Trump is the natural product of American civil religion.
As Frank Bruni persuasivelyargued in the New York Times, the Republican frontrunner comes off not as “someone interested in serving God” so much as “someone interested in being God.” Trump so closely links himself and the divine that he drifts into boasting of his own accomplishments in the very process of explaining why God is important. The candidate feels he is above the need for God’s forgiveness (as it is written, “there is one who is righteous, yea, just one”) and recently named “an eye for an eye” as his favorite Bible verse, an interesting selection given the New Testament’s assignment of vengeance as God’s prerogative.
.. Of course, Americans might rightly protest that we don’t ascribe divinity to the presidency, but the office is undoubtedly sacralized. Its successes—notably in foreign policy—are attributed to divine blessing. Conventional politicians may be more politic than Trump, but most will happily harness God to tow their pet projects. A classic example is what theologian Michael J. Gorman labels the “divine passive voice,” in which, often in the run-up to war, presidents say things like “We are called…” to subtly invoke a holy authority for their plans. In a Trump White House, the voice would simply become slightly more active.
.. “I do solemnly swear that I, no matter how I feel, no matter what the conditions, if there are hurricanes or whatever, will vote on or before the 12th for Donald J. Trump for President,” he asked Floridian supporters to promise in advance of their state’s primary. This sort of ultimatum is right at home in a civil religion that facilitates unthinking Christian loyalty to the state by means of a clever syncretism: If America is “under God”—if the United States becomes the “city on a hill”—we needn’t worry about obeying God rather than men. It’s all one and the same as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph is idolatrously mutated into an American tribal deity.
.. “Greatness is defined especially as financial, political, and/or military strength, and this definition carries with it the conviction that both America and Americans should always enjoy and operate from a position of strength and security.”
.. The authority of the White House has expanded to match the sanctity we’ve assigned it. (Not for nothing is it called the imperial presidency.) Themodern office “looks nothing like the modest, businesslike, law-governed executive the Framers envisioned,” and if it did, Trump wouldn’t want it.
Pope Francis blasts global idolatry of money over people
The pope, who later celebrated Mass for some 300,000 people outside the city’s cathedral, told them: “We don’t want this globalized economic system which does us so much harm. Men and women have to be at the center (of an economic system) as God wants, not money.”
“The world has become an idolater of this god called money,” he added.