By The Editorial Board
American politics has reached divine stakes as the November election approaches.
At the Republican National Convention in July, there was a spirit in the air of divine intervention. Many speakers thanked God for saving former President Donald Trump from being killed on July 13 by an assassin who took the life of one rally-goer and injured others.
Sporting a bandage on his right ear, the former president emerged defiant at the convention, flocked by thousands of adoring supporters and the very real sense that God had moved in the physical world, intervening specifically to save Trump’s life so that he could resume office in January.
The Maricopa County Republican Committee, a Floridian organization representing one of the largest Republican counties in the nation, posted a video on X, stating that Trump’s near-assassination signifies the fulfillment of Leviticus 8:22, when Moses smears the blood of a sacrificial ram on Aaron’s right ear.
The video says the former president’s wound is a “visible mark of consecration, signifying that the person is dedicated to God’s service.”
At the RNC, Pastor Lorenzo Sewell of Detroit asked the crowd, “do you know that Trump was shot at 6:11? And do you know that Ephesians chapter No. 6, verse No. 11, says ‘be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power?’”
There is danger in placing divine importance on the shoulders of a political candidate. Not only is it theologically bankrupt in that it presumes that anyone can know God’s plan for us — and even more absurdly, that we can intuit how God feels about American elections — but it elevates support for a politician past any reasonable level. It becomes closer to idol worship than advocacy.
Not one political party defines members of the Christian faith, and there are believers across the aisle, not to mention in countless countries abroad that don’t share the American political system. It belies the diversity in politics and personal feelings of members of the Christian faith, and it sends the wrong message — vote one way, or you aren’t Christian enough.
This sort of rhetoric should be offensive to people of faith, and its extreme divisiveness should be cautioned against.
Finally, it’s cherry-picked. Verses such as Revelation 13:3 might cause someone to say that a prominent figure being shot in the head and surviving would be a sign that the end times are upon us. Scripture can be contorted every which way in order to support a political ideology, make someone out to be holy or turn them into a beast. Either way you twist it, it’s dishonest to use scripture to bolster a political figure.
