Psalm 23: Political Power and Evangelical “Authority”
Evangelical American spirituality is hyper-focused on power. Here, we see how the poetics of Psalm 23 participate in an apotheosis of Trump as a mystified, authoritarian political shepherd.
American Political Spirituality, 9-11, and Psalm 23
George W. Bush’s citation of Psalm 23 in his address at 8:30 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2001:
Tonight, I ask for your prayers for all those who grieve, for the children whose worlds have been shattered, for all whose sense of safety and security has been threatened. And I pray they will be comforted by a power greater than any of us, spoken through the ages in Psalm 23: 'Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me.' [full speech]
In Bush’s reading, the Psalm promises to meet pain with comfort “by a power greater than any of us.”
a power greater than any of us
Self-Help Spirituality & Personal Empowerment in Evangelical Praise Songs
Evangelical praise songs, those same songs that drew me into white evangelicalism in the 1990s, are probably the single most influential engine of evangelical self-help spirituality. But praise song poetics are hyper-fixated on power — and not just on divine power, but first person-power*:
Our God is an awesome God. He reigns from heaven above (He reigns)
Shine, Jesus, shine. Fill this land with the Father’s glory. Blaze, Spirit, blaze. Set our hearts on fire
From the shadows into your radiance…search me, try me, consume all my darkness
I'll be a living sanctuary — a Sanctuary for you Lord
I lift your name on high
You took the fall and thought of me above all
Each step I take You make a way…(I) found a God who relentlessly pursues
Now I have resurrection power living on the inside.
I’ll sing with the glittering crown on my brow
I can hear the sound of nations rising up. We will not be overtaken, we will not be overcome. The same power that rose Jesus from the grave, The same power that commands the dead to wake, Lives in us, lives in us.
A smattering of lyrics (collected in a five minute and a two minute session) from evangelical praise songs, Our God in an Awesome God, Shine Jesus Shine, Lord Prepare Me to Be a Sanctuary, Lord I Lift Your Name on High, Above All (Michael W. Smith), Casting Crowns, Resurrection Power, My Jesus I Love Thee, Same Power.
*An article I found very quickly about trends in the content of evangelical praise songs. I emphasize how quickly I found these lyrics and this article because I want a quick way to suggest how pervasive these “power” themes are in evangelical praise songs. They were obvious features of the poetics to me, as a college student when I first encountered evangelical praise songs. (See my Prelude to Psalm 23 series).
Demographic Spirituality and Evangelical Power
“The demographic shift in American religion since the 1960s is remarkable. Two thirds of the generation we call the “baby boomers” stopped going to churches and temples as adults. Half of them have now returned to religious practice, but not to the mainstream, hour-long services of their childhood. They have joined churches, temples, and odd little groups that put intense and personal spiritual experience at the center of what it is to believe in the divine.” (T. M. Luhrmann, “The Art of Hearing God,” 140)
Demographically speaking, these are the current American evangelical elders. They are:
architecting, or perhaps better — fabulating American Christian Nationalism
mapping global and national politics with their (self-heroic) eschatological imaginations
spawning hundreds of politicians to save things like (their) freedom, (their) values, (their) way of life, (their) history, etc.
spiritually devoted to personal symbols of supremacy
For some context, this essay in The Conversation speaks to the overhaul of pietistic Christianity by New Thought, power of positive thinking, prosperity gospel, and evangelical politics.
https://theconversation.com/why-you-should-know-about-the-new-thought-movement-72256
Mini-Shepherd-King Spirituality and Theopolitics of Psalm 23
I found a theopolitical, evangelical reading of Psalm 23 with incredible ease the other day. The website is called Theopolis. The motto featured on the homepage is: “The heavenly city of God resurrects the cities of men.” The collective of writers are galvanized by and advocate for “a distinctly ecclesiocentric postliberalism.”
Amidst the project’s explicit political rhetoric, the page about Psalm 23 is just called “Psalm 23: A Lesson in Reading Biblical Poetry” (Theopolis website). But the theopolitical American evangelical poetics is pronounced by the end of the essay. I will quote and highlight several key phrases that craft a poetics of evangelical political spirituality :
Regarding the last line of Psalm 23: “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever,” the author emphasizes that “the end continues on, and pushes the text into my life and into the world ‘forever.’”
into my life and into the world forever
“The conclusion seems to be that my life will now be relegated to the temple.”
“As I advance through “the days of my life” – as I am in the world – I am also in the house of the Lord. In other words, I have become, as Paul says, a living, moving temple (1 Corinthians 3:17). Wherever I am, there God’s Spirit dwells ( 1 Corinthians 3:16). The mercy seat of the holy of holies is over me – where I am – because I am forgiven in Christ Jesus (cf. 1 John 2:2). My life has not simply receded into God’s presence, but God’s presence has pushed out into all of my life.”
Wherever I am, there God’s Spirit dwells
“At our house, Psalm 23 is often the song that we close the day with as we put our kids to bed. At our church, we often sing this psalm before the Gospel reading in the liturgy during Trinity Season. For many Christians, Psalm 23 is their most beloved Scripture passage. It is one of those texts that we keep coming back to again and again as its words further shape and form our lives into the image of the Shepherd.”
“Yahweh himself is the paradigmatic king because he is the Shepherd-King, he is the one who sends his Son and sacrifices himself for his people. His grace overflows so much into his kingdom (as we see in Psalm 23) that it also flows out from his people, as we become miniature shepherd-kings.”
“And this also means then, that God conquers the enemies of his kingdom as his people wage war by taking up their cross, following their Shepherd-King, and giving their lives for the life of the world.”
we become miniature shepherd-kings
Trump Spirituality and the Evangelical Political Shepherd
Here we go—the evangelical poetics of power crafts Trump as a biblical shepherd in an evangelical video called “God Made Trump” (2024).
The 2024 video is a remake of a 1978 speech crafted using biblical symbols and rhetoric. That original speech was given at a Future Farmers of America Convention, a speech that was both popularized and distinguished as a marketing tactic in a Super Bowl XLVII commercial for Ram trucks (2013).
So, the Trump video — On January 5, 2024, a few days before the Iowa caucuses (and on the fourth anniversary eve of January 6th insurrection in 2021), Trump posted a video on his social media website, Truth Social, called “God Made Trump.” Terry Gross from NPR prepared and then quoted the badly recorded voice-over in her recent conversation with Bradley Onishi, a scholar of Christian Nationalism who is himself an ex-Christian nationalist.
The voice-over on the video narrates:
And on June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a caretaker. So God gave us Trump. God had to have somebody willing to go into the den of vipers, call out the fake news for their tongues as sharp as serpents. The poison of vipers is on their lips, so God made Trump. God said, I need somebody to be strong and courageous, who will not be afraid or terrified of the wolves when they attack, a man who cares for the flock, a shepherd to mankind who will never leave or forsake them. [emphasis mine]
Terry Gross and Bradley Onishi, “Tracing the rise of Christian nationalism, from Trump to the Ala. Supreme Court” (NPR, Feb 29, 2024).
See also NPR’s story on “Morning Edition” where Steve Inkseep unpacks its meaning with Robert P. Jones, president and founder of Public Religion Research Institution (PRRI).
Trump’s Rhetoric About Sheep
Retweeting a Mussolini quote on Feb 28, 2016 from his realDonaldTrump Twitter account, Trump showed his disdain for the “docile” subjectivity of being a sheep.
“It’s better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35682844
Recall that Psalm 23 is an address to God from the perspective of the cultivated animal. The singer likens himself to a sheep throughout. But we saw the same disdain for being a sheep in the Theopolis analysis of Psalm 23 above, where the author concludes by recommending an entirely different subject position, the shepherd-king. Then we see the Christian nationalist video cultivating spiritual visions of Trump as shepherd to his flock…never mind that the role of shepherd is one that only Jesus plays in Christian theology.
The retweeted Mussolini quote says less about a deliberative state of mind and more about Trump’s impulse to share in this American Christian rejection of being positioned as a sheep. Instead, he favors the role of predator (lion), but a symbol that is baptized as religious by biblical traces symbolism — lion king, lion of Judah, etc.
Submission Spirituality and Evangelical Desire for a Tyrant
I moved on her.
I will strip her naked.
I don’t even wait.
(I will) slay her with thirst.
All of a sudden, I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits like a bitch.
From between her breasts.
Which she said were her pay from her lovers.
She decked herself.
But me she forgot.
It was I who gave her.
I’ll show you where.
I just start kissing them.
From her lips.
When you’re a star, they let you do it.
She shall respond.
I am now going to allure her.
And I moved on her very heavily.
You can do anything.
I will block her…so that she cannot find her way.
Grab them by the pussy.
No one will take her out of my hands.
A mashup of direct quotes from Hosea 2 in the New International Version of the Hebrew Bible and Donald Trump’s statements on the Access Hollywood tapes when he spoke to Billy Bush in NBC Studio’s parking lot in 2005.
It is no wonder evangelical political groups are selling a Trump Bible —
As a fund-raiser for his 2024 run on the U.S. presidency, Donald Trump is selling a “God Bless the USA Bible.”
On his post advertising the fund-raising tactic, he said: “All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It’s my favorite book…I’m proud to endorse and encourage you to get this Bible. We must make America pray again.”
Prayer is an intimate, imaginative, desire-rich practice — here implicitly directed towards political power and explicitly occasioned by politicized ends. A parade example of evangelical political spirituality.
“Uncle Sam and Jesus hanging out — getting progressively more American and more religious.” AI generated image. Reddit.
Posted to a subreddit called “ChatGPT” in September, 2023. As an AI-generated image, I am not providing image credits like I would for the artist(s) whose uncredited works made this generated image possible.
