What does Donald Trump’s image of himself as Jesus Christ say about American Christians? - David Behrens
In 1966 John Lennon clumsily compared The Beatles to Jesus, and the ‘moral majority’ on the Christian right was so scandalised it encouraged American teenagers to burn their LPs in righteous protest.
Today that same religious movement is seeking to condone its president’s portrayal of himself as Jesus healing the sick. What does that tell you about the hypocrisy of a nation still filled with churchgoers?
A doctor could write a whole book on Donald Trump’s God complex and what it reveals about the state of his intellect, if he has one. Several psychologists are probably doing that as we speak. But you don’t need a medical certificate to know that the world’s most volatile and dangerous leader right now is not Vladimir Putin nor any Ayatollah but the leader of the supposed free world.
And if you’re looking for something positive to take away, it’s perhaps a measure of how free the world still is that Trump can laugh off his barefaced blasphemy. Misrepresenting a deity in visual form is not something they’d dare do in Iran, let’s put it that way.
But his ability to repel criticism as casually as a wet dog shaking itself off is precisely the problem. He has become a religion in himself, comparable in his own mind to the Pope – with whom he crossed swords last weekend – and emboldened by loyal disciples, apologists who draw their own power from being in his orbit. Sixty years ago John Lennon could not understand what made people idolise him like that; Trump thinks it’s his right.
His acolytes include the devoutly religious (at least since his conversion to Catholicism seven years ago) vice-president JD Vance, who tried to excuse the symbolic AI image of his boss by saying the President “was posting a joke”. It would have made more sense as a statement if you removed the word ‘posting’.
Vance is ineffectual but Pete Hegseth, the unqualified, heavily tattooed TV host who was confirmed as Defence Secretary in January only by dint of Vance’s casting vote, is plain frightening. Hegseth identifies as a ‘militant Christian’, of a type that can overlook his two divorces, his child born out of wedlock, the multiple allegations of sexual assault and his excessive drinking so long as he continues to attack the “leftist folklore” of separating church and state.
His beliefs, if he truly believes anything, represent the very heights of hypocrisy. Over here no-one but a raving zealot bashing bibles outside Sainsbury’s on a Saturday morning would repeat a word he says.
But we are less God-fearing than Americans: only one of us in 20 goes to church every weekend compared with fully a third there. That’s a big, gullible audience which doesn’t understand that militant Christianity is a contradiction in terms.
Nor is giving religion a bad name is a uniquely American preoccupation. We are more than capable of doing it ourselves.
The most unchristian thing I’ve heard this week – and the best argument for keeping church and state separate – came not from Trump or even Hegseth but from Anglican HQ in Westminster. The Church of England, it was reported, was “preparing” to apologise for imposing unwanted adoptions on young, unmarried mothers. This happened not centuries ago but as recently as the 1970s, well after the sexual revolution The Beatles unleashed.
The Church, with state funding, ran about 100 mother-and-baby homes across England and used them to effectively hide single pregnant women from society. Tens of thousands of babies were taken from their mothers simply because of the absence of a marriage certificate.
Even now, when such a policy would be unconscionable, the Church has not conceded it was wrong; it is only “considering” saying sorry. If it does, ministers will have to as well, since their predecessors helped foot the bill.
The abhorrence most of us will feel about separating mothers from their children on purely ideological grounds is what sets us apart from Americans. Abortions are banned or heavily restricted in 17 US states and if Pete Hegseth had his way, the other 33 would be made to follow. After all, he said two months ago, “protecting the God-given life of an unborn baby is not political, it’s biblical”.
He also, by the way, wants to see “wicked souls be delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them”, a philosophy that doesn’t sit comfortably with what the Bible says about mercy and compassion. But it is in the nature of the hypocrite to believe only what he chooses.
A more prescient warning lies elsewhere in the Good Book: beware of false prophets and fake Christs disguised as wolves in sheep’s clothing. Oh yes, if it’s symbolism you want, Trump’s image of himself is a warning straight from hell.