What boggles the mind is that so many Americans are buying into his royal fantasy. Apparently millions of us, including the vast majority of Republicans, missed the history lesson on the American Revolution.
We Yankees did what we did not just because we did not like England’s King George III, but because we were completely over any need for kings. In their place, we came up with the novel theory that people should govern themselves through elected representatives—a theory so novel at the time that even after our side won that war, some of us still wanted to crown a king. To his everlasting credit, George Washington rejected becoming king, a rejection that one might think would bury the idea forever.
But here we are, two and half centuries later, not only toying with the idea of being ruled by a king, but actually encouraging it. Many of us apparently love the thought of endowing one person with the divine authority to make all of our decisions for us.
Ah, there it is, “divine authority.” “The divine right of kings” claims that kings are kings not only because they were born into the right families and live in gold-encrusted palaces and control vast and lethal armies but because God made them so. “Divine right” is the ultimate nail in the coffin of human freedom, and apparently Republicans are lovin’ it like they love MacDonald’s burgers.
The high priest of Donald Trump’s divine right to rule as he pleases is Secretary of Lethality Pete Hegseth. Hegseth is high priest because he’s got the inside track to Jesus. He loves to parade himself around in well-cut suits, tacking the name of Jesus onto fierce incantations and imprecatory prayers pronouncing death and destruction on all whom the king hates, possibly including anyone who dares to disagree with his taste in shoes.
Between Trump’s personal army (aka I.C.E) and Hegseth’s awesomely-armed forces, this king and his ever-loyal priest intend to destroy all opposition at home and abroad. Meanwhile, over in the increasingly-inconsequential congress, House Speaker-boy Mike Johnson proudly and with a straight face awards to Mr. Trump the very first “America First” trophy, which looks like a gold-gilded bald eagle taking a bow as it homes in on its prey. How appropriate.
Enough. The point of this rant is to link Saturday’s “No Kings” rallies to Sunday’s Palm Sunday celebrations.
It is possible that on the day Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey, the Rome-enthralled would-be royal class was making its entrance on the other side of town on war horses. Both entrances drew their crowds.
Christians need to know which crowd they are in.
Last Wednesday night I heard a fiery sermon warning Christians not to confuse the two who came parading into Jerusalem that day—that is, not to confuse Jesus with any king/Caesar/dictator/despot. The preacher of that sermon is the prophet our nation desperately needs to hear today.
Nationalism draped in Christian trappings is heretical.
Elevating an elected United States President to a divinely-anointed cult figure is unAmerican.
These betrayals of our nation’s founding and of the Christian faith must stop: stop in the name of democracy; stop in the name of government of, by, and for the people; stop in the name of God, for God’s sake!
Matthew 21:10 records that “when (Jesus) entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking ‘Who is this?’”
I hope that by Palm Sunday afternoon Christians who see in Donald Trump the Second Coming of Christ will look at both Jesus and Mr. Trump and ask of each of them, “Who is this?” and be able to enumerate the vast differences between them. Those differences are not at all hard to see. You just have to want to look.
Please.
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