Divine Providence and Politicians
03 Feb 2023 Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture
“It’s a Miracle!” These are the words Scott Morrison spoke when he won the election in 2019. People call events “miracles” all the time: a baby being born, a person being rescued, a team winning a football game. Yet those words might also signify a belief that God preordained Morrison to become Prime Minister.
Niki Savva’s latest book, Bulldozed: Scott Morrison’s fall and Anthony Albanese’s rise describes Morrison’s “God complex”. One former cabinet minister told her Scott Morrison often used words like, ‘God wants me to do this, or God has chosen me to be Prime Minister’. A Liberal MP mentioned that Morrison thought he was ordained to be there.
If so, he is not the only politician to think God has ordained him for the role. Sigmund Freud quotes Woodrow Wilson as saying “Remember that God ordained that I should be the next president of the United States. Neither you nor any other mortal or mortals could have prevented this.”1 Russkii mir (Руський мір) is difficult to translate in English, but is a sense of Russia having a manifest destiny, which Paul Ladouceur argues was used to support Vladimir Putin’s ‘personal and geopolitical ambitions.i
Many Christians believe in Divine providence, or God’s intervention in the world and in their lives. Similar views are held by people of different faiths, including people with who claim to have no religious beliefs, but still think the universe is working for their good. So does it really matter if someone thinks God has placed them in a certain role, even if they are a politician or world leader?
For some, the answer is most definitely ‘yes’. In responding to Woodrow Wilson’s statement above, Freud stated, ‘I do not know how to avoid the conclusion that a man who is capable of taking the illusions of religion so literally and is so sure of a special personal intimacy with the Almighty is unfitted for relations with ordinary children of men.’ In The Monthly, Judith Brett noted that she is not too worried if a baker or a builder or a financial consultant has a belief in a supernatural reality, but she wants the Prime Minister 'to have a firmer grip on material reality'. Yet these seem to be criticisms against faith in a supernatural being more than anything else. Religion will always be used to attack, in the same way former Clubs NSW CEO, Josh Landis, said NSW Premier was acting from his ‘conservative Catholic gut’ in relation to pokies reform.
From a Christian perspective, believing God has placed someone in a role is justified, but can become problematic if they equate God’s will with their own, or start to think they are infallible. The story of King David shows us how badly anointed leaders can sometimes fail. God never works through one person alone and speaks through a multitude of voices. At Vatican II, the Catholic Church formulated the idea of sensus fidelium(sense of the faithful), reflecting that the Holy Spirit works through the body of believers, anointing them and giving them collective discernment. Woodrow Wilson’s belief that God had put him in the role did not prevent him from listening to others, stating, ‘The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people.’2
To model good leadership, as Christians, we should also look to the example of Christ:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used for his own advantage, rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. (Philippians 2:6-7)
To feel God-ordained is not an excuse to exalt oneself, but rather a requirement to humble oneself. It is a reminder that we must always be listening to God’s voice and listening to others, testing our own ambitions and ego in the light of our loving God’s Beatitudes.
Picture is Baptism of Christ, Juan Sánchez Cotán, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Baptism of Christ, Juan Sánchez Cotán, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons