We need to understand the psychological phenomenon that’s infected our culture right now. From our congressional halls, to our church gatherings, millions in our nation are being swallowed up in what social-psychologists call, “the cult of personality”. And it was on full, text-book display during Pam Bondi’s (February 11, 2026) hearings with the House Judiciary Committee. [C-SPAN]
Instead of answering specific questions about justice issues at hand (what a United States Attorney General does for a living), Bondi repeatedly (on five separate occasions) launched into what Max Weber (1864-1920) called “APOTHEOSIS” – the technical term for the exaggerated, unquestioning adulation, and extreme idealization of a leader that involves the use of propaganda, conspiracy, legend-telling, vilification of detractors and persecution complex to portray a leader as heroic, infallible, and worthy of manifest worship.
After a year back in the White House, Mr. Trump’s efforts to promote himself as the singularly dominant figure in the world have become so commonplace that they no longer seem surprising. He regularly depicts himself in a heroic, almost godly fashion, as a monarch, as a Superman, as a Jedi knight, as a military hero, even as a pope in a white cassock.
While Mr. Trump has spent a lifetime promoting his personal brand, slapping his name on hotels, casinos, airplanes, even steaks, neckties and bottled water, what he is doing in his second term as president comes closer to building a cult of personality the likes of which has never been seen in American history. Other presidents sought to cultivate their reputations, but none went as far as Mr. Trump has to create a mythologized, superhuman and omnipresent persona leading to idolatry.
Cabinet meetings have become long, huddle-sessions in which individual department secretaries seek to outdo each other in heaping fawning, over-the-top praise upon the President.
His picture has been splashed all over the White House, on multistory banners on the side of federal buildings, on annual passes to national parks and maybe even soon on a one-dollar coin. His name has been etched on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, on the U.S. Institute of Peace, on federal investment accounts, special visas and a discount drug programand, if he has his way, on Washington Dulles International Airport, Penn Station in New York and the future stadium of the Washington Commanders.
His White House is pressuring the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery to display portraits of Mr. Trump by his supporters. A group of cryptocurrency investors has shelled out $300,000 to forge a 15-foot-tall gold-covered bronze statue of Mr. Trump called “Don Colossus” to be installed at his golf complex in Doral, Fla.
His administration is considering designating a new class of battleships in Mr. Trump’s name. His allies are pressuring foreign leaders to endorse his bid for the Nobel Peace Prize and threatening consequences for resisting. Some supporters in Congress have even proposed adding his face to Mount Rushmore, an effort that, for the moment, has gained little traction.
What distinguishes APOTHEOSIS from normal popularity is
A. the “demand for verbal adulation”, (the effusive glorification we heard from Bondi yesterday)
B. unquestioned, final control over the narrative, and
C. a “circle-the-wagons” defense of the leader himself, (what we see in Dutch Sheets’ appeal below)
…all of which flows from the living leader him/herself.
The slavish following that surrounds Trump is about more than mere vanity. “This is not just egotistical self-satisfaction, it’s a way of expanding presidential power,” say Harvard scholar, and presidential historian, Michael Beschloss.
APOTHEOSIS is often fostered by totalitarian regimes (like Stalin, Mao, Sadaam Hussein, and smaller communities like Charles Manson and Jim Jones) to ascend to greater degrees of unrestricted power.
Indeed, last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump suggested that authoritarianism was not necessarily something to eschew. “Usually they say, ‘He’s a horrible dictator-type person, I’m a dictator,’” he said openly. “But sometimes, you need a dictator.”
APOTHEOSIS is sometimes also described as “abdication syndrome”, where followers surrender their critical thinking to a parental figure, who becomes the “savior” for the population in question, providing their subjects with the narratives that tell them how to understand, and operate within their society.
Benjamin E. Goldsmith of the Australian National University and Lars J.K. Moen of the University of Vienna, who have studied Mr. Trump’s hold on his supporters, and published a paper on the abnormality in the Political Psychology journal, said the personality cult allowed Mr. Trump to dominate Republican primary contests, right-wing media and his party’s majorities in Congress. Those who stand against Mr. Trump are deemed traitors and punished accordingly.
“For us, this is the major threat to U.S. democracy from Trump’s cult-like following,” they wrote. “Congress is transformed into an enabler, even when the executive makes disastrous policies, undermines the rule of law or might attempt to fix elections. The system can transform into an electoral autocracy.”
Apotheosis binds followers of a movement to their leader more than to any particular policy prescription, making his success or failure their own. Veneration and loyalty are central and ideology secondary. The leader is presented as infallible, uniquely qualified, even divinely delivered for this moment in history.
Mr. Trump has played to these themes since taking the national political stage. “I alone can fix it,” he declared when running in 2016. “I myself am peace. Believe it.” he trumpeted weeks days before the 2024 election. “I was saved by God to make America great again,” he said on being inaugurated again last year.
From a Christian standpoint, what we are witnessing is a significant part of the power of a “strong delusion” (2 Thessalonians 2:11) overtaking the critical analysis, and Berean thinking of a people-group. This is a supernatural distortion of reality that the Lord Himself will give to those who take increasing pleasure in unrighteousness. (v.12)
THE antiChrist will demand APOTHEOSIS – AND be more cunning and serpentine in his constraint for it, than any figure ever.
“And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived. He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed.” (Revelation 13:14-15)
Whether you believe Trump is an antiChrist, or not, here’s the point: the same spirit that is demanding his defensive veneration today is the same spirit that will be demanding the veneration of the beast in fulfillment of Revelation 13 in the days ahead. If our American evangelical family can’t withstand the smaller temptation today, how do we expect to be able to stand the vastly greater pressure later?
In the Words of the prophet Jeremiah: “If you have run with the footmen and they have wearied you, then how will you contend with horses?” (Jeremiah 12:5)
But here’s the kicker. The “greater pressure” will not only come from the power of the beast himself. It will come from our own sisters and brothers, all around us, who shape the social mind-set that insists that there is only one acceptable way of viewing the individuals, circumstances and dynamics within the culture. Social psychologists call this corporeality, “group-think”.
Group-think occurs within a collection of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. The desire for cohesiveness, within a group produces an inclination among its members to agree at all costs. This causes the community to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision at the expense of critical (ala. Berean) evaluation.
Group-think requires individuals to avoid raising controversial issues or alternative solutions. Furthermore, groupthink can produce dehumanizing actions against the “outgroup”. Members of a group can often feel under peer pressure to “go along with the crowd” for fear of “rocking the boat” or of how their speaking out will be perceived by the rest of the group. Group interactions tend to favor clear and harmonious agreements and it can be a cause for concern when little to no exterior arguments for better beliefs, outcomes and structures are called to question. Groupthink can often lead to the creation of “yes men”, because group activities and group projects in general make it extremely easy to pass on not offering constructive opinions, and potentially more fruitful options.
Psychologist Irving Janis (Yale University) pioneered the initial research on the group-think theory. He writes: “I use the term group-think as a quick and easy way to refer to the mode of thinking that persons engage in when concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive in-group that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action. Group-think is a term of the same order as the words in the newspeak vocabulary George Orwell used in his dismaying world of 1984. In that context, group-think takes on an invidious connotation. Exactly such a connotation is intended, since the term refers to a deterioration in mental efficiency, reality testing and moral judgments as a result of group pressures… The main principle of group-think is this: ‘The more amiability and esprit de corps there is among the members of a policy-making in-group, the greater the danger that independent critical thinking will be replaced by group-think, which is likely to result in irrational and dehumanizing actions directed against out-groups‘.”
Jeremiah writes to strengthen the people against these insidious, and potentially ruinous interpersonal forces: “For even your brothers, the house of your father, even they have dealt treacherously with you; yes, they have called a multitude after you. Do not believe them, even though they speak smooth words to you.” (Jeremiah 12:7)
This is the vital question before the church in this hour. Does our American evangelical family have the discipline, and prophetic fortitude that will enable us to escape the vortex of APOTHEOSIS that has engulfed SO MUCH of our Church family throughout history?
In the rest of chapter 12’s message, Jeremiah references the fierce jealousy of God to produce a people who are not ravaged by the destructive, and despotic ways of satan’s tyranny: “Many rulers have destroyed My vineyard, they have trodden My portion underfoot; they have made My pleasant portion a desolate wilderness. They have made it desolate; desolate, it mourns to Me; the whole land is made desolate, because no one takes it to heart. The plunderers have come on all the desolate heights in the wilderness, for the sword of the Lord shall devour from one end of the land to the other end of the land; no flesh shall have peace.” (Jeremiah 12:10-12)
Beloved. The zeal of the Lord stands in wholehearted opposition to the devouring desolation that always comes with self-adulating power. Ultimately, should we not take His prophetic counsel to heart, and see His Hand in what is arrayed against us (indeed, on behalf of our good), we will find our God in violent opposition to us. People of the Word need not be deceived about this reality.
Today is the day to avail ourselves of the full, circumspect counsel of our King. Today is the day to humble ourselves and take refuge in the watchful, inner-vigilance of prayer, and yield our flesh to the crucifying work of the Spirit, that we may develop an idol-intolerant heart, and a pure devotion to the exaltation of Jesus alone.
“O Lord, our God, masters other than You have ruled us, but we praise Your Name alone.” (Isaiah 26:13)
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JSB • February, 2026
NOTE: If you’re curious: Here’s a very accessible, thorough, non-political article that helps break down the human components of cult-dynamics, (including apotheosis) so that they become more easily identifiable in our every-day world.
DEFANGING AUTHORITARIANISM by Daniel D. Barber (June 8, 2023)