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<\/a>Consider, for example, how evangelical Christians who back Donald Trump like to liken the president to leaders from biblical history. To justify their support for a man of abundant iniquity and dubious piety, they compare Trump to the Persian ruler Cyrus, who conquered the Babylonian Empire and allowed Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem. As Tara Isabella Burton explained last year<\/a>:<\/p>\n For believers who subscribe to this account, Cyrus is a perfect historical antecedent to explain Trump\u2019s presidency: a nonbeliever who nevertheless served as a vessel for divine interest.<\/p>\n For these leaders, the biblical account of Cyrus allows them to develop a \u201cvessel theology\u201d around Donald Trump, one that allows them to reconcile his personal history of womanizing and alleged sexual assault with what they see as his divinely ordained purpose to restore a Christian America.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Problematic as that analogy is<\/a>, it\u2019s not just Cyrus. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has compared Trump with Esther<\/a>, the Jewish queen of a later Persian monarch. Then last month outgoing energy secretary Rick Perry, another evangelical in the Cabinet, told Fox News<\/a> that:<\/p>\n God uses imperfect people through history. King David wasn\u2019t perfect. Saul wasn\u2019t perfect. Solomon wasn\u2019t perfect. And I actually gave the president a one-pager on those Old Testament kings about a month ago. And I shared it with him and I said, \u201cMr. President, I know there are people who say that you say you were the chosen one.\u201d And said, \u201cYou were.\u201d I said, \u201cIf you are a believing Christian, you understand God\u2019s plan for the people who rule and judge over us on this planet in our government.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I\u2019ll leave it to historian John Fea<\/a> to explain why Christian belief in God\u2019s sovereignty doesn\u2019t lead to Perry\u2019s \u201cchosen one\u201d conclusion, and let historian Neil J. Young<\/a> explain why \u201cself-rationalization for voting for Trump\u2026 has given way to a sort of self-absolution for continuing to support him in light of his myriad imperfections in office, not least his debased character and rampant illegalities.\u201d But Perry\u2019s broader mention of \u201cOld Testament kings\u201d made me think back over those sermons our congregation has heard recently from the books of 1st & 2nd Kings.<\/p>\n Growing up, those were some of my favorite scriptures. While I know now that they\u2019re not histories in the modern sense, they helped kindle my lifelong interest in the politics and religion of the past. And as a Christian who finds the Trump-as-Cyrus (let alone David<\/a>) argument utterly unconvincing, I recognize that I\u2019m still tempted to look to the political histories of the Old Testament for typologies that help explain events in my own time.<\/p>\n As our guest preacher took us through\u00a02 Kings 22-23<\/a>, for example, I felt my mind start to cast about for a contemporary American leader who matches the type of King Josiah. The last king of Judah who \u201cdid what was right in the sight of the Lord<\/span>, and walked in all the way of his father David\u201d (22:2), Josiah led a religious reformation, restoring the temple and calling his people back to monotheism when the high priest Hilkiah rediscovered \u201cthe book of the law\u201d (likely Deuteronomy). As impressively, our guest preacher pointed out, Josiah acknowledged his own responsibility, ripping his garments when he realized that the people of God had neglected the word of God.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to see how Christians across the political spectrum could adapt this story to their own partisan purposes, lamenting 21st century American versions of the various idolatries pervasive in Judah and celebrating a rising young leader of integrity and resolve who would help call Americans back to the path of truth and righteousness. Precisely because that analogy comes so easily, I\u2019m trying to bear in mind the warning<\/a> of Cambridge University scholars Judd Birdsall and Matthew Rowley:<\/p>\n To avoid the weaponizing of Scripture and the sacralizing of politics, we urge our fellow Christians to refrain from using biblical typologies in political life\u2026.<\/p>\n The problem with biblical typologies comes when we try to link them to the political leaders and causes of our day. Whereas New Testament typologies pointed to spiritual claims about Christ and his church and carried for Christians the authority of divine inspiration, typologies of the Trump-as-Esther sort serve partisan agendas and rely on subjective interpretation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n After all, the Bible \u201ccontains a vast array of possible biblical types that one can cherry-pick to legitimate just about any political leader or partisan agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n But if we should beware self-serving historical analogies or typologies, we shouldn\u2019t then decide that the royal stories of the Hebrew Bible have nothing to teach citizens of a democratic republic. The contexts of Josiah\u2019s court and our system of government are vastly different, but Old Testament commentator Rebecca Kruger Gaudino still urges us to study this past with an eye to the present:\u00a0(quoting here from her introduction to 1st Kings in the Renovar\u00e9 Spiritual Formation Bible<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n To read 1 & 2 Kings today is to be invited into an unsettling reflection on Israel\u2019s public life\u2014and on\u00a0our\u00a0<\/em>public life. The theologians of 1 & 2 Kings insist that public life can and must be aligned with the law of God, and they mourn and rage that public life is, instead, the very place of routine compromise. To read 1 & 2 Kings is to see that all areas of public life\u2014political, religious, economic, judicial, and military\u2014and the lives of individuals caught up in this public life are open to God\u2019s review and resolve. It is also to see that understanding God\u2019s resolve for public life is an absolutely essential, and yet regularly perplexing, task.<\/p>\n \u2026These biblical texts vehemently assert that there is a moral order in God\u2019s creation, that God has a tenacious resolve about this world\u2019s life\u2014and that we resist this resolve at our peril.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But instead of focusing our attention on the titular monarchs of 1st and 2nd Kings, Gaudino emphasizes the role played by another group: the prophets, whom \u201cGod mobilizes\u2026 to invade royal space and stand nose to nose with the king. Backed by the authority of the true Sovereign of Israel, the prophets look kings up and down and pronounce God\u2019s word, in often searing language.\u201d<\/p>\n And they do the same to us. As we read such texts, the prophets continue to \u201csummon us to see the gods we and all our institutions and governments worship, often the very gods of 1 & 2 Kings: might, influence, wealth.\u201d<\/p>\n So let\u2019s go back to the story of Josiah, the rare king who gladly seeks out the oracle of God after learning that the law of God has been neglected. After the rediscovery of the Torah, he sends a delegation to a prophet, who gives them this message for the king:<\/p>\n \u201cThus says the Lord<\/span>, the God of Israel: Tell the man who sent you to me,\u00a0<\/span>Thus says the\u00a0Lord<\/span>, I will indeed bring disaster on this place and on its inhabitants\u2014all the words of the book that the king of Judah has read.\u00a0<\/span>Because they have abandoned me and have made offerings to other gods, so that they have provoked me to anger with all the work of their hands, therefore my wrath will be kindled against this place, and it will not be quenched.\u00a0<\/span>But as to the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the\u00a0Lord<\/span>, thus shall you say to him, Thus says the\u00a0Lord<\/span>, the God of Israel: Regarding the words that you have heard,\u00a0<\/span>because your heart was penitent, and you humbled yourself before the\u00a0Lord<\/span>, when you heard how I spoke against this place, and against its inhabitants, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and because you have torn your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you, says the\u00a0Lord<\/span>.\u00a0<\/span>Therefore, I will gather you to your ancestors, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace; your eyes shall not see all the disaster that I will bring on this place.\u201d (2 Kgs 22:15-20)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In the end, Josiah goes to his grave in war<\/a>, not peace, but he does avoid seeing the disasters that befall his less righteous sons and grandson<\/a>.<\/p>\n The prophet reminds us here in the 21st century of the importance of humility in our leaders and should make us ask how we have abandoned God to worship our own idols. But as striking as the oracle itself is the identity of the person who speaks for God to the king. Here\u2019s the verse<\/a> I left out:<\/p>\n So the priest Hilkiah, Ahikam, Achbor, Shaphan, and Asaiah went to the prophetess Huldah the wife of Shallum<\/em> son of Tikvah, son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe; she resided in Jerusalem in the Second Quarter, where they consulted her.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (See also the parallel passage in 2nd Chronicles<\/a>.) Claiming to speak with the same authority as her contemporaries Jeremiah and Zephaniah, Huldah is one of five women<\/a> in the Old Testament described as a prophet.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t mean to identify a Huldah, Deborah, or Miriam already on the American religious scene. But if we\u2019re going to learn any lesson from these biblical histories, it\u2019s that time and energy spent legitimating those in power would be better spent listening for those who speak truth to power. If we dare to seek a historical type, let it be a Daniel, not a Cyrus; a Nathan, not a David; a Huldah, not a Josiah.<\/p>\n To do so, we likely will need to tune our ears to the voices of women like Huldah, and others drowned out by those who hold power in church and society. For if our contemporary prophets are anything like those Gaudino describes in 1st & 2nd Kings, they will be \u201cfigures of immense, God-given power\u201d who \u201cstep out of\u2026 improbable places and from the ranks of\u2026 \u2018no-account\u2019 people to speak the truth about the kingdom.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rather than legitimating support for political leaders by comparing them to biblical kings, Chris suggests that we instead heed the prophets who spoke for God to such rulers. Prophets like a woman named Huldah…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1012,2974],"tags":[2572,2570,212,6159],"class_list":["post-53604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible-2","category-chris-gehrz","tag-david","tag-donald-trump","tag-old-testament","tag-prophets"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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