Article
America
Church and state
Creed
Politics
6 min read

Trump is the new Constantine - but he's no Saviour

Trump’s second coming invites imperial comparisons. Are they accurate?

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

A montage shows Donald Trump as a Roman emperor leaning on a sword
Pax Americana.
Reddit.

After years of polarised politics, nepotism from previous rulers and disputed claims to power, an unpredictable and egotistical leader believes that God had saved him to make the nation great again. He is acclaimed as the most powerful leader in the world and instantly surprises everyone by issuing a raft of disruptive new measures to radically change the way society functions and announces that he is going to target anti-Christian bias in society. 

Sounds familiar?  

No, it’s not Donald Trump. It is the fourth century ruler of the Roman empire – Constantine the Great. And the parallels are striking.  

Constantine, the son of a Roman general and a Balkan barmaid, was the first Christian Roman emperor. Before then, all emperors were pagans, worshipping the Greek and Roman gods. In the early 300s AD, the emperor Diocletian launched a period of intense persecution of Christians, aimed at suppressing their subversive influence. After it died down, and after years of political infighting within the empire, Constantine marched on the capital and defeated his enemy Maxentius at the battle of the Milvian Bridge outside Rome. Just before the battle, Constantine had a dream in which he saw a sign of something that looked like a cross in the sky, with the tagline “in this sign, conquer”. From that time onwards, he believed that God had chosen him for this direct purpose – to bring peace to the empire by conquering its enemies, internal and external, under the banner of Christianity.  

After his accession Constantine, like Trump, introduced new economic policies to reverse rampant inflation, restructured government, and strengthened military capacity to deter the empire’s enemies. He also started to give privileges to the until-now persecuted Christians. Paganism, the ‘official’ religion of the empire was increasingly relegated to second place. Churches were granted land on which to build new edifices, and gatherings of Christian leaders became commonplace, some of which he presided over, such as the Council of Nicaea which took place in 325 AD, 1,700 years ago this year. Christian priests were excused from public duties to give themselves to their prayers. Crucifixion was abolished as a form of execution. Sunday became a weekly holiday, pagan practices were outlawed in public.  

Historians have debated Constantine’s motivation for years. Was he a genuine Christian, wanting to advance the faith by giving the church a good run at converting the empire? Was he a boon for the church in releasing it from the burden of persecution? Certainly, at the time, many Christians were delighted, enjoying their new privileges and access to the imperial court like wide-eyed pastors invited to the White House. Eusebius, the great historian of the early church wrote: “in every city the victorious emperor published decrees full of humanity and laws that gave proof of munificence and true piety. All tyranny had been purged away.” It could be the voice of a Southern Baptist.  

Yet on the other hand, Constantine was irascible, unpredictable and vindictive. He had his second wife, three brothers-in-law, his eldest son and his father-in-law executed.  

His vanity extended to renaming the old city of Byzantium, newly made the capital of the empire after himself – Constantinople. Was he cynically using the growing cultural force of Christianity to bring unity to a divided and fragmenting empire? Some historians suggest that in doing so, he fatally changed the nature of Christianity. Constantine was exactly the kind of military messiah that first century Jews had expected, yet one totally different from the crucified rabbi from Nazareth.  

Which was it? It's hard to tell. He certainly promoted the Christian faith and gave it new freedoms. Yet, although he presided over the Council of Nicaea, with its famous decree that Christ shared the same nature (‘consubstantial’ was the technical term) as God the Father, there is little mention of Jesus in Constantine’s religion. He sometimes seems to have thought of himself as the Saviour of the Church rather than Christ, with the watershed of history not in the first century with the victory over sin and death in the Resurrection of Jesus, but in the fourth century with his own victory over Maxentius. 

For some historians, the Christian church was originally a counter-cultural movement, offering a radical new vision of life, favouring the poor over the rich, the weak over the powerful, centred on the crucified Jesus. After Constantine, Christianity became centred on a majestic ruler of the heavens and the earth. Christ the Pantokrator, the image of Christ in glory found in Orthodox churches around the world replaced images of Christ on the cross. This was, they suggest, not Constantine being formed into the image of Christ, but Christ being conformed to the image of Constantine.  

Christians might be glad of the opportunities that a Trumpian world might offer. But they need to be careful in what they wish for 

The similarities with Donald Trump will be obvious, even if different readers will vary on how they see the extent of the likeness. They both favoured Christianity even though their own personal faith is hard to pin down. They can both be ruthless and vindictive towards those that cross them. They are not afraid to tear up the rule book and adopt new policies that shake up the established order.  

So, what might the story of Constantine have to tell us as we consider the second coming of Donald Trump?  

Many Christians rejoiced at Trump’s re-election. At his inauguration, Franklin Graham, like Eusebius many centuries before, pronounced that God had ‘raised up’ the new President. Trump himself claimed that God had saved him through the assassination attempt last year to Make America Great Again. Others see it as a disaster, offering a ruler of dubious character who looks nothing like Jesus. 

Constantine was, on balance, a mixed blessing for the church. His rule did enable the church to thrive. It gave it a position within society that made possible a network of churches, parishes, dioceses that helped its message spread far and wide. It was no doubt easier to be, and to become a Christian under Constantine than under his anti-Christian predecessors. Yet at the same time, he subtly changed the shape of Christianity and made the Church the faith of the powerful, even though Christianity has always flourished more among the poor and struggling who know they need help.  

The Church under Trump might be glad of laws and cultural moves that make it easier to practice and promote their faith. Yet the danger of allowing Trump rather than Jesus to determine the Church's vision of leadership and lordship, remains. In subsequent years, while making the most of the opportunities that a newly Christianised empire gave, the church also needed figures like Ambrose, the fourth century Bishop of Milan who was willing to ban the emperor Theodosius from church when he committed crimes in the name of the empire. It also needed the radical Christianity of the desert fathers and mothers who withdrew to remote places to pray and live a radically alternative lifestyle from the increasingly soft and easy Christianity of city life. As Paul Kingsnorth recently reminded us, “the monks built the West, just as surely as the soldiers did, and they built the more enduring part.” 

Christians might be glad of the opportunities that a Trumpian world might offer. But they need to be careful in what they wish for. Followers of the crucified rabbi from Nazareth need to be wary of hitching their wagon to any one political ruler. There is only one messiah after all. 

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Article
America
Character
Culture
Politics
5 min read

What would make America great again - humility

Hubris, Hope and Humility - and how they fit together in the court of King Donald

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

Elon Musk sits next to Donald Trump on a plan, while giving the thumbs up gesture with both hands.
Office of Speaker Mike Johnson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Over the inauguration weekend, I was in Texas. Trump-Vance flags still fluttered in the cold wind, now more in triumph than soliciting votes. This was in the middle of the biggest winter storm to hit the southern coast of the USA in 65 years, where four inches of snow ground cities to a halt. The seemingly endless cycle of American TV news channels were caught between fascination with Storm Enzo, and the return of a political hurricane in Washington DC.  

President Trump’s first few days broke upon the world rather like a fresh storm. When a new government takes over, it is customary to sound a note of hope for the future, uniting the nation, cautious anticipation for a new dawn, pledging to try one’s best for the people and so on. Yet Trump’s speech was optimism on steroids. He announced the beginning of a ‘golden age’ for America. “From this day forward” he claimed, “our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. We will be the envy of every nation, and we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer.” 

Elon Musk went even further. This election, he said, was a “fork in the road of human civilisation.” As a result of the good Republican voters of the USA, “the future of civilisation was secured”, as he looked forward to a day when the stars and stripes would even be planted in the soil of the planet Mars.  

There is a fine line between hope and hubris. Many commentators have contrasted the gloomy outlook of Keir Starmer with the upbeat optimism of the Republicans in Washington. American always outdo us Brits when it comes to can-do optimism, yet this was something else.  

Hope lifts people’s spirits. It gives a sense of possibility and points to an unknown but bright future. St Paul asks “who hopes for what they can see?” Hope recognises that the future is not entirely in our hands, that events - and our own stubbornness and pig-headedness - can derail the best laid set of plans. It knows that the future is uncertain and yet, because of a simple trust that the world came from goodness and will end with goodness, believes that sometimes despite, rather than because of our efforts, the future is bright.  

Hubris, however, is when human confidence goes into overdrive. In the classical world, writers such as Hesiod and Aeschylus saw hubris as the dangerous moment when a mortal claimed to be equal to, or better than a god.  

Phaeton was a teenage boy racer, a son of the sun god Helios. He took hold of his dad’s chariot for a day, thought he could steer better than his aged parent, drove too fast, too close to the earth, burning it up and thus earning a trademark lightning bolt from Zeus for his pains. Arachne was a weaver who thought his cloth more beautiful than that of Athena, the goddess of all weavers. And of course, the most famous of all, Icarus, made himself a pair of wings, soared just a bit too high, melting the wax that held them together, plunging him into the sea like a burnt-out satellite falling, falling and then sinking into the dark blue depths of the vast ocean. A trip to Mars anyone?  

Yet without a dose of humility, the modesty that recognises not everything is in their control, that they will get things wrong, and need to admit it when they do, they will only generate antagonism and disharmony. 

There are, of course, parallels in Christian literature. The Tower of Babel is the story of a civilisation that thought it could build to the skies, to reach and rival God himself. God was not impressed and confused the speech of the uppity humans so they could no longer understand one another. King Herod - grandson of the one visited by the wise men at Christmas - dressed himself in finery, smiled smugly at the acclaim of the crowds that his was ‘the voice of a god and not a mortal.’ No sooner had he said this than ‘an angel of the Lord struck him down, he was eaten by worms and died.’ 

These are ancient stories of brash and overblown self-confidence, that a human could do what only the gods can. They recur in pretty well every human strand of wisdom. Hubris usually arises from an insecure desire to be better than anyone else, better even than the gods, or God. It is essentially competitive. If greed is the desire to be rich, then hubris is the desire to be richer than everyone else. It creates comparison, jealousy, and yes – envy - in fact, that is the point - to be the envy of everyone else. Of course, social media is full of it. It is hard to like hubristic people. They generate envy or resentment, or when they fall, a delicious dose of Schadenfreude. None of which are particularly good for us.  

The opposite of hubris is humility. The root word for humility is the same as humus, humour, humanity. It derives from that ancient biblical story of the human race being fashioned by God out of the dirt. It punctures holes in our self-importance, reminds us of our lowly origins. It is the precious ability to laugh at yourself. Humility is appropriate for us precisely because we are not gods, and woe betide us if we think we are. We are instead poised between the earth and the heavens, sharing in the divine image, capable of great things, maybe one day even reaching Mars. Yet we are also capable of great cruelty and harm, frail and liable to get things badly, sometimes catastrophically, wrong. Once we forget our dual nature, made to be like God, yet moulded out of the earth; with huge potential for creativity and yet with a tendency to over-reach, a flaw within that leaves us vulnerable to temptation, we are in danger of blundering ahead like bulls in the proverbial China Shop.  

And this is the danger that Trump and Musk are flirting with. I wish them well. I really do. Maybe they will make America great again. Maybe they will usher in an age of prosperity and order. Yet without a dose of humility, the modesty that recognises not everything is in their control, that they will get things wrong, and need to admit it when they do, they will only generate antagonism and disharmony. And they will probably do more harm than good.   

Fyodor Dostoyevsky once wrote “Loving humility is a terrible force: it is the strongest of all things, and there is nothing like it.” Humility ends up being stronger and achieves more than hubris. Jesus was said to be “gentle and humble in heart.” And he changed the world more than anyone else. Donald and Elon – watch and learn. 

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