Recently, the White House shared an image of the president digitally adorned in papal vestments.  Our Executive Conference Minister of the Southern New England Conference, Rev. Darrell Goodwin, shared a thoughtful response to this, pointing out that the image was not just provocative, but also spiritually offensive and theologically irresponsible. 

The image is “a profound distortion of sacred tradition and a dangerous blurring of the lines between political power and spiritual authority.  It trivializes the sacred vocation of religious leadership.  It mocks the faithful witness of clergy who have served in times of war and peace, through pandemics and protests, offering hope not for political gain but for the sake of the Gospel.  It turns what is holy into a prop and places the weight of centuries of spiritual devotion onto a meme.  What we witnessed was not simply a joke.  It was a form of modern idolatry.

“To elevate any president, past or present, to the realm of the sacred is to forget who truly holds power.  It is to trade the Kingdom of God for the kingdom of partisanship.  And that is a bargain too costly for any faith-rooted society to accept.

“This is not about left or right; this is about what is holy.  We must not allow our symbols, our vestments, our sacred spaces, to be turned into marketing tools or campaign fodder.  We must resist the temptation to confuse political loyalty with spiritual truth.”

Rev. Goodwin concludes with this encouragement to us all: “Let us remember that our highest allegiance is not to any flag or figure but to the living God who calls us to truth, humility and justice.”

This is a thoughtful response to a truly manipulative spectacle.  The image ignores the fact that power, in the Christian tradition, is based on servanthood and instead assumes that it is the same as political power which, particularly in our modern context, is based on superiority, arrogance and bullying.  

Rev. Goodwin’s response reminded me that we can take pride in the wider church to which we belong.

See you in church,

–Rev. Dominic