Donald Trump -- Ordained and Chosen?

“ Mr. President … you said you were the chosen one. You were … You are here in this time because God ordained you.’”

– Rick Perry

People like Former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and conservative commentator Wayne Allyn Root believe Donald Trump is the “Chosen One,” relating his presidency to the second coming of God.

"The King of Israel? The second coming of God? He thinks he's Jesus. That's where we are," tweeted Diana Butler Bass, a scholar specializing in American religion and culture.

Trump has actually referred to himself as the “Chosen One,” and though many doubt he has a Messiah complex, (Trump later tweeted he was "kidding" and "being sarcastic" when he called himself the "chosen one.”), the belief that Trump was specifically chosen by God to occupy the office is prevalent among evangelicals.

Perry puts it like this:

 "God's used imperfect people all through history. King David wasn't perfect. Saul wasn't perfect. Solomon wasn't perfect … If you're a believing Christian, you understand God's plan for the people who rule and judge over us on this planet in our government.”

John Fea, professor of American history at Messiah College, explains that the phrase “Chosen One” is probably part Christianity, part science fiction, part myth, part fantasy, part Harry Potter." Fea said. "But at the same time, there is embedded within that phrase this idea that God chooses certain people — and evangelicals will believe this — that God chooses certain people for particular moments in time to serve his purposes."

In this interpretation of Trump as “God’s Chosen One” people view him as a King Cyrus-like figure, anointed by God to save America from cultural collapse. That claim about Trump has been made in books and even a feature film called The Trump Prophecy (2018).

According to Anthea Butler of Religion News Service, Christian followers of Trump even created a coin with images of Trump and Cyrus on it to use during their prayers. Also there have been a series of paintings of Trump as a kind of redeemer figure by John McNaughton. Others depict Trump being hugged by Jesus, or signing bills at the resolute desk with Jesus standing behind him. Butler says, “These images, for some evangelicals, are fan images of the hopes and the realities they believe President Trump’s election has wrought.”

In interviews with 50 Trump supporting evangelicals, Julie Zauzmer, religion reporter for The Washington Post, found evangelicals find Trump appealing because he “sees America like they do, a menacing place where white Christians feel mocked and threatened for their beliefs.” He is also, “against abortion and gay rights and…has the economy humming to boot.” These are all reasons for Trump's popularity with evangelicals.

Similarly, in a personal essay, Elizabeth Bruenig, opinion columnist for the Post and a Catholic convert from evangelicalism, wrote that “Trump’s less-than-Christian behavior seemed, paradoxically, to make him a more appealing candidate to beleaguered, aggravated Christians.”

Bruenig believes evangelicals feel oppressed by a culture that forces them to sell wedding cakes to gay people and watch television programs where single women occasionally have sex. Christians are supposed to turn the other cheek; they need an agnostic bully to stand up for them.

Indeed, for many white evangelicals, Trump proclaiming himself the divine agent of racist retribution is a restatement of the basic tenets of their faith. However, some very disturbing sects have been emboldened with Trump's election.

Most notable of those religious frightening ideologies are those who profess Christian Identity (also known as Identity Christianity). They include racist, anti-semitic, white supremacists who hold that only Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Nordic, Aryan people, and those of kindred blood are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and hence the descendants of the ancient Israelites.

Christian Identity beliefs were primarily developed and promoted by authors who regarded Europeans as the "chosen people" and Jews as the cursed offspring of Cain, the "serpent hybrid" or serpent seed. White supremacist sects and gangs later adopted many of these teachings.

Christian Identity holds that all non-whites (people not of wholly European descent) will either be exterminated or enslaved in order to serve the white race in the new Heavenly Kingdom on Earth under the reign of Jesus Christ. Its doctrine states that only "Adamic" (white) people can achieve salvation and paradise.

Of course, few evangelicals are self-professed racists or those with a Christian identity who deify Trump as the savior of the white race. Many of these Christians are true believers in Christ who have worked for equality and justice in the U.S. and they still do so today. Even if they don't necessarily idolize Trump as the Chosen One, these same evangelicals don’t want to criticize Trump. They see him as one of their own. Indeed, they view Trump as a politically anointed Christian leader who will get back their governmental clout.

In the late 1970s and 1980s white conservative evangelicalism became fused with the GOP. This merger is known as the “Christian” or “Religious” Right today. John Fea posits this political movement was born out of fear that the removal of prayer and Bible reading in schools, the growing diversity following the Immigration Act of 1965 (Hart-Celler Act), the intrusion of government (“big government”) into segregated Christian academies in the South, and the legalization of abortion were undermining America’s uniquely Christian identity.

John Fea explains …

“The leaders of the Christian Right believed the best way to 'reclaim' or 'restore' this identity was by gaining control of all three branches of government. Jimmy Carter, a self-proclaimed “born-again Christian,” was not championing these issues to the degree that many evangelical conservatives wished. As a result, white evangelicals gravitated to Ronald Reagan, a man who seemed to understand evangelical concerns, or was, at the very least, willing to placate evangelicals.”

Now, the political evangelical support for Trump's “Make America Great Again” rule is firmly rooted in antipathy to abortion and marriage equality. It gains traction through Trump's fear mongering with vicious immigration policies such as building a border wall and enacting Muslim bans. Most evangelicals view the entire existential struggle as a necessity to protect the country’s religious foundation from incursions by the secular left.

The transformation of “evangelical” from a theological position to a “racial and political” one is a prime driver of the increasing hostility of liberals to religion.

According to surveys by the Pew Research Center, the percentage of liberals who believe that churches and religious organizations positively contribute to society dropped from nearly half (49 percent) in 2010 to only one-third (33 percent) in 2019. And according to 2016 data from the Voter Study Group, only 11 percent of people who are very liberal say that being Christian is at least fairly important to what it means to be American – compared to 69 percent of people who identify as very conservative.

With the Trump presidency, it is evident that left-leaning people with weaker religious ties are opting out of religion because they dislike Christian conservatives’ social agenda. Politics is now a driving factor behind the rise of the religiously unaffiliated.

This shift is reducing churches’ ability to bring a diverse array of people together and break down partisan barriers. That threatens to further undermine trust in religious groups and make our politics more and more divisive.

David Campbell, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame, says …

“We have very few institutions left in the country where people who have different political views come together. Worship was one of those — and without it, the list is smaller and smaller.” 

One very interesting division surely comes from the many millions of non-white evangelicals in America – of course, not very many of them voted for Donald Trump. So, division within the ranks of the faithful makes a political evangelical stand a fractured ideology.

Nonetheless, as ridiculous as it may be, millions of evangelical Christians believe that in Donald Trump, who perceived during his candidacy he could murder someone in Times Square and not lose his base, they have precisely the person “chosen” by God to lead this country back to God and to protect it against the attempts of atheists and liberals to turn it in the other direction.

The cult of true believers cannot be talked out of their Chosen One doctrine by reasoned arguments. They cling to End Time prophecies and conspiracy theories to support their political beliefs – beliefs being spread by politicians like Rick Perry and Nikki Haley.

I wonder how many remember that Rick Perry, who ran unsuccessfully for president in both 2012 and 2016, called Trump's candidacy “a cancer on conservatism” that “must be clearly diagnosed, excised and discarded.”

“My fellow Republicans, beware of false prophets,” Perry said of his then-rival while addressing a conservative group in mid-2015. “Do not let itching ears be tickled by messengers who appeal to anger, division and resentment.”

Perhaps Perry's own “itching ears” have caused his recent conversion to the Trump Chosen One belief. Superstition has it that itching or buzzing in the left ear is said to mean you are being badmouthed, or will face bad luck. It appears he, like so many other Republicans who once discredited Trump, has caved to political pressures … and much of that pressure has come from the voting block of the evangelical right seeking their own religious influence.

Here is what the Bible actually says of prickling feelings in the auditory structure:

“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead,

to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers

to say what their itching ears want to hear.”

2 Timothy 4:3 New International Version (NIV)