No American leader has ever been chosen by divine decree. No president has been crowned by heaven, no senator anointed by sacred hands. Our leaders rise and fall by the will of the people — not by divine will. Yet, time and again, we hear the same dangerous lie: that some politicians rule not by election but by divine right.
This is not just bad theology — it’s dangerous to democracy.
The men who signed the Declaration of Independence didn’t just break away from British rule — they shattered the idea that leadership comes from heaven. The divine right of kings, an idea that had kept Europe in chains for centuries, was tossed aside in favor of something radical: government by the people, for the people. No king, no emperor, no pope would dictate the laws of this land.
The Founders had seen firsthand what happens when rulers claim to be chosen by God. They knew that divine authority was not just a justification for power — it was an excuse for tyranny. That’s why they built a system where no man could sit on a throne, and no government could exist without the consent of the governed. As Thomas Jefferson warned, “In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection of his own.”
The Founders understood that power must come from the people, not from divine decree. But centuries later, those who dream of a theocratic America have found ways to twist religious texts into weapons of control.
One of their favorites is Romans 13, which states that “all authorities are ordained by God.” But what they fail to mention is that Paul was speaking about church leadership, not kings and emperors. He was urging early Christians to maintain order — not declaring that every ruler in history was personally chosen by God. If that were true, then Stalin and Hitler were also divinely appointed, and that’s a theological dead end.
They also reach for the Old Testament, pointing to God’s anointing of kings, as if America were ancient Israel. But we are not a theocracy. We are not a kingdom, not a church-state, not a nation governed by religious decree. We are not Iran, where clerics declare who may rule. We are not Saudi Arabia, where kings claim divine legitimacy. As Benjamin Franklin wisely observed, “When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.” And yet, there are voices in our own country who want to drag us back into that kind of thinking.
So why do people yearn for a ruler supposedly chosen by God? Why would anyone embrace the chains of divine rule after generations of fighting to remain free? The answer is fear. Fear of responsibility. Fear of democracy. It is easier to believe that a leader is ordained by God than to wrestle with the complexities of governing. It is easier to submit to a king than to take on the duties of citizenship. And for those in power, this myth is incredibly convenient — it justifies their rule while stripping the people of theirs.
We’ve seen it before. It’s the rhetoric of men who seek control, not leadership. It’s the language of those who don’t want to answer to voters, who don’t want to be held accountable for their failures. It is a direct assault on the very foundations of American democracy. “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive,” C.S. Lewis warned. This applies perfectly to leaders who claim divine backing to justify their rule. Once people accept the idea that a ruler is appointed by God, questioning authority becomes sacrilege, and tyranny is dressed up as righteousness.
This isn’t only a theological debate — it’s a political reality. If we start accepting that our leaders are divinely chosen, then elections become meaningless. If rulers are appointed by God, then dissent becomes heresy. And once we let that idea take hold, we’ve abandoned the very principles that have kept us free.
America’s greatest experiment is self-governance. It is a nation where leaders are determined by the will of the people, not by the decree of any church or holy text. If we forget that, if we surrender to the false comfort of divine rule, then we will have undone the very thing that has kept us free for nearly two and a half centuries.
No man — no matter how many times he holds up a Bible for a photo op — is called by God to lead this country. That is a lie. And it’s up to us, not heaven, to put an end to it. Or as Frederick Douglass put it, “I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” A powerful reminder that action — not divine decree — changes the world. If we want to keep this republic, we must act now, before the false prophets of power turn faith into a weapon against democracy itself.
