John Smyth
2025-02-06 00:42:07 UTC
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PermalinkBlasphemy, sacrilege, or both? Photo: David Dee Delgado/Getty Images
Back when he first captured the hearts of Republicans generally and
conservative evangelicals specifically, it became fashionable for
Christian Right leaders to compare Donald Trump to Cyrus the Great, the
pagan Persian king who unwittingly served the will of God (according to
the Hebrew Scriptures) by liberating the Jews from the Babylonian
Captivity. It was a clever rationalization that enabled these holy
warriors to dismiss all the evidence of Trumps heathenish belief system
and sinful behavior and make him Gods (and their) vehicle for the
redemption of America. Being King Cyrus also relieved the 45th president
from any inconvenient obligation to change his evil ways or beg for a
forgiveness he explicitly didnt think he needed.
After Trump thrilled many conservative Christian activists by stacking
the Supreme Court in a way that produced the reversal of Roe v. Wade and
the expansion of the religious liberty to discriminate against the
wicked, some of his churchy fans began to view him not as a disposable
instrument of Gods will and thus as an replaceable ally but as an
indispensable leader of their cause. In part thats because they have
internalized his fury over the stolen election of 2020 and hence the
necessity of a Trump comeback to prove the divine plan cannot be
thwarted. Worse yet, some conservative Christians have conflated Trumps
struggle with the eternal struggle between the heavenly hosts and their
demonic enemies.
Were witnessing a pop-culture moment exemplifying this confusion of
religious and secular conservatism. Actor Jim Caviezel, best known for
his portrayal of Jesus in Mel Gibsons 2004 movie The Passion of the
Christ, made it known on Fox News that he regarded Trump as the new
Moses. He made this pronouncement while flogging his latest flick, Sound
of Freedom, which, much like The Passion of the Christ, has become a
counter-Hollywood phenomenon heavily promoted by ticket-buying churches
and church organizations. As Rolling Stones Miles Klee explains in his
review, the new movie is the perfect vehicle for Caviezel, who has been
flirting with QAnon-ish conspiracy theories for a good while:
[Caviezel] has become a prominent figure on the conspiracist right,
giving speeches and interviews in which he hints at an underground holy
war between patriots and a sinister legion of evildoers who are
harvesting the blood of children. Its straight-up QAnon stuff, right
down to his use of catchphrases like The storm is upon us. Here, he
gets to act out some of that drama by playing a fictionalized version of
Tim Ballard, head of the anti-sex trafficking nonprofit Operation
Underground Railroad (O.U.R.), in a feature film that casts the operator
as a Batman-style savior for kids sold into the sex trade.
Caviezel pulled Trump into his story by asserting that hed be the leader
who would go after the traffickers. And he also revealed that he had
provided Trump with a private showing of Sound of Freedom at the former
presidents Bedminster resort. Trump unsurprisingly responded with a
Truth Social post vowing to administer the death penalty to human
traffickers and blaming Joe Bidens border policies for this terrible
danger to children.
Now if you are a QAnon believer, this all fits together: America is
controlled by the pedophile satanists of the Democratic Party. Trump will
liberate their victims (presumably in chains awaiting their destruction
by blood-drinking global cabalists) and with them their country. And the
45th president has never lifted a finger to disabuse these people of
their dangerous and psychotic delusions.
But even among the uninitiated, the Trump-trafficking nexus can be
seductive. Human trafficking has been a major preoccupation of
conservative evangelicals in recent years, perhaps as an undeniably
worthy target of those whose all-purpose sexual puritanism is no longer
fashionable. So Trumps identification of trafficking with lax Democratic
policies and promises to save children resonate, making this cruel man a
liberating Moses figure.
Before Trump and his conservative evangelical fans get too comfortable
with this idea, they might want to read their Bibles (or in Trumps case,
have someone read to him from their Bibles) and recall Mosess ultimate
fate. After leading the Israelites out of the bondage of Egypt, Moses was
barred from entering the Promised Land because of his willful defiance of
an edict from God. Instead a younger successor, Joshua, took over
leadership of his people. Lord knows Trump is a willful defier of every
godly law, and right now younger MAGA conservatives (e.g., the 44-year-
old Ron DeSantis and the 37-year-old Vivek Ramaswamy) are bidding to
succeed him. Maybe King Cyrus is a safer role model for the former
president after all.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/07/new-moses-is-new-sign-of-
christian-rights-trump-confusion.html