It is a story found in the Torah, the Bible and the Koran: Moses comes down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, only to find the Israelites worshipping a golden calf. He then angrily destroys it and the worshippers are punished for the sin of idolatry.
After a 22-foot gold-covered statue of President Donald Trump raising his fist, known as the “Don Colossus,” was dedicated at the Trump National Doral Miami last week, Trump ally and evangelical pastor Mark Burns defended it in a long and meandering post on X.
“Let me say this plainly: this is not a golden calf,” he wrote. “We worship the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone. This statue is not about worship. It is about honor.”
But the biblical symbolism here is impossible to ignore. When the Israelites fashioned the golden calf, the sin was not merely that they made an object of gold. It was that they transferred reverence, trust, identity and obedience from God to something political, visible, immediate and emotionally satisfying.
They wanted certainty they could see and touch. They wanted a figure around which to rally. They wanted strength more than holiness.
I spent a few years in Augustinian formation studying scripture, tradition and the moral demands of faith. And I know enough to recognize idolatry when it is staring at me with a face plated in gold.
Let’s not pretend this is complicated theology. It is not. You cannot stand in front of a golden statue built to glorify a political leader, surround it with preachers, bless it, praise it and then act shocked that the rest of us might consider it a false idol. The Apostle Paul was explicit: “Flee from idolatry.” It can’t get any simpler than that.
That is why the image of pastors “blessing” a golden statue of a political leader is not just unsettling to secular Americans, but also to Christians, Jews and Muslims across theological and political lines.
Even if those involved insisted they were blessing the man or praying over the country rather than worshiping an idol, symbolism matters profoundly in Scripture. The Bible is saturated with warnings not merely against literal idol worship, but against confusing earthly power with divine authority.
From Exodus to 1 Corinthians, which is the other Corinthian Trump doesn’t know about, Christian Scripture reinforces one of the central pillars of Christianity: the rejection of idolatry and the command to worship God alone. Exodus 20:3-5 and Leviticus 26:1 explicitly forbid the creation and worship of idols, establishing that devotion belongs solely to God. Psalm 115:4-8 mocks idols as powerless objects made by human hands, warning that those who worship them become spiritually hollow themselves. In the New Testament, the warning continues unchanged. John 5:20-21 closes with the direct instruction: “keep yourselves from idols.”
Together, these passages make clear that Christianity is rooted in rejecting the elevation of human-made figures, objects, power or status above God. Burns should know that.
Some pastors now sound less like ministers of the Gospel and more like court prophets.
Modern Trumpism has blurred the line between political loyalty and spiritual submission so completely that some pastors now sound less like ministers of the Gospel and more like court prophets protecting the fragile ego of an ancient king.
This is where the American church should be alarmed. Not because of one ridiculous statue, but because too many religious leaders have traded moral authority for proximity to power. Parts of Christianity increasingly measure spiritual success through political conquest. Leaders are defended not by the standards of the Gospel, but by whether they “fight for us.” Moral failings are excused if the leader delivers judicial appointments, cultural victories or partisan revenge. Political identity becomes fused with religious identity until criticism of a politician is interpreted as an attack on the faith itself.
That fusion is spiritually dangerous because it transforms Christianity from a transcendent moral witness into a tribal instrument. And once that happens, scripture itself becomes selective. Passages about humility, welcoming the stranger, truthfulness, mercy, peacemaking and care for the poor recede into the background. In their place emerges a Christianity centered on grievance, images of strength, spectacle and enemies.
The golden statue is more a symptom than the problem. The concern here is not whether the “blessing” of Don Colossus technically qualifies as a “golden calf.” It is whether Christians can still distinguish between the worship of God and the worship of power clothed in religious language. The golden statue becomes symbolic not because Christians literally believe it is divine, but because it reveals what many now believe Christianity is for.
Once a faith becomes unable to criticize its own idols, it ceases to be prophetic. It becomes court religion — a chaplaincy to power rather than a witness to truth. If pastors spend their time defending images of Trump rather than defending the teachings of Christ, something is deeply wrong in the soul of American Christianity.
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Michael Steele
Michael Steele is a co-host of "The Weeknight," which airs Monday through Friday at 7 p.m. ET on MS NOW. He is a former lieutenant governor of Maryland and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.