parish” whose members volunteer for programs “to combat hunger, homelessness, racism and other significant issues.”
The St. Mark’s website notes that the Episcopal Church embraces “inclusion,” and that “people of all genders and sexual orientations serve as bishops, priests, and deacons in our church.”
The church’s donations page bears Whatley’s name, as stewardship chair, along with those of the rector and senior warden. A post on the St. Mark’s Facebook page, meanwhile, shows that Whatley delivered the “message” during “services” at the church in September 2020.
Whatley could not be reached for comment, either through his campaign or the Republican National Committee.
But Robert Orr, a former associate judge on the North Carolina Supreme Court and former Republican candidate for governor who is also a member of the Episcopal Church, told Raw Story he believes “all the basic tenets of Christianity are completely at odds with the policies being imposed by the Trump administration.”
Orr cited decisions to cut funding for school lunches, to end humanitarian aid to poor countries by shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development, and to “turn a blind eye to the humanitarian devastation going on in Gaza.”
“I think that those who are in lockstep with Mr. Trump have an obligation to explain how those kinds of policies are not inconsistent with the teaching that you hear on Sunday in your Episcopal church, your Baptist church, or your synagogue,” said Orr, whose alienation from the Republican Party began during the 2016 election before he switched his voter registration to unaffiliated following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
‘Intertwined and inseparable’
The intertwining of faith and politics has undoubtedly been a central theme of Whatley’s life.
In the 1990s, he earned a master’s degree in religion from Wake Forest University, then a joint degree in law and theology from Notre Dame. The Assembly reported that Whatley’s dissertation “centered on the Roman Empire’s occupation of Palestine just before and after the time of Christ,” in which he wrote that “religious and political power were intertwined and inseparable.”
Contemplating faith, Whatley also pursued politics.
As a sophomore at Watauga High School in Boone, N.C., he volunteered for the 1984 Senate reelection campaign of the Republican Jesse Helms — a hardline conservative leader.
After clerking for a federal judge in Charlotte, in 2000 Whatley volunteered for the Republican candidate George W. Bush’s recount effort in Florida, key to Bush’s presidential election win over the Democrat Al Gore.
Following stints working for the Bush administration, the staff of then North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole, and an oil and gas lobbying firm, Whatley was elected chair of the North Carolina Republican Party in 2019.
In 2021, following Jan. 6, the state party censured then Sen. Richard Burr for voting to impeach Trump for inciting an insurrection. In early 2024, as Trump was locking up the Republican nomination, he backed Whatley to chair the national committee.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) retired after opposing Donald Trump. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
The current North Carolina Senate race is to replace Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican who announced his retirement after opposing Trump’s package of tax cuts and slashed domestic spending, known as the “big beautiful bill.”
When Whatley formally launched his campaign in Gastonia on July 31, his loyalty to Trump took center stage.
Six days earlier, Trump issued a “complete and total endorsement” on Truth Social, all but assuring Whatley’s victory in next year’s primary.
Trump wrote: “I need him in Washington, and I need him representing you!”
In his kickoff speech, Whatley thanked Trump for his “vision” and “leadership,” while pledging to support Trump’s “efforts to deport violent criminal illegal aliens.”
The Rev. Shawn Griffith, Whatley’s pastor at St. Mark’s, gave a nonpartisan invocation, asking for God’s blessing on Whatley and his family.
“We pray that you give Michael wisdom in seeking your will in the decisions he will face,” Griffith said. “We pray that you give him strength and courage to choose and do the right things rather than those that are popular.”
Whatley’s 18-minute speech eschewed religion, referencing Trump nine times. The word “faith” received zero mentions.
Whatley said he would champion “North Carolina values,” which he enumerated as “a healthy, robust economy, safe kids and communities, and a strong America.”
‘Win elections for faith’
Whatley hasn’t always shied away from faith in the political sphere.
In Charlotte in 2022, addressing the Salt & Light Conference — hosted by the Faith & Freedom Coalition, led by longtime political strategist Ralph Reed — Whatley said: “I work hard every day to make sure the North Carolina Republican Party is going to be the party of faith … I pray that I can use this platform that I’ve been given by the voters of North Carolina, and the Republicans of North Carolina to be an instrument of God.”
That year, Whatley teamed up with Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson to speak at a series of pastor luncheons hosted by the American Renewal Project, an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center has linked to an anti-LGBTQ agenda.
Robinson wound up badly losing his 2024 bid for governor after CNN reported that he had described himself as a “Black Nazi” on a pornographic website.
During a December 2023 interview for a podcast hosted by Clearview Church in Henderson, N.C., Whatley said he had appeared at “30 different pastor lunches across the state” and spoken to 4,000 pastors.
“We talk about how to win elections for faith, not Republican versus Democrat,” Whatley said. “This is good versus evil. How do we get everybody to engage on this? Because I can assure you liberal churches are engaged. How do you get the evangelicals and other conservative churches to engage?”
Whatley said then it was imperative to recruit “moral” people to run for office, because “I’ve never seen someone who became a more moral person after they got elected.”
Six months into the second Trump administration, Whatley’s church is moving faith into the public square.
One day after the inauguration, the Rt. Rev. Marian Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop for the Diocese of Washington, D.C. directly pleaded with Trump to “have mercy” on “gay, lesbian and transgender children in both Republican and Democratic families who fear for their lives.”
Budde went on to admonish Trump that while some “may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde speaks to Donald Trump and his political flock (Photo: Screen capture via National Cathedral video)
The following month, the Episcopal Church joined more than two dozen Christian and Jewish groups in filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s move to give immigration enforcement agents more latitude to make arrests at houses of worship.
In May, the Episcopal Church terminated a partnership with the federal government to provide refugee resettlement services, in response to Trump’s move to classify white Afrikaners as refugees based on the discredited claim that they face racial discrimination in South Africa.
Most recently, the Episcopal Diocese of New York hired a lawyer to free a South Korean university student whose mother serves a priest in the diocese from ICE detention.
Orr told Raw Story the apparent drop-off in Republican rhetoric on religion since the 2024 election reflects “a political purpose.”
Voters who helped elect Trump in response to appeals to their faith, Orr said, “were used in a cynical way to exploit their beliefs on social issues and conservative flashpoints.”