McCulley-Stacy

I want to talk about a picture.

This weekend, on Orthodox Easter, the President of the United States posted an AI image of himself on Truth Social dressed in biblical robes, appearing to be laying healing hands on a sick man, with eagles, the American flag and warplanes filling a heavenly sky above him. He posted it without comment or explanation, the same night he was publicly attacking Pope Leo XIV, the first American-born pope, for having the audacity to call for peace during a war.

Let me say that plainly: Donald Trump cast himself as a messianic figure and attacked a man of God for preaching the Gospel. In the same evening.

Some may say I need to be careful here. I know that some of you who that will read this column voted for Donald Trump and believe in him deeply. I’m not writing to mock that. But I am writing to say, very candidly and without apology, is that what he posted this weekend crosses a line that should trouble every person of genuine faith, regardless of party.

I grew up in a tradition that took scripture seriously. The laying on of hands is not a campaign aesthetic. Healing the sick is not a brand. When you borrow the visual language of the divine and replace the face of Christ with your own, you are not honoring faith. You are strip-mining it for your own political power.

And real Republicans should say so.

The party I grew up respecting believed in something. Limited government. Personal accountability. The separation of institutions that exist to check each other. The Church and the State were supposed to stay in their lanes precisely because mixing them produces something neither faith nor democracy can survive.

Pope Leo’s message was simple: “Blessed are the peacemakers.” That is not radical left ideology. That is Matthew 5:9. Trump’s own Defense Secretary recently invoked God to justify the Iran war. The President claimed God personally approves of the conflict. And when the Pope disagreed, Trump called him “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy.”

This is not conservatism. This is something else entirely.

Conservatives used to understand that no leader gets to wear the robes of the Almighty. That humility before God was the whole point. This matters beyond theology and politics.

History has not been kind to movements that fused national identity with a single man’s divine mandate. That fusion, wherever it has taken root, has required citizens to stop asking hard questions. Devotion replaces discernment. Loyalty replaces conscience. That is not patriotism. That is something else entirely.

The power which the President currently holds and boldly uses without regard for decency and integrity is dangerous. Not just for our democracy, but for the whole of humanity.

We can do better, we must do better. We can demand our leaders earn and hold our trust through accountability, not imagery. We must hold our faith traditions as something that belongs to God, not to any political movement.

I’m not asking you to change your politics. I’m asking you to remember what your politics were supposed to stand for.

Because this isn’t it.