Like others, I think the timing of the March 28, 2026, international No Kings rallies with Palm Sunday and later in the week, Passover, is beautiful. God clearly has thoughts about all-powerful human rulers and about hereditary rulers that are not reflected in the proclivities of certain strands of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I can’t speak with any authority about Islamic history, so this is a Biblical (Israelite/early Jewish) and then historical reflection on the Christian flirtation with autocracy that endangers us today. 

After Moses and Joshua, the Israelites are led by a series of Judges who come from different tribes and regions of the land (the occupation of that land and the displacement of the people who lived there is a narrative for another time, but it bears shocking resemblance to—one could theorize with some legitimacy that it inspired—the European conquest of the Americas). These Judges are just as fallible as any other humans; indeed, Jephtha sacrifices his own daughter after a foolhardy promise to God and Samson, the last named Judge, barely redeems his early missteps at the end of his life as a martyr. The identity each successive Judge is discerned in community, in consultation with the wise ones among the people and with attentiveness to God’s call to the individual who is raised up for a given time. The position of Judge is not hereditary; I think this is why God provided this form of leadership and it is ultimately the strength of modern democratic forms of government, whether direct democracies or republican democracies.

As happens frequently, the Israelites complain that they don’t like their Judges and demand a king so they can be like everyone else. God for a while plays the wise parent, saying NO through the prophetic leaders of the people, most pointedly Samuel. Samuel reminds the people that kings are just as fallible as Judges with the added concern of hereditary rule, a real problem in a nation whose leaders are called by God, not born to reign. Eventually God—I like to think in the classic parenting method of letting children learn from their own mistakes—ultimately caved to their demands. Samuel finds Saul, Saul becomes king, and cue the disaster. 

God intervenes before Saul’s sons can inherit the throne, raising David to be king. Saul sees David as a threat, chaos ensues, Saul and most of his family are killed, David becomes king, and cue the serial disasters starting with David’s rape of Bathsheba. David’s court prophet, Nathan, gets some choice monologues along the way expressing God’s disappointment with the whole endeavor. David dies, chaos ensues, Solomon occupies the throne, and cue the disaster. One would think that building the Temple, the very dwelling place of the God of Israel, would keep Solomon in God’s good graces, but no, Solomon was seduced away from worship of God by his 300 wives and 700 concubines. Upon his death, his sons fight over the kingdom, ultimately splitting the nation into two smaller kingdoms. This is the generational curse of David’s primary crime, which plays out then for almost 400 years with only a few kings who follow in the ways of God until “Indeed, Jerusalem and Judah so angered the Lord that he expelled them from his presence.” (2 Kings 24:20). The last King of Judah, Jehoiachin, is exiled to Babylon and the people are scattered; in a final betrayal of God, Johoiachin spend his last years of exile not in prison but as a dinner companion of King Evil-merodach of Babylon!

When the Israelite people are allowed back to Jerusalem and the surrounding countryside following the fall of Babylon, they are ruled over by kings—just not their own kings. For the next 350-400 years, a number of minor regional client dynasties reign on behalf of larger powers.  Some of these even have ties to the Israelites themselves, particularly the Hasmoneans, who reign for just over a century. Along comes Rome—a newly-minted empire still masquerading as a republic—and shortly thereafter Herod the Great, a client king who along with his sons Herod Antipas, Herod Agrippa, Herod Archelaus, and Herod Philip, features heavily in the stories of Jesus and the early church. Herod the Great may have greatly expanded the Second Temple, but faithful to God he is not. Nor are his many sons Herod. Is it any wonder, then, that the people want a “real king” to conquer and expel the Romans, to “Make Jerusalem Great Again”?

Messianic fervor at the time centers on this ideal king in the lineage of David. What people hunger for, what they think they need most, is this new King who will restore them to worldly power like they had in the time of David and Solomon. Enter Jesus of Nazareth. He is not, and never claims to be, the new King of Israel. But the Romans see how Jesus attracts crowds and hear the fear of their docile religious collaborators, who worry that Jesus is fomenting revolution that will put their power and personal safety at risk. Jesus is a threat. So, as we see unfolding during Holy Week, Jesus must be removed from the scene. The triumphal procession of Jesus into Jerusalem served as the final reminder that he needed to be stopped; no one with any sense of history could miss the royal aspirations and callbacks in that parade route lined with adoring, cheering people! Arrested, tried, convicted, crucified dead, buried. Done and dusted. Problem solved, no King Jesus to worry about.

Except, of course, that the king Jesus points people toward is the Ruler of the Universe. Teaching that allegiance of heart, mind, and soul belongs to God, not to any empire or person embodying empire, Jesus calls back to the days of leaders raised up by God and recognized by the wise ones for a season, not families who inherit leadership for generations. Christianity began as an anti-imperial movement in the same mold as early Israel.

By the early 4th century CE, Constantine recognizes Christianity as a way to control people. Everything goes to hell in a hand basket after that because Christianity ever since has been captive in some way to the state, especially in Europe. The Divine Right of Kings and the Doctrine of Discovery, ideas rooted in horrible theological positions of religious leaders far too close to power centers, have been instrumental in the destruction of entire peoples and of the natural world as colonization becomes the primary way to spread Christian beliefs to newly discovered territories in the Americas. Along with colonization comes chattel slavery, encouraged first as a way to punish “savages” who won’t convert because clearly, they are “subhuman”. Kings need ever-growing income, which the African slave trade supports handsomely even as those enslaved human beings are put to work devastating the environments of entire islands and regions for agriculture. Where chattel slavery didn’t take hold, various forms of servitude still existed; serfs in Russia, for example, didn’t gain full citizenship until the 1860s even though they had lineage as far back as the tsars on the land.

One would think that the Enlightenment ideals of democracy and freedom would have completely supplanted all of these notions of supreme power and control by monarchs and their favorites. Alas, no. Monarchy just keeps reinventing itself because power is enticing and greed can never be underestimated as a reason to gain power. Christianity as imagined by monarchists, or by those with an autocratic bent, can be molded to meet the needs of those who want, or want to keep power, to wit, Christian nationalism in the United States, Hungary, and Russia, among other places. Nevertheless, human rulers—male, female, or non-binary—may claim to be supreme rulers, may act as though there are no restraints on their power, may even disrespect and dismiss the ethical and moral norms of human civilization. But they are not God.

And if I’m going to be a monarchist, the only monarch I want to be subject to is God.