by Sheldon Greaves
The last few weeks have featured a number of news stories about how some Trump supporters or spokespersons believe that Donald Trump is “God’s Chosen One”, (whatever that means). The idea is popular among Evangelical leaders, although it is causing some attrition among younger members. For the True Believers, however, Trump is moving from God’s servant to a messianic figure worthy of worship, to which I caution, be careful what you worship.
Messiah de Jour
This story isn’t new. Every age has its charlatan prophets, its messianic pretenders, its purveyors of pretense masquerading as piety. There are likewise political saviors who will promise power or fulfillment in exchange for total devotion. These stories tend to end badly. Briefly stated, they are associated with communities who feel themselves under some kind of existential threat, and undergo radicalization as they try to protect themselves. The tendency is to try to return to “core values” and protect them, reinvigorate them. What comes out is a form of fundamentalism, but in the process those core values always become distorted. Sometimes they are actually inverted.
This explains why so much of Evangelical positions on public policy is at near-total variance with the Bible, but that’s another discussion.
Good Messiah, Bad Messiah
It is interesting to look at how Trump’s Evangelical supporters justify his gradual apotheosis to Messiahship. It turns in part on the development of the concept. In most of the time covered by the Hebrew Bible, a “messiah” (which means “anointed”), was simply someone designated for a particular role. It carried no connotations of cosmic virtue or salvific mission. This started to change during the Babylonian Exile, which began after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 BCE. What was left of the Jewish nation hoped for some kind of restoration that only divine intervention could bring about.
The thinking was that God would raise up a leader from among the Jewish people to make this happen. So, imagine their surprise when their “savior” turned out to be none other than a pagan king: Cyrus. This cause no small amount of consternation, which the Bible reflects. But the Jews managed to deal with that ambiguity (something that, historically, they are exceptionally good at). Trump’s Christian defenders have turned to this story as a way to defend their idol. To say the least it is a dubious comparison; by most accounts, Cyrus was a reasonably decent, enlightened, intelligent, disciplined and, in his own fashion, pious king. One cannot say the same about the orange abomination currently infesting the White House.
More to the point, one suspects that Evangelical leaders are pushing this idea with the understanding that Trump is the front man, while they conduct their own influence campaign behind the curtain. This is based on the questionable assumption that they can break him to harness and control him for their own ends.
Right. Good luck with that.
Why the Radicalization?
Evangelicals have reason to worry. Their demographics are definitely heading in the wrong direction. More importantly, they have lost a number of high-profile battles in the “culture wars” such as gay marriage, now decisively settled. With the legislative flip in Virginia, it is now possible that they will vote to ratify the ERA, making it the law of the land. They long ago ceded the moral high ground to those to the left of them, but this is growing more and more obvious to everyone. Their hypocrisy is now, literally, a defining trait.
All this adds up to an existential threat, in addition to the manufactured evil generated by right-wing media. Trump’s unholy alliance with the Christian right is just the latest in a series of other such partnerships between right-wing Christianity and secular power brokers in a quest for a share of that power. It has led them directly to the immoral terrain they now inhabit.
The Hebrew Scriptures consistently seek to erode institutions of power. The God of the Bible consistently favors the vulnerable over the powerful. This theme is neither muted nor subtle. Evangelical Christianity has betrayed its moral grounding by chasing after a false god, who will ultimately betray them.