Trump’s Easter AI image equating himself with Christ crosses a line even for evangelical supporters, who forced its removal. Politicizing Jesus is idolatrous, relies on bad historical analogies, and ignores that Jesus was executed not for politics but as a Roman bureaucratic bargain. Religion should not bless worldly power.
While Westerners awoke on their Easter to be greeted by a mere profanity-laced social media fusillade aimed at Iran, Easterners could behold on their holiest holy day a bizarre AI-generated image of Donald Trump as Christ the Healer.
The Eastern and Western Churches use different liturgical calendars, which means that in most years Easter Sunday occurs on different dates in the Eastern and Western rites. This is one of those years, but both churches are now in the midst of the fifty-day feast that precedes Pentecost, so reflection on the meaning of Easter–and on what it doesn’t mean–is still in order.
Eastern-rite Christians got the worst of it from Donald Trump this year, which perhaps is appropriate in that they predominate among the faithful in the lands where the U.S. is currently at war. While Westerners awoke on their Easter to be greeted by a mere profanity-laced social media fusillade aimed at Iran, Easterners could behold on their holiest holy day a bizarre AI-generated image of Donald Trump as Christ the Healer. To the credit of Trump’s evangelical Protestant fan base, their reaction was swift and negative, and the offending post was shortly removed.
Trump’s politicization of Jesus is perhaps the most extreme such example I can think of, but it is merely the most obvious instance of a phenomenon that has long been common among those who wish to give their worldly interests the imprimatur of the messiah. Considering that Islam takes a high view of Jesus as one who was born of a virgin, who was taken up to heaven after his earthly ministry, and who will someday defeat the Dajjal or Antichrist, it seems that devout Muslims might have some interest in this matter as well.
The inappropriateness of politicizing Jesus should be obvious to everyone, but since it obviously isn’t, I hope I may be permitted to dilate upon it just a bit:
1) Politicizing Jesus is idolatrous.
2) Politicizing Jesus bespeaks a tacit belief that we can’t really solve problems on a religious level or as religious individuals or groups, that we need the state, otherwise known as force—even if one is “helping the unfortunate.”
3) Politicizing Jesus uses the messiah as the celebrity endorser of a political product or ideology, like a famous actor doing a television commercial for Volkswagen.
4) Politicizing Jesus is usually based on really bad historical analogies.
5) Politicizing Jesus usually overlooks a few key facts, such as that Jesus was a first-century Palestinian Jew and not a 21st-century Westerner. I’ve heard Jesus called a Republican businessman because he supposedly recruited entrepreneurs and got things done. Since childhood I’ve been hearing him called a hippie because he had long hair, which, if true, means only that he wasn’t a Roman. I’ve heard him called a Democrat because he told people to share, though I note that he left no instructions on how to force other people to share (or on how to live a life of luxury in the suburbs while forcing other people to share).
Here we need to address the wearisome canard that “Jesus was executed for being a political criminal.” This argument is popular because it absolves the speaker or writer of the responsibility of blaming the Jewish leaders for Jesus’ trial and conviction, thereby sidestepping an accusation of anti-Semitism.
The fact – if we can believe anything the Gospels say – is that the Jewish leaders wanted him dead, but being under Roman rule could not execute him themselves. Pontius Pilate, a mediocre career politician who thought Jesus was innocent, had already incurred the displeasure of his superiors with what they saw as an insufficient response to disorder in the vicinity. Pilate desperately wanted peace in the Middle East and agreed to dispatch Jesus in order to prevent the Jewish leaders from stirring up a riot.
In short, Jesus was convicted as a political criminal, but not for actually being one. He was the victim of a sorry political deal intended to save the career of a Roman bureaucrat.
If that doesn’t make you think twice about associating Jesus with politics, you are a deeply disturbed individual.
The cast of characters at Jesus’ trial is certainly an intriguing one: The priests represented the upper class of the Jewish nation. The Pharisees and scribes were from the middle class, such as it was. The lower classes, for whom Jesus had done so much, preferred politics as usual and demanded crucifixion for Jesus and freedom for a prisoner who had been condemned to death for committing a political murder. The Romans were just there to referee what they thought was an intramural spat among exotic primitives, and they said, “Okay, whatever,” and chalked it up to another day in the provinces.
Do we really want to associate Jesus with anything this tawdry, and in effect have him blessing the way the world works?
Though I am not optimistic, I hope that Trump’s excursion into the most outre blasphemy will prompt some sober reflection among supporters who have associated religion and politics far more closely than a mere desire to see the former exert a wholesome influence on the latter.
I understand the Biblical account of Jesus to mean that there is life after politics, economics, and business as usual. If we believe Jesus was unjustly abused and overcame all of that, we should try to act like it. That should keep us all pretty busy, regardless of how we vote.