During President Donald Trump’s inaugural address, he credited surviving his assassination attempt on the campaign trail to divine intervention, claiming he was "saved by God to make America great again.”
Hours later, inauguration service leader Bishop Mariann Budde directly challenged Trump’s statement. Rebuking his newly declared immigration policies, she said, “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.” Trump criticized her in return, declaring that the “so-called Bishop” brought “her church into the world of politics in a very ungracious way.” Rev. Budde wasn’t the only Christian figure to criticize the Trump Administration; Pope Francis recently released a scathing open letter criticizing Trump’s migration policies.
As a history major, I’m fascinated by this brawl between these two spiritual and secular powers. I’m currently taking a seminar investigating depictions of Jesus in late medieval literature and art. Though the middle ages may seem far removed — or maybe even irrelevant — from our contemporary political climate, these events illustrate the opposite. Public spats between politicians and religious leaders, from priests to popes, are not unprecedented. Rather, they coincide with the distinctly medieval political struggle between the church and state for influence over the faithful.
There has never been a non-Christian president, though political opponents may sling accusations of atheism. Some of the most contentious contemporary political debates around abortion and same-sex marriage rest on Christian foundations. The idea that modern politics are above religious influence is simply untrue, and the long-lasting influences of Christianity on political authorities trace back to the Middle Ages.
For example, in January of 1076, the German King Henry IV, along with several German bishops, publicly renounced their allegiance to then-Pope Gregory VII, demanding that he abdicate his papal position. This action kicked off what would become known as the Investiture Controversy, the culmination of a simmering struggle between the papacy and monarchy over the right to appoint bishops. Despite firing the first shot, King Henry IV was ultimately forced to concede to Pope Gregory VII, begging barefoot in the snow at Canossa to be re-communicated back into the church. Historians interpret this instance as indicative of a power shift away from secular leaders towards papal authorities in the eleventh century.
Just a century later, in 1162, English King Henry II engaged in a similar battle with Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, over the extension of monarchical authority over Church courts. This conflict, however, resulted in Becket’s murder by the King’s soldiers. While the King faced public backlash for this, he was ultimately able to solidify the power of the English state through legislation, signaling the emergence of an increasingly powerful earthly authority and decline in church influence.
Of course, members of the Trump administration aren’t sending soldiers to Vatican City; the Catholic church no longer has anywhere near the political influence that it possessed in the Middle Ages. Despite this, Christians still comprise around two thirds of America’s population; they’re a powerful voting bloc and an even more dominant source of cultural influence. In North Carolina alone, the majority of residents are Christian, with large communities of Catholics, Southern Baptists and non-denominational affiliations. Conflicts between secular and spiritual leaders directly involve the values of millions of Americans.
Political affiliation among Christian denominations and demographics varies wildly, but among people who voted for Trump, the majority believes that he will defend their Christian beliefs. When Trump says that he was saved by God to become president, he’s directly speaking to American Christians. Trump’s simultaneous appeals to Christianity and clashes with those same Christian institutions parallels past public disputes between popes and kings, revealing the lingering influences of centuries-old religious tensions in America. For Christian Americans, these debates split secular and spiritual allegiances, presenting a return to a very medieval form of political dispute.
