Sometimes Trump supporters are compared to cultists. In many
cases, the comparison is unfair, but sometimes, as an outside observer looking
in on the MAGA movement, you have to shake your head in amazement. That was the
case last week when Miriam Adelson, wife of billionaire Republican political
donor, Sheldon Adelson, called for the addition of the “Book of Trump” to the
Bible.
In an op-ed for the Las
Vegas Review Journal, Mrs. Adelson celebrated President Trump’s pro-Israel
policies. In her piece, which stops short of extolling his godly virtues, she
compares Trump to Esther, the Biblical queen who saved the Jews from a genocide
at the hands of Haman, an evil advisor to the king of Persia.
Noting that Trump is still not widely supported by American
Jews, Adelson writes, “Scholars of the Bible will no doubt note the heroes,
sages, and prophets of antiquity who were similarly spurned by the very people
they came to raise up.”
“Would it be too much to pray for a day when the Bible gets
a ‘Book of Trump,’ much like it has a ‘Book of Esther’ celebrating the
deliverance of the Jews from ancient Persia?” she asks. “Until that is decided,
let us, at least, sit back and marvel at this time of miracles for Israel, for
the United States, and for the whole world.”
The answer to that question is, of course, yes. It would be
much too much to amend the Bible so that it sings the praises of Donald Trump.
The very fact that the question is asked seems to indicate that something is
deeply amiss within the Republican Party. There are many reasons why there will
never be a Book of Trump, not least of which is that the Old Testament canon
was established hundreds of years before the time of Christ. More than that,
making Donald Trump the object of holy devotion seems antithetical to the teachings
of the Bible.
The consecration of Donald Trump is not limited to Adelson,
who is Jewish, but also occurs in evangelical circles as well. I described
several months ago how Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress led his church in a “Make
America Great Again” hymn and attacked Christians who were not on the Trump
train. Likewise, Franklin
Graham has called upon Christians to pray for Trump to triumph over his
enemies and said that “God was behind the last election.”
In some cases, Trump supporters go beyond equating Trump
with Esther or King David and make him equal to Jesus himself. Just ahead of the
2018 election, a billboard
in St. Louis pictured Trump with the caption, “The Word became flesh - John
1:14,” a messianic reference to Jesus Christ. The first chapter of John begins
with the statement, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.” An ebook
on Amazon is titled “Donald 'MESSIAH' Trump: The Man, the Myth, the
Messiah?” and asks if the president is the “Last Trump of God.”
The message is also carried forth by many rank and file
Trump supporters. If you have ever frequented pro-Trump social media groups,
you have probably seen memes like this one
depicting Christ guiding President Trump’s hand as he signs documents in the Oval
Office or this
photo of a Trump supporter wearing a shirt that reads, “Jesus died for you,
Trump lives for you.” Some of the social media content is satirical, some is not,
and it is often difficult to tell the difference. The tendency of the Trump
movement to deify the object of its obsession is so widespread and so
transparent that it has inspired articles in GQ and Psychology
Today as well as on Christian sites such as Red
Letter Christians.
Just last week, a Michigan couple held a MAGA-themed,
July 4 wedding in which the groom wore his Marine dress uniform and the
bride wore a wedding gown crafted from a “Make America Great Again” flag. Bridesmaids
wore red MAGA hats with the exception of the maid of honor, a Democrat who wore
a plain red cap instead. While the article does not identify the religious beliefs
of the couple, marriages have traditionally been a covenant between man, woman,
and God rather than man, woman, and president.
While some on the right have argued that Democrats have
become secular and replaced God with quasi-worship of the state or an environmental
religion centered on climate change. Now it seems that some Republicans, either
because they are either secular themselves and lack a focus for the innate
human need to worship God or because they are simply misguided and perhaps Biblically
illiterate, have replaced God with Donald Trump.
I am not going to spend time itemizing Donald Trump’s continuing
unchristian behavior or rehash the fact that, as recently as the 2016
presidential campaign, Donald Trump was at best a nominal Christian who said he
had never
prayed for forgiveness and who was simultaneously lying
about hush money payments to a porn star with whom he had cheated on his
pregnant wife. I am also not going to suggest that every Trump supporter
literally worships the president, although some certainly seem to do so.
What I am going to do is point back to the first of the Ten
Commandments, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). Putting
President Trump on par with God and Jesus is literally placing a false god
before the real one. Even putting partisan politics ahead of worshipping God is
worshipping an idol. Further, Jesus himself warned against false prophets. In his
Mount Olivet discourse, Christ said that at the end of the age “false messiahs
and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive,
if possible, even the elect” (Matthew 24:24). That day may have come.
As Bobby Azarian wrote in Psychology
Today, “No one is infallible, no one is free from bias, and no one is
honest all of the time, no matter how hard they may strive,” a statement that echoes
the Christian doctrine of the depravity of man, the idea that “all have sinned
and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
“When you believe that someone is truly a godsend, you can
excuse anything,” Azarian warns. “It all becomes ‘for the greater good.’ And
when that happens, it is a slippery slope to gross abuses of power that
continuously increase in magnitude.”
If such adoration was aimed at Barack Obama or Hillary
Clinton, conservatives and Republicans would rightly ridicule it and those who
practice it. The response should be no different because the object of affection
of these Trump supporters is a Republican president. No American should bend a
knee before a leader of either party and Christians should only kneel to
worship Christ. Whether Trump-worship is an actual cult or merely a cult of
personality, worship of a president does not bode well for either the Republican
Party or the American Republic.
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