Why Christians Bond With Corrupt Leaders

When we drink the water, we sometimes forget its true source.

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One of my favorite things I do in my professional life is appear once a month on the Holy Post podcast. The podcast was founded by Phil Vischer (creator of the legendary VeggieTales franchise) and Skye Jethani, and my once-per-month appearances are called “French Fridays.” I always enjoy the conversation, but this month’s edition is particularly good, and definitely not because of me. It’s because of Skye. 

We were talking broadly about the Christian community’s persistent connection to corrupt leaders (inspired by this remarkable Vanity Fair profile of Jerry Falwell Jr.), and Skye used a brilliant biblical analogy, one that explains both God’s mercy and our very human tendency and temptation to bond with the wrong people.

The story comes from the book of Numbers, Chapter 20. As a bit of background, the people of Israel, led by Moses, were in a wilderness with no water, and the people were angry at Moses. God then gave Moses explicit instructions: “Speak to the rock while [the people] watch, and it will yield its water.” 

But Moses, angry at the rebellion against him, revised God’s instructions. He gathers the people and says, “Listen, you rebels! Must we bring water out of this rock for you?” Then Moses struck the rock with his staff. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Marc Frischhertz

    Read the book “Corruptible”.

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    Ben Connelly

    “ We have our favorite writers,”

    Like you, David!

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    Antebellum Whig

    thank you, David, for writing this. there is a clear issue here that's not discussed- at least analytically - nearly enough. I think there's much more to this phenomenon than you touch on here, but the first word doesn't need to be the last word.

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  4. Scottfree

    David, thank you for the article and reminder of how easy we can elevate our leaders, whether religious, political or other.

    Also, a special thanks for sharing the Baby Yetu video. Love the energy that the choir expresses.

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    Scarlette Tarte

    Hmmm. Well, they have certainly bonded to DeSantis in Florida. Who had actual nazis on parade in his state this week. Who stood on overpasses and shouted "Jews are the Devil" and "Vax the Jews" and other horrible slogans and signs.

    And what has DeSantis said about all this? Absolutely nothing. His "spokesperson" came out with this tweet saying "Do we even know they are nazi's, or is this a stunt like the "white nationalists" who crashed the Youngkin rally in Charlottesville, and turned out to be Dem staffers?"

    Hey Pushaw, they were not "Dem staffers". They were from the Lincoln project. So first of all, crazy, get your facts straight. And second of all, tell us why you tried to delete this tweet?

    This is not her first foray into courting the antisemitic nazi vote. She went on a bizarre twitter rant last year about the Rothschilds... a conspiracy driven rant that blamed them for vaccine passports. She later claimed to be joking, but indeed, her rant uses references that only ONE audience would be familiar with...the nazi audience.

    And when asked why DeSantis has not condemned the nazi protests...she said "DeSantis always condemns antisemitism...well, except this time, and oh yeah, last time when that guy in Texas took those Jews hostage in the temple. When asked why he didn't condemn that, his spokeswoman said 'Well, it wasn't a Florida issue". Lol. Now, they are in Orlando, and HE STILL SAYS NOTHING.

    The fact is, antisemitic incidents are up 40% in Florida. And DeSantis says nothing.

    The state legislature is trying to ban all sorts of books, ban free speech in schools, and even is trying to pass a law that would LEGALLY shield white people from feeling "discomfort" over Florida's racist past.

    THIS is where the ban books, ban ideas, shut down teaching of history crowd gets you. This IS WHO IS ATTRACTED to those types of ideas. The NAZIS.

    Any so called christian that supports DeSantis after all this, can no longer be thought of as a Christian.

    There is no "other side" to this. Either you are a hater and side with Nazis or you don't. If you don't, you cannot support DeSantis...and even the Jews in the state are catching on to that fact. DeSantis even wants his own "military force" that he alone controls...who does that remind you of in 1930's Germany, eh? This on top of his own "election police force".

    Take a lesson from this. Florida has the largest increase of hate groups in the nation...and now you know why. They see DeSantis as one of them, and he is doing nothing to disavow them of that idea.

    Choose your side.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Dustin Anglin

    Oh man, I remember in college booting up Civilization IV, the video game Baba Yetu was written for, being so excited to get started building my conquering civilization led by Ghandi (it’s a silly game) and being so floored by title screen song that I just sat there listening to it on repeat for 30 minutes. It still gets me choked up listening to it now. 😊

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    Michael Berkowitz

    It's because I agree with so much of what Mr. French writes and because he seems to be a good man that I often take the time to pick nits from his essays.

    Here he says "A sure sign of excessive loyalty is extending trust to a man or a woman in a way that you wouldn’t extend it to anyone else.

    I 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 I can see what he intends, but I don't agree with the rule as stated. I've had many teachers, but two of my rabbis were especially revered by generations of students and a wide swath of the community at large. They stood out as Great Men. Because of my personal experience of them, when it would come up in conversation that I disagreed with them on some political matters (I was to the right of them on those), I would always qualify it by saying that I'd question my own motives before I questioned theirs. I definitely extended them trust that I wouldn't extend to others, and for good reason.

    It wasn't blind and it wasn't absolute, and they themselves drummed into their students how everyone should think for himself; the last thing they wanted was groupies.

    Still, according to this criterion my attitude was dangerous. I disagree.

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      Kizedek

      I think what David French is getting at is the exclusive nature of the trust ...*as required by the corrupt leader*.

      "I definitely extended them trust that I wouldn't extend to others, and for good reason."

      Sure. That's natural in good relationships of all sorts. But you might find the same or similar good reason to also trust others, if you had occasion to, or if you developed similar relationships with others.

      But if those you trusted were corrupt, they might warn you off others (indiscriminately or arbitrarily) and tell you they weren't trustworthy in order to consolidate their influence over you.

      In other words, you might trust the Corrupt Leader to be a kind of information gateway for you, telling you what was real or fake, for example.

      In that type of situation, you can't be extending similar trust to two or more individuals that each disagree with the other (at the least, they would have to be aligned, and defer to one voice). So, kind of by definition, you are extending them trust in a way that you wouldn't extend to anyone else -- until you broke with them.

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        Michael Berkowitz

        You're likely correct, which is why I wrote that I disagree with the rule "as stated". It should have been qualified.

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  8. CandS

    David, you bring up the Demo's defense of Clinton. It would be appropriate to also have included the Repub's and too many Christians defense of Trump to bookend your thoughtful piece.

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  9. Zack

    Christians might not be unique in their susceptibility to falling for false prophets, but the overlap in personality between Christians and "joiners"/"followers" more broadly is significant. You see a similar dynamic outside of traditional religion in the new secular religions (Gret Thunberg is an obvious recent example).

    My experience of Christianity has always been that it is highly deferential to authority. One would imagine that flatter, low-church Protestantism would be less so, but if anything the opposite is true. The local pastor ends up wielding authority in interpreting scripture that would make any Catholic bishop jealous. Congregations are pre-wired to think in terms of deference, and those who don't fit the mold simply leave the church or move to a different denomination whose teachings better fit their personal views.

    We should not be surprised to see such a group of people fall for various cults of personality.

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    Nick H

    One of these is not like the others. I don't know Joe White personally, but people I love and respect more than anyone else do know him well, and they say he's a good man. One who has made mistakes certainly. He trusted people he shouldn't have and failed to put the needs of the victims above the needs of his institution, and that shouldn't be overlooked. The Kanakuk story is a tragedy, but it's wrong to lay the whole thing on White alone. There's a lot that can be criticized without a doubt, but he's not corrupt and personally immoral like Falwell and Zacharias appear to be.
    Separately, your reference to The Sermon on the Mount reminds me of how often that lesson is misunderstood. Jesus was presenting "profoundly challenging declarations of moral purpose" to be sure, but the lesson was that we *can't* achieve that standard. It. Is. Impossible. What Jesus describes sounds extreme (pluck out your own eye before it leads you to sin, just to name one example), but if anything he's understating it. Jesus wasn't giving us a list of rules to live by. He was presenting an example of what it would look like to try to be as moral as we would need to be to be holy. It's crazy, and it's still *not good enough*. No person that has ever lived or will ever live can live up to the example of Jesus. We simply cannot do it on our own. And that's okay, because He's done it for us. We should try to be that moral, but we *will* fail. And knowing we will fail, we should put our trust in Him.

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