The Evangelical Trump Worship Just Took an Apocryphal Turn

Everything under Trump is Trump Worship, especially conservative sects of American religion

In the Old Testament, Moses spent 40 days on Mt. Sinai, only descending once he had the ten commandments in hand. When he finally climbed off the mountain, he found his people worshipping a literal golden calf statue.

Moses then smashed the stone tablets containing inscriptions of the ten commandants, and he burned the golden calf and cast its remains into the water and made the tribe drink from it.

It might seem strange for a liberal blog written by a lefty trans woman recounts a story from the bible, but it somehow became relevant in US politics last week.

American Evangelicals disregarded these warnings from millennia ago last week when they dedicated a 22 foot tall golden statue of Donald Trump at an event at the Trump National Doral Resort in Florida.

The statue appears to mimic Trump's now famous fist pump after a shooter in Butler, PA took a shot towards him that left his right ear bloodied, though the figure is notably trimmer than the president's real life body. The irony of the display of conservative religious figures praying to a literal gold statue was a little on the nose, as the event was roundly mocked on social media.

Even Pastor Mark Burns (no relation), a conservative televangelist, who attended the event couldn't see past the apocryphal parallels. "Let me be clear," he tweeted. "[T]his is not a golden calf. We worship the Lord Jesus Christ and him alone."

Pastor Burns can insist all he wants to that it's not a "golden calf" but we've all seen the constant stream of videos and images of conservative religious figures praying over Trump as if he's a deity. It looks completely ridiculous to anyone who's not completely church-brained.

A passage from Exodus perfectly encapsulates the mockery these people put upon the God they allege to worship:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’

“I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”

It's a well known fact by now that I am a lapsed Catholic, probably a former Catholic at this point given the church's official stance on trans people, so religion doesn't play much of a part in my life other than the near constant guilt my brain feels over just about everything.

But it's plain, even for someone like me, to see that evangelicals do worship Trump instead of Jesus. Sure they read from their little bible books during services, but none of their actions are based in the teachings of Christ. Conservative evangelical churches exist by riling up parishioners' bigotries and declaring them as attacks on God and their church itself.

The trans people, the immigrants, the urbanites. The Muslims, the Jews (not the ones in Israel), and the queers. All are fair game according to church doctrine.

It doesn't matter that the unemployment rate amongst trans people is approximately at Great Depression levels. It doesn't matter that fellow Christians are being rounded up and held in concentration camps in squalid conditions, or are transported across the globe shackled for dozens of hours at a time to be dumped off in a strange foreign land that just so happens to allow legal slavery.

The existence of these people all are attacks on God himself that must be defended against, according to these so-called holy men and women.

Trump is their warrior, the one ordained to take on all of the enemies of God.

Or so they say...

Trump himself has even taken to adopting this role publicly. A few weeks ago, he posted an AI generated illustration of himself as Jesus, healing a person laying in a hospital bed.

But there's no one on this Earth who would say that Trump is Christ-like in any way. Conservative church goers love him because he bashes all the people they hate. Conservative churches in the US (and I'm not just talking about Evangelicals here) do not exist to worship Christ, they exist first and foremost to extract money from parishioners and secondly, to cement conservative political power.

The prosperity gospel, a uniquely American protestant view that God confers wealth and power to the most holy and righteous among His flock, has been one of the most destructive forces in this country. It allows Christians to look at a disgusting example of a man like Donald Trump, and see his gold-gilded palaces and influence, and decide he must be holy.

It looks at the lowly trans woman and her Great Depression level economic conditions and decide she must be unholy, despite the fact that trans people are not mentioned in the bible (unless you count eunuchs).

Trump is the ultimate prosperity gospel creation: a powerful man with the appearance of wealth who happens to hate all the right political outgroups.

Now Trump is trying to remake the nation's capital in his own image. He tore down the East Wing of the White House to build his [corruption scheme] ballroom, he drained the reflecting pool and painted it blue, and he gilded over the White House with the gaudiest looking gold touches you've ever seen. Now he wants to build his own triumphal arch, bigger than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, despite the fact that he is badly losing his war with Iran.

Trump himself is a walking scam. He extorted money from dozens of major corporations to fund the construction of his ballroom, but is now asking for a billion dollars from Congress to fund it. He's extorted money and gifts from leaders of other countries in return for favorable treatment and aid. His administration is handing out lucrative no-bid contracts to political cronies.

His list of alleged corruptions is endless.

If Jesus existed today, he would burst into the Oval Office when these conservative faith leaders are literally worshipping Trump in prayer and overturn all the furniture and cast them out of the temple as he did to the money changers.

This will continue until we break out of this protestant delusion that wealth and power in the hands of a white cis het man is an indication of holiness. It papers over so many matters of sin.

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