It has dawned on me in the last few days that the model of government from above visited upon the yielding heads of the governed by an all-powerful executive comports somewhat with what I take to be certain tenets of Christian theology.

In the church I grew up in there is an unchallenged deity whose plan for his subjects is inscrutable and beyond question, whose might is absolute, whose is word is law, whose will is to be obeyed and exalted by his followers. God can do what he wants because he is God. Do but praise him.

On the human scale there has arisen at times a type of “leader” who is not “elected” in our sense of the term but rather “chosen” and anointed to be duce, caudillo, fuehrer, or whatever he may be called. Do but praise him.

Are the Christian God and the human “leader” of the sort I’ve mentioned comparable in any way? And does that congruency account for the substantial support lent by the religious community to an executive branch that asserts immunity from, and sovereignty over, its nominally co-equal branches of government?

It’s a skein of associations that has many strands, and I’m not sure I can follow them to a knot. But it exercises me.

(c) 2019 JMN