Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism (HarperCollins, 2023), 119.
The corner of [Robert] Jeffress’s office was a shrine – his secretary used that specific word to describe it – to President Donald J. Trump. There was an eight-foot-tall poster memorializing the “Celebrate Freedom” concern in D.C. (the one where the choir sang “Make America Great Again”). There were boxes of Trump cuff links and a golden Trump commemorative coin. There were dozens – dozens – of framed photos of Jeffress and Trump: praying over him, talking with him, shaking hands with him, giving thumbs-up with him, walking alongside him, speaking in front of him, standing dutifully behind him. (There were also a few photos of Jeffress with Mike Pence, and one, seemingly misplaced, of him with right-wing pundit Ann Coulter. In the sweep of my reporting on the former president and his many sycophants, I had never seen such a temple to Trumpism. Anything that carried the man’s distinctive Sharpie signature was framed: news articles, White House proclamations, email correspondences, even printed-out tweets.
The Amateur Exegete 
The phrase “cult of personality” naturally comes to mind. And once again I’m reminded of the complicated but generally shameful relationship between the Vatican and Italian fascists in the early 20th century (about which David Kertzer has written several superb books). Similar moral compromises, hypocrisies, selective outrages, strategic silences, conspiracy theories about “globalists” (wink, wink), etc., etc., etc. The parallels aren’t perfect, to be sure. Mussolini was a short-tempered, impulsive, profane, promiscuous, irreligious demagogue, whereas Trump is . . . um, taller.
-Lex Lata
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