A season of resurrection.

For Christians this is an important week. It’s when Christians observe the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It is the resurrection – rather than the crucifixion or even the nativity – that stands at the heart of the Christian faith. Jesus’s followers couldn’t avoid seeing the brutality of His crucifixion. What they didn’t see coming was the resurrection.

If it weren’t for the resurrection that we celebrate every Easter, it’s unlikely that we would still be celebrating the nativity every Christmas.

Resurrection, the triumph of life over death, hope over despair, lies at the heart of what gives Christianity its appeal. Whether you believe in the literal bodily resurrection of Christ or not, the resurrection story of ultimate triumph – of things working out in the end despite appearing to be hopeless – provides the basis for an optimistic life. (Living pessimistically, to my way of thinking, is to be barely living at all.)

I offer this as predicate to the political commentary that readers and listeners have come to expect in this space. And I say it despite my deep reluctance to invoke theology – any theology – to make a point about contemporary politics. Beyond that general caution I am very specifically cautious to never deify a politician. The blood-soaked pages of history are filled with examples of the bad things that happen when politicians get turned into gods.

But with that disclaimer fully stated, I am struck this Easter by some clear parallels between the politics of Jesus’s day and the politics of now.

Let’s start with the obvious. Jesus was a disrupter. So is Donald Trump.

In Jesus’s day the religious leaders (i.e. the Pharisees and the Sadducees), the lawyers (i.e. the Scribes), and the religious ruling council (i.e. the Sanhedrin) – in other words the entirety of the ‘establishment’ – were uniform in their opposition to Jesus. Jesus’s teachings threatened their power and standing. If you went to Sunday School as a kid you were told of Jesus throwing the moneychangers out of the temple. The establishment was comfortable. Jesus made them decidedly uncomfortable.

The parallel to Donald Trump is almost exact. Trump’s presence in Washington presents an existential threat to the D.C. establishment, an establishment comprised of most Democrats, too many Republicans and career federal bureaucrats.

Trump’s creation of DOGE is nothing less than a latter-day turning over of the tables in the temple.

Thus, the second parallel – persecution.

The persecution of Jesus led to his arrest, conviction and execution. Of those three, Donald Trump suffered the first two and only narrowly escaped the third.

Leading to the third parallel – resurrection. According to the Scripture Jesus was bodily resurrected. According to the November 2024 election, Trump was politically resurrected.

Let me stop and again emphasize that I am not directly comparing Donald Trump to Jesus. Jesus, according to Christian gospel, is the Son of God. Donald Trump is a mere mortal – and a deeply flawed one at that.

The theme of this essay is resurrection. Flawed mortal that he is, Donald Trump is the driving force behind a nascent American resurrection.

It couldn’t be timelier. To quote Lincoln, the occasion is piled high with difficulty. We’re $36 trillion in debt and growing that debt at the rate of about $2 trillion a year. Faith in our core institutions has been shattered. The American middle class is shrinking and losing wealth, even as an elite, entitled and drippingly condescending ruling class is growing and getting richer. The malignant regime of China is enriching itself at the expense of American workers. Administrations of both parties – but most particularly the immediate prior administration – have allowed millions of people into the country who are now living on the backs of already overburdened American citizens.

Having weathered everything that could be thrown at him (figuratively and literally), Donald Trump is stronger than ever and moving at muzzle velocity to address these problems. Our latter-day Sadducees, Pharisees, Scribes, Sanhedrin, et. al. are beside themselves and almost literally foaming at the mouth.

But ordinary, working American citizens – many of whom never voted for a Republican prior to Donald Trump – having despaired, are now hopeful of a 21^st century American renaissance.

A resurrection.

How appropriate in this Easter season, when hope is the central theme.