In September 2021, a massive billboard promoting Donald Trump loomed high above Highway 27 in Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., with the words of Isaiah 9:6, a biblical text long cherished by Christians, emblazoned over an American flag: “Unto us a son is given and the government shall be upon his shoulders.”
Christians have for two millennia understood that verse to predict the birth of Jesus as the Messiah. The billboard, however, featured a picture of Donald Trump, clearly proclaiming him as the messianic savior.
Fake courtroom sketch of Donald Trump with Jesus.
Almost three years later, on the first day of his civil fraud trial in New York, Trump released a drawing of himself sitting next to a white Jesus, the sort of image most white Americans assume is a more or less accurate depiction. Above the picture, the caption read, “This is the most accurate court sketch of all time. Because nobody could have made it this far alone.”
Then, during his campaign for the 2024 Republican nomination for the presidency, Trump and his advisers released a video that played on two of the most crucial stories in the entire biblical text — the creation of the world (“In the beginning, God created,” Genesis 1:1) and the birth of Jesus whom the angels proclaimed as Messiah and Lord (Luke 2:11).
The text of that video read:
On June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need a caretaker,” so God gave us Trump. God said, “I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, fix this country, work all day, fight the Marxists, eat supper, then go to the Oval Office and stay past midnight at a meeting of the heads of state.” So, God made Trump. “I need somebody with arms, strong enough to wrestle the deep state, and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Someone to ruffle the feathers, tame the cantankerous World Economic Forum, come home hungry, have to wait until the First Lady is done with lunch with friends, then tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon, and mean it.” So, God gave us Trump.
In March 2024, one of Trump’s followers posted online the text of Psalm 109:3-8, part of which reads,
They have surrounded me with words of hatred,
And fought against me without a cause.
In return for my love, they are my accusers,
But I give myself to prayer.
“When Donald Trump or any politician suggests he or she is the messianic savior, anointed by God, that politician is a fraud.”
The person who posted the text commented, “It is ironic that Christ walked through his greatest persecution the very week (Holy Week) they are trying to steal your property from you.”
Trump responded with six short words: “Received this morning — Beautiful, thank you!”
These claims by Trump and his supporters take us back to one of the New Testament’s central themes — that the upside-down kingdom of God, marked by service to the least of these, always stands in judgment on the right-side-up imperial powers, marked by wealth and power.
When Donald Trump or any politician, regardless of political party, suggests he or she is the messianic savior, anointed by God, that politician is a fraud, according to the standards of the biblical text. And when the Christian community embraces a politician — any politician of any political party — who claims for himself or herself a messianic role, the Christian community has plunged a dagger into the heart of the Christian faith.
In truth, we live in a world remarkably similar to the world in which Jesus lived — the world of the Roman Empire — and the burden of the New Testament text is that Jesus, the suffering servant — not Caesar, the imperial ruler — is always Lord of all.
Richard T. Hughes
Richard Hughes is distinguished professor of religion emeritus at Pepperdine University and co-author with Christina Littlefield of Christian America and the Kingdom of God: White Christian Nationalism from the Puritans to January 6, 2021.
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