By Theodore Bunker Courtesy Newsmax

President Donald Trump’s “ultraconservative religious allies” are responsible for his response to the coronavirus pandemic, author Katherine Stewart wrote in an opinion article for The New York Times on Friday.

Stewart, a journalist and the author of “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism,” noted “Trump rose to power with the determined assistance of a movement that denies science, bashes government, and prioritized loyalty over professional expertise. In the current crisis, we are all reaping what that movement has sown.”

She adds the “denial of science and critical thinking among religious ultraconservatives now haunts the American response to the coronavirus crisis.”

Stewart cites statements from several evangelical leaders who are close with Trump, such as Guillermo Maldonado, who said “Do you believe God would bring his people to his house to be contagious with the virus? Of course not.”

She also quotes Rodney Howard-Browne of The River at Tampa Bay Church in Florida, who called people worried about the disease “pansies,” and Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., who said the response to the coronavirus was “overreacting,” and said it was an “attempt to get Trump.”

Stewart notes, “By all accounts, President Trump’s tendency to trust his gut over the experts on issues like vaccines and climate change does not come from any deep-seated religious conviction. But he is perfectly in tune with the religious nationalists who form the core of his base. In his daily briefings from the White House, Mr. Trump actively disdains and contradicts the messages coming from his own experts and touts as yet unproven cures.”