By Ibrahim Negm
There is a scene that should disturb every person of faith, regardless of creed.
On Easter week, Paula White-Cain, President Trump’s personal spiritual adviser and head of the White House Faith Office, rose before an assembled Easter luncheon and delivered not a prayer, but a canonisation.
“You were betrayed, and arrested, and falsely accused,” she told the President. “This mirrors the familiar trials that our Lord and Savior experienced – but because of His resurrection, you rose up. Because he was victorious, you will be victorious in all you put your hand to.” Trump, warming to the occasion, had already drawn his own comparison, retelling the Palm Sunday story of Jesus entering Jerusalem to adoring crowds, then adding with a smile: “They call me king now. Can you believe it?”
The White House subsequently deleted the video. That deletion — quiet, swift, and far too late — was itself a confession.
The parallel between Jesus of Nazareth and Donald Trump fails at the first touch of honest scrutiny. Biblical scholar Aaron Higashi was unequivocal: “There is no valid comparison between President Trump’s arrests and Jesus’ experiences.”
Trump navigated his legal proceedings surrounded by lawyers, released promptly, and materially comfortable throughout.
Jesus was ambushed by an armed mob in the dark, subjected to violence, denied legal counsel, and publicly executed after a sham trial before a jeering crowd.
Jesuit priest James Martin drew the line plainly: “Equating a political figure with the sinless Son of God during Holy Week — that’s unacceptable.”
Catholic theologian Rich Raho simply called it “blasphemous.” Rev. Benjamin Cremer was the most direct: “This is what it sounds like to misuse Jesus’ name.”
These are not secular critics or partisan commentators. These are devout, practicing Christians — priests, scholars, and theologians — drawing a line that their faith demands.
The preacher behind the pulpit
To understand the moment, one must understand its author. Paula White-Cain is not a mainstream Christian voice.
She is a televangelist of the prosperity gospel tradition — a current critics across the Christian spectrum have labelled theologically corrupted, built on the claim that material wealth follows from faith and generous financial donations to ministry.
The Christian Post documented how her doctrine “manipulates vulnerable individuals by linking their financial status to their spiritual worth.” This is the figure Trump appointed to lead his White House Faith Office.
The choice was revealing. Religion was not being engaged – it was being deployed.
A pattern, not an incident
The Easter comparison was not a lapse in judgment. It was a culmination. Since his second term began, Trump has systematically wrapped his presidency in sacred imagery: weekly prayer circles in the Oval Office, a national “America Prays” initiative, and a State of the Union address in which he declared that “when God wants a nation to work His will, He knows exactly who to ask.”
The Boston Globe documented how his evangelical agenda has become “supercharged,” with critics warning it has become “a vehicle for airing partisan grievances” rather than genuine faith.
Scholars at the USC Centre for Religion and Civic Culture describe what is emerging as “an institutionalised, fundamentally anti-democratic religio-political movement” that directly threatens the constitutional separation of church and state.
The logic of this progression is dangerous. When a president becomes a Christ-figure, his critics become sinners. His policies become sanctified directives. His failures become divine tests. His opponents become enemies of God. This is not metaphor — it is the grammar of theocracy.
What the deletion revealed
Someone in the White House understood that what occurred was wrong — and deleted the evidence anyway. No apology, no statement, no explanation was offered. That silence is instructive. One does not delete a prayer because it went too far. One deletes a performance because the audience reacted badly.
Faith, when conscripted into the service of political power, does not ennoble power — it diminishes faith. The faithful of every tradition — Christian, Muslim, Jewish — owe it to their heritage to say so clearly: this is not what belief looks like. This is what its exploitation looks like. And the difference matters enormously.
Ibrahim Negm is a Senior Advisor to the Grand Mufti of Egypt
