When MAGA strategist Steve Bannon told the Economist that Donald Trump was “a vehicle of divine providence” and “an instrument of divine will,” he was not being rhetorical. He was articulating a political theology: the claim that a leader, if chosen by God, stands above human law and temporal limits. That idea—once (and still) the claim of monarchs—has reentered modern politics. What a decade ago seemed to be a scatter of populist insurgencies now looks like a global movement bound by shared metaphysics of grievance and destiny.
Across continents, movements that differ in creed converge in disposition. They sacralize exclusion, distrust pluralism, and cast political opposition as moral decay. In the United States, Christian nationalism presents itself as the defense of a persecuted majority. In Europe, Viktor Orban casts what he calls “illiberal democracy” as Christian civilization under siege. In South Asia, Hindu nationalism translates majority anxiety into divine mandate. In each case, the language of holiness serves power: If the nation is sacred, dissent becomes blasphemy.
When MAGA strategist Steve Bannon told the Economist that Donald Trump was “a vehicle of divine providence” and “an instrument of divine will,” he was not being rhetorical. He was articulating a political theology: the claim that a leader, if chosen by God, stands above human law and temporal limits. That idea—once (and still) the claim of monarchs—has reentered modern politics. What a decade ago seemed to be a scatter of populist insurgencies now looks like a global movement bound by shared metaphysics of grievance and destiny.
Across continents, movements that differ in creed converge in disposition. They sacralize exclusion, distrust pluralism, and cast political opposition as moral decay. In the United States, Christian nationalism presents itself as the defense of a persecuted majority. In Europe, Viktor Orban casts what he calls “illiberal democracy” as Christian civilization under siege. In South Asia, Hindu nationalism translates majority anxiety into divine mandate. In each case, the language of holiness serves power: If the nation is sacred, dissent becomes blasphemy.
The killing of Charlie Kirk accelerated this convergence. His death transformed him from a polarizing activist into a unifying symbol across the nationalist right. Bannon quickly anointed him “the America First martyr,” and conservative media framed his killing as evidence that the enemies of Christian America had become enemies of the nation itself. Even within the Catholic hierarchy, the language of sanctification crept in: Cardinal Timothy Dolan likened Kirk to St. Paul—the apostle who carried the Christian message across the ancient world. In death, Kirk’s persona shifted from political operative to missionary figure, a vessel through which a broader movement narrated its suffering, righteousness, and global calling. Martyrdom gave Christian nationalism what it had lacked: a canonized story of sacrifice, usable by movements in the United States and beyond.
This is not a reprise of 1930s fascism—there are no single-party states or marching militias—but a 21st century hybrid: digitally networked Christian soldiering, impassioned and morally justified. It thrives on nostalgia and resentment yet claims transcendence. Its danger lies in that fusion of grievance and sanctity, which renders compromise sinful and opponents demonic.
Into this field steps an unlikely actor: Pope Leo XIV.
A pope from the United States (once considered impossible), he was born in the Midwest and shaped by years as a missionary in Peru. He’s fluent in English and the language of both U.S. conservatism and the social conscience of Latin America. He understands the emotional grammar of Christian nationalism because he once spoke parts of it. But his papacy has quickly signaled another register: the effort to reclaim Christian identity from its political captivity.
Leo’s early months have been marked by seemingly pro forma reflections on scripture and impromptu responses to media. He has denounced the weaponization of religion in wars of identity, defended migrants and refugees, and challenged those who call themselves pro-life while supporting the death penalty or the “inhuman treatment of immigrants.” Speaking by video link from the Vatican on Nov. 21, the pontiff took on the politicization of faith, warning roughly 15,000 cheering young people gathered in a stadium in Indianapolis for the National Catholic Youth Conference to “be careful not to use political categories to speak about faith,” adding that “the church doesn’t belong to any political party.”
Under his quiet pressure, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops—long divided and cautious, except when it came to the politically charged issue of abortion—voted overwhelmingly in Baltimore earlier this month to oppose the Trump administration’s mass deportations, calling current rhetoric and violence against migrants “dehumanizing.” The vote changed no policy but it did change posture: For the first time in years, the church spoke with clarity against a politics of fear.
That moment revealed Leo’s method. He acts institutionally but thinks theologically, restoring a moral horizon to democratic life. Where nationalist movements claim divine sanction for power, he insists that power must answer to conscience. His project is not partisan resistance but moral reorientation.
History offers a precedent. When St. John Paul II returned to his native Poland in 1979, his message—“Be not afraid”—undermined a regime built on fear. He did not defeat communism alone, but he exposed its spiritual incoherence and weakness. Leo faces a different adversary: not an ideology that seeks to abolish the spiritual but rather to monopolize it. Both attempt to define the human person in their own image. Both require theological correction as much as political opposition.
Whether Leo can play that role depends on credibility. The church’s perceived failures—the exclusion of women from ordination, the legacy of abuse and cover-up—shadow any moral campaign. If he confronts those wounds with candor, he strengthens his authority; if he evades them, he weakens it. But his instincts so far suggest a pope willing to risk controversy for conscience. He seems to grasp that the contest ahead is over moral authority itself: who has the right to define virtue in public life.
That contest will be most acute in the United States. Among the radicalized young right—the extremist “groypers,” ultra-traditionalists, and online agitators—religious language now fuses with political nihilism. They speak of providence, destiny, and divine vengeance; they see Trump less as president than as chosen instrument. As institutions fray and violence becomes thinkable, the idea that the divine outranks the law is gaining adherents. If that theology takes root, democratic legitimacy will acquire a rival source of authority.
The 2026 midterms may crystallize this collision. A polarized electorate, emboldened militias, and churches claiming spiritual mandate could turn political conflict into a moral crusade. A papal pastoral visit would not merely be ceremonial. Consider the visual of Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Holy Father side by side outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. Or Leo, the vicar of Christ, in the MAGA lion’s den—the gilded White House palace with its outsized grand ballroom—face-to-face with a movement and a U.S. administration that claims Christianity while defying its ethic of mercy. His words could matter precisely because they would speak from within the same tradition, reclaiming its moral vocabulary. He could remind believers that cruelty is not courage, that patriotism without compassion is idolatry, and that fear has never been a Christian virtue.
Skeptics may dismiss such gestures as symbolic. Yet symbols shape legitimacy. The struggle against Christian nationalism will not be won by policy papers or social media rebuttals but by re-anchoring moral imagination. The nationalist claim is that faith must protect order through exclusion; Leo’s counterclaim is that faith demands justice through inclusion. Each offers a vision of human dignity and divine purpose. Only one can prevail.
Beyond the United States, similar theological contests are unfolding: Orthodox traditionalism in Russia, Pentecostal moralism in Africa, Hindu majoritarianism in India, Buddhist supremacism in Myanmar. Each asserts that pluralism is weakness and that the state must guard spiritual purity. Against this mosaic of illiberalisms stands a diffuse but widening coalition—liberal democracies, civil society networks, moderate faith leaders—united by the defense of human dignity but fragmented in language and strategy. Leo XIV may become an unexpected bridge among them, offering a moral lexicon that transcends political alignment.
His challenge—and perhaps his historic opportunity—is to restore the distinction between faith and power without surrendering either. If John Paul II helped dismantle a system that tried to extinguish the spirit, Leo faces a movement that seeks to weaponize it. The danger is subtler but no less profound. When the sacred is conscripted for political ends, the result is not holiness but the glorification of national power as divine mandate rather than an earthly electoral or constitutional one.
The collision that is shaping up will test institutions and imaginations alike. Its outcome will hinge on whether moral authority can again restrain political absolutism. History seldom announces turning points, but it sometimes offers warnings. We are living in one. The question is no longer whether religion belongs in public life—it always has—but whether it will serve freedom or sanctify domination. Pope Leo XIV, improbably, may help decide the matter.
