After surviving his first assassinatiin attempt, Mr. Trump announced he has become “more spiritual.” His popularity stays strong, and his supporters now see him as “called by God,” to be God’s emissary to “fix” the United States. Assassination attempts, whether real or supposed, reinforce convictions that the “victim” is “God-chosen.” Many of Trump’s white evangelical supporters believe that “God has a hand on him,” meaning that, despite his moral flaws, God has chosen Trump to serve once again in the White House. This continually-stated pronouncement makes me think about the observation by Madeleine Albright (1937 – 2022) former U.S. Secretary of State: “This is the first rule of deception: repeated often enough, almost any statement, story, or smear can start to sound plausible.”

Authoritarian leaders have always found religion a wonderful convenience, which they manipulate to their advantage. It enables them to lord it over other people and allows them to punish their “enemies” guilt-free, since that punishment, they can proclaim, is what God wants. Their distorted religion enables them to bully and denigrate certain groups of people: women, LGBTQ people, non-whites, foreigners, and miscellaneous “losers.” Values like love, mercy, and compassion disappear. The key value is faithfulness and obedience to the authoritarian leader.

There are classic historical examples: The atheist and anti-clerical Benito Mussolini (1883 – 1945) needed backing by the Vatican to promote his National Fascist Party. He therefore married in the Catholic church and had his children baptized. In his first parliamentary speech in 1921, he announced that “the only universal values that radiate from Rome are those of the Vatican.”

Spain’s Generalissimo Franco (1892 – 1975) became a cruel and murderous dictator. Although Franco himself was known for not being very devout, he portrayed himself as a fervent Catholic and used religion to increase his power. He used the Guerrilleros de Christo Rey (the Warriors of Christ the King) to implement his policy of torture and executions.

And of course, as we are already commemorating the end of WWII in Europe, we know the story of Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945). Hitler ceased being a Catholic when a teenager. But Hitler and his Nazi party promoted their brand of “Positive Christianity.” He described Jesus as an “Aryan fighter” who struggled against the corrupt Pharisees. Joseph Goebbels (1897 – 1945), Hitler’s Reich Minister of Propaganda and one of his closest and most devoted associates, wrote in April 1941 that although Hitler was “a fierce opponent” of the Vatican and Christianity, “he forbids me to leave the church, for tactical reasons.”

Getting back to the contemporary United States, I suspect we all remember that day in early June 2020 when, Bible in hand, then President Trump posed for photos in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church. It was Trumpian political theater.

Dr. Mariann Bude, Episcopal Bishop of Washington DC since 2011, stressed that Trump had used the Bible at St. John’s “as if it were a prop or an extension of his military and authoritarian position.” Trump is now selling “God Bless the USA” Bibles for $59.99 as he faces mounting legal bills.

Ideally, healthy religion supports and gives meaning to our lives. It proclaims values about how we should live and how we should relate to one another. It can unite us and give us hope and courage for tomorrow. All the great religious traditions call for honesty, justice, respect, and compassion. When grossly distorted, however, religion can also be a source of violent division, destruction, and death.

Promoting a healthy Christian way of life may very well be our biggest Christian challenge in 2024 and at the start of a new presidential administration in 2025. We need to reflect and examine our beliefs and our behavior, encouraging and supporting other healthy religion people.

The United States should be a society with liberty and justice FOR ALL. Leadership counts. Character counts. Authentic Christianity, in collaboration with other religious traditions, helps make it happen. 

• Jack

Dr. John Alonzo Dick – Historical Theologian