Sunday, December 7, 2025

Autonomy and Interdependence

I have a backlog of unfinished posts, revealing the distractions of my life since the advent of the Trump administration, but I want to start a new one (you are welcome to read one as a new post or a new administration or both). 

In his 2000 review of M. Mitchell Waldrop's book Complexity: the Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (1992), Robert Dare says: 

Complexity, the theory goes, manifests itself in “complex adaptive systems”, which are made up of many independent agents [my emphasis] who interact and adapt to each other and to their environment, producing the phenomenon of emergence -- a system behaving as more than the sum of its parts.

I was disturbed immediately by Dare’s characterization of agents as "independent". To my mind, agents in any complex system are not independent. While they may have some identity and integrity independent of the complex system within which they are interacting, they are also exchanging energy, matter, information, and organization with the other agents within the system, to the point that they can hardly be understood or even exist apart from that enfolding ecosystem. Consider a single neuron in a brain – yours or mine, perhaps. It can be isolated, put in a petri dish, and studied. Eventually, of course, the neuron will die, not having participated in a single coherent thought. What we might learn from such study can be useful and illuminating, but it ends in death of the agent under study. The same with a single human – say, you or me. We can, of course, become a hermit, isolating ourselves totally from other humans, but human society is only one of the many complex systems within which we are embedded, such as the Earth. If we isolate ourselves from the Earth, denying any exchange of energy, matter, information, and organization, then we die almost immediately, depending on how long we can last without breathing. We are not independent, discrete agents, and thinking of ourselves as independent leads to grievous misunderstandings.

Still, I suspect I was over-reading Dare's comment, and my favorite complexity writer Edgar Morin provides the proper correction. Morin says that complex systems function through a paradox of both autonomy and dependence – not either/or, but and/and. Agents in a complex system are both autonomous and dependent, and anyone trying to understand a specific agent must think in these usually antagonistic terms simultaneously. Likewise, one must not assume that the two concepts are in some manner reconciled. They are not. Rather, they stand face to face, at times cooperating, at times conflicting, but it is within the necessary tension between the two that the agent both emerges and gains its agency.

I suspect, then, that Dare's independence refers to agents' autonomy of action and the absence of centralized control, rather than to an existence isolated from the system. In the context of his review of Waldrop’s book, "independent" seems to imply that agents—whether they are quarks, cells, individuals, planets, or galaxies—operate according to their own local rules and adapt to one another without a "single, intelligent, 'executive branch'" dictating their behavior. We can see this sort of tension at work in the murmurations of starlings where each individual bird decides for itself how to move but within the context of the flock. The result are those beautiful swarms that delight the eye and mystify us.

In a murmuration, each starling, as a single agent in this complex adaptive system, acts locally with a certain amount of autonomy and without a ruling starling to guide it – no Abraham Lincoln or Steve Jobs starling. Rather, a starling considers its proximate mates and tries to synchronize its own actions with theirs. It's quite possible that a single starling has little to no sense of its larger swarm. It almost certainly has no sense of the orchestrated movements of the murmuration and the fantastic designs that it is helping to create. Rather, it behaves locally as best it can with its tiny brain and quick reflexes, but with little sense of the larger designs of its flock. It is aware that the movements of the swarm affects its own movements, but it can explain those influences only in terms of its local conditions. At times, a smaller swarm will separate from the larger swarm to form a different sect, political party, or musical or literary genre, but often the separated swarm eventually finds its way back to the larger swarm.

In his attempt to explain this dynamic tension between autonomy and dependence especially in the field of Education, Mark Mason says:

In the simplest terms, [these systems] solve problems by drawing on masses of relatively stupid elements, rather than a single, intelligent, ‘executive branch’. They are bottom-up systems, not top-down ... . [T]hey are complex adaptive systems that display emergent behaviour. In these systems, agents residing on one scale start producing behaviour that lies one scale above them: ants create colonies; urbanites create neighbourhoods; simple pattern-recognition software learns how to recommend new books. The movement from low-level rules to higher-level sophistication is what we call emergence. (Complexity Theory and the Philosophy of Education, 2008)

Agents are not truly independent of their enfolding ecosystems in an existential sense. Rather, they act in a mass "of relatively stupid elements, rather than a single, intelligent, 'executive branch'". I assume that Mason is suggesting that humans, for instance, are not absolutely stupid, but only relatively stupid when compared to their enfolding ecosystems, which are functioning at a higher scale. This is like saying that a flock of starlings has certain intelligence and capabilities that an individual starling lacks. Complexity science conceptualizes this dynamic not as a contradiction, but as a necessary paradox of autonomy versus interdependence.

That agents are deeply embedded in their ecosystem and thus interdependent, or coupled, which is central to complex adaptive systems. While agents such as starlings and humans have some degree of local autonomy, they are formed by a mutual causality. They are "co-creative, co-emergent, [and] co-dependent on each other for their existence" (Lichtenstein, Bringing Complexity into Social Analysis, 2018). The identity of an agent is always co-created by the presence of all the other agents in the system functioning both in their own identities and the identity of the swarm.

No agent can exist without the exchange of energy and information with other agents both at its own scale and at scales above and below it. As far as I know, all agents couple, where individual components influence and are influenced by others; if parts are "tightly coupled," a change in one propagates rapidly to others. Inversely, loose coupling tends to slow down propagation through a complex system. In her essay about how complexity works within modern organizations, Glenda H. Eoyang says:

In an organization, coupling affects the speed of information transfer and the effectiveness of efforts to encourage change. For example, if research and development are tightly coupled to the rest of an organization, then the manufacturing processes had better be flexible and adaptable. The factory will be expected to produce new and radically different products frequently and with minimal cycle times. On the other hand, if the organization is uncoupled from research and development, then findings will not be reflected in product designs, and management might see R&D funds as wasted resources. (A Brief Introduction to Complexity in Organizations, 1993).

Starlings, it seems, are a tightly coupled bunch who greatly value flying with their flocks and, hence, their magical murmurations in which, in the familiar expression, the whole becomes more than the sum of the parts.

This degree of coupling, of course, can become too restrictive for some agents, especially humans. This is because the whole is also less than the sum of the parts, as Morin explains: 

The whole is not only more than the sum of its parts, but it is also less than the sum of its parts. Why? Because a certain number of qualities and properties present in the parts can be inhibited by the organization of the whole. Even when each of our cells contains the total of our genetic inheritance, only a small part of that heritage is active, and the rest is inhibited. In the relationship between an individual and her society, the liberties (even those extreme liberties that are considered delinquent or criminal) inherent to each individual may be inhibited by the police, laws, and social order. Restricted Complexity, General Complexity (2007)

Thus, while starlings are engaged in their magical murmuring, they are constrained from searching for insects, seeds, and fruits in the grass or from mating in the nests that male starlings have constructed and attracted a female to join.

This downward pressure by the system on the individual agent is too restrictive for some humans who like to brag that they are individuals not coupled to any human group – social, political, religious, philosophical, economic, or otherwise. And while sociopolitical systems can be too oppressive, humans are, in fact, tightly coupled to their material ecosystem, the thin, blue line of atmosphere, land, and water within which they exist. And almost all humans are coupled to their human groups. I suspect that even the hermit on the hilltop owes much of his solitude to the other humans who created him, raised him, and then informed his language and religious practices.

But dependence does not seem to work only one way: from enclosing ecosystem to individual agent. At the same time that a complex ecosystem helps define its enfolded agents, the complex system itself is literally defined by these multiple interactions among its many different agents. The connectivity, or coupling, among agents is often viewed as more important than the agents themselves, as it is the interactions that create and maintain the system's structure. When we watch the murmuration of starlings, we are captivated by the flows and contours and shifting shapes of the swarm, not so much by any individual starling. A single starling does not a murmuration make. (Letts, Complexity Theory and Social Theory, 1992, p 42)

As Edgar Morin has explained to my satisfaction, to understand complexity, we must learn to think in complex ways. This juxtaposition of autonomy and interdependence, of individual and group, of whole and parts, is one of those ways to think differently. Morin uses the term self-eco-organization to express this complex thought. Morin argues that for a system (or agent) to be autonomous, it must be open to its environment to exchange energy and information. In his essay Restricted Complexity, General Complexity (2007), Morin says:

I define self-eco-organization as living organization, according to the idea that self-organization depends on its environment to draw energy and information. … Consequently, we arrive at what I logically call the autonomy/dependence complex. For a living being to be autonomous, it must depend on its environment for matter and energy as well as knowledge and information. The more autonomy develops, the more multiple dependencies develop.
For agents and the complex systems that they enclose and in which they are themselves enclosed, both autonomy and dependence are necessary conditions of existence, and agents emerge and express themselves within that near chaotic, irreconcilable space between the two. This complex space is a recursive conversation rather than and either/or argument. An open system must at the same time be closed (independent) enough to maintain its distinct identity, yet open (interdependent) enough to feed its existence. To understand either agent or system, we must consider both and their interactions. Thinking of either the one (reductionism) or the other (wholism) won't do.

Preiser, Cilliers, and Human describe this complex method of thinking this way:

[T]he logic of critical complex thinking proposes a type of thinking that necessitates a double movement similar to what Derrida calls the double bind. It suggests that the concept and its counterpart (the yes and the no) are thought simultaneously. Morin (2007) calls this the ‘logical core of complexity’, which is dialogical and economical in nature. However, the art lies not in thinking one in terms of the other in binary motion, but in terms of how the one is dependent and determined by the other. The knack lies not in describing opposites when making knowledge claims, but in thinking both at the same time. It is described as a ‘dialogic (that) is not the response to these paradoxes, but the means of facing them, by considering the productive play of complementary antagonisms’. (Deconstruction and Complexity: A critical economy, 2011)
In summary, a more correct understanding of Dare's claim is to assume that "independent" means that agents are not necessarily puppets of a central controller. Rather, they are as Heylighen, Cilliers, and Gershenson say in Complexity and Philosophy (2006), agents are always "partly competing, partly co-operating, or simply mutually ignoring" each other and so entangled that they cannot be fully understood apart from the system they constitute. So for me, independent is the wrong understanding; dependent is the wrong understanding; self-eco-organization is the correct understanding. 
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Tuesday, January 7, 2025

Understanding the Stories Evangelicals Tell about Trump

This post addresses the issue that I have with the stories that the American Evangelical community tells about Donald Trump. As a political progressive, I am perplexed when I hear my friends and family tell me, for instance, that Donald Trump is a righteous warrior battling evil powers such as the Deep State and Demonic Democrats to restore America to its former greatness. I struggle to characterize either Trump as a righteous warrior or Democrats as demonic, and I am not yet convinced of the existence of a coherent dark cabal within our government bent on the subversion of the United States. Moreover, I do not believe that America has fallen into a deplorable depravity. Perhaps most troubling, though, I do not understand how people whom I know otherwise to live intelligent and successful lives can believe such stories about a character whom I perceive to be thoroughly corrupt. I find myself asking how these good people can buy into Trump's MAGA community.

I have recognized similar confusion among many of my politically progressive friends and family, and while it is easy to dismiss such Trump stories as silly or stupid, such dismissal does not help me to address the danger such stories pose or to understand the people who believe such stories. I have been reading and writing about the Trump stories since 2018 and about rhizoRhetoric since 2014. My thinking about the Trump narratives, then, has been framed by my thinking in complexity, especially in rhizoRhetoric and rhizoNarratology, both of which view rhetoric and narratology as complex systems. While this post will not focus on narrative as a complex system, which I will address in a future post, it will be informed by that view.

In this post, I will use the narratology of Walter Fisher to frame how the MAGA community, especially the Evangelical wing of that community, can believe and act on the stories about Donald Trump. I will explore one story in particular: the story of Donald Trump as a latter-day King Cyrus of Persia. I choose this story because it is concise and treatable in a short presentation, but much of what I say about it can be applied to the many other Trump stories in circulation. In fact, I think much of what I say applies to all narratives in general, but we shall see.

Rational vs Narrative Paradigms

In his 1984 article "Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm", communication theorist Walter Fisher posits two large modes of public discourse: the rational and the narrative, and he claims that public discourse in the West has been dominated by the rational paradigm, which emphasizes logic and evidence, while the narrative paradigm, which centers on compelling stories and how well they resonate with an individual's existing beliefs, has been relegated to the role of mere opinion. Fisher attempts to reverse this imbalance, insisting that narrative is the more inclusive and fundamental form of communication and reducing the rational to a special case of the narrative. He goes so far as to make narrative a core, defining feature of humanity, which he calls homo narrans, or story-telling humanity.

Problems with the Rational Paradigm

The rational paradigm assumes that rationality defines the human being and is the epitome of human thought and creativity. It is not, for a number of reasons that lie beyond the scope of this post, but Fisher points to a number of issues that the rational paradigm causes for public discourse:

  1. Humans are essentially rational beings. (They are not)
  2. Argument in the form of clear-cut inferential structures is the paradigmatic mode of human communication. (It is not)
  3. Argument is framed by situations – legal, scientific, legislative, and so on. (This restricts valid discussion to those fields, leaving out much of human experience)
  4. Rationality is fixed by expertise in subject matter and logic and skill in applying that expertise. (This restricts valid discussion to experts in those fields, leaving out most humans)
  5. The world is a set of logical problems appropriately addressed through rational analysis and logical argument. (The recognition of complex, wicked problems has upset this assumption)
  6. Rationality privileges epistemology over ontology, knowing over being.
  7. Rationality restricts public discourse to certain and probable knowledge. (4)
Fisher notes that the rational paradigm excludes most people from public discourse, which is reserved for rational elites who have been educated in specialized knowledge and in the forms of rational discourse germane to that field of knowledge. He says that the end result has been to "restrict the rational world paradigm to specialized studies and to relegate everyday argument to an irrational exercise" (5). 

Fisher lists a wide range of thinkers who challenge the rational paradigm. I'll not cover his thorough list, but I note that the challenges to the rational paradigm continue into the twenty-first century. For instance, in his books The Righteous Mind and The Happiness Hypothesis, psychologist and popular author Jonathan Haidt characterizes the human mind as a rider on an elephant, and he makes a strong case that the rider, our rational mind, evolved not first but later to support and guide the elephant, our emotional, intuitive mind, and that the emotional mind is the stronger, more fundamental sense-making aspect of human thought. Of course, when the rider and elephant work together, then humans can achieve their greatest insights, but when they conflict, the rider is no match for the elephant and is usually left in a clean-up role, trying to rationalize whatever the elephant does. In Chapter 8 of The Happiness Hypothesis, Haidt explains that the elephant mind understands its world through story rather than through rational argument.

Even more recently, in his Atlantic essay "How the Ivy League Broke America", conservative columnist David Brooks details how the Twentieth century educational leaders such as Harvard president James Conant sought to restructure American society on rational terms, leading to an overemphasis on rational intelligence and to an American caste system built on IQ scores and matriculation in the most elite schools. This reliance on the rational paradigm has not led to the ideal public leadership that Conant envisioned. Rather, as Brooks suggests, "under the leadership of our current meritocratic class, trust in institutions has plummeted to the point where, three times since 2016, a large mass of voters has shoved a big middle finger in the elites’ faces by voting for Donald Trump."

After the presidential election in November, 2024, Ohio State University political economist Don Leonard published an online article "Trump voters said they were angry about the economy" in The Conversation in which he analyzed the disconnect between the government's facts and rational arguments about the positive health of the economy and the popular perception that the economy is failing. The Government's self-evident propositions, demonstrations, and proofs," its "verbal expressions of certain and probable knowing" (4) convinced most economists that the American economy was improving, was well, especially when compared with the economies of other nations recovering from Covid. The data were accurate, and the arguments were impeccable. They were also wrong – rather, they told the wrong story. The American middle class, which voted largely for Trump, told stories about sticker shock at the grocery store and gas pump. Those like myself who listened to the rational argument didn't hear those stories, and we forgot that story always trumps argument – pun intended.

Despite its intellectual affordances and benefits, the rational paradigm is not the only or even the best way to view the world. The rational paradigm will not adequately explain why so many of my Evangelical family and friends put their faith in Donald Trump. I must look for explanations and clarity elsewhere, in narrative.

The Narrative Paradigm and Public Discourse

In "Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm", Fisher argues that narrative is a more powerful and persuasive form of communication than logic because it can engage both our minds and our hearts (14). Narratives can help us to understand complex issues, to empathize with others, and to make decisions based on our values as well as our reason. He concludes, then, that the narrative paradigm offers a better way of understanding and resolving public moral arguments (10). 

Fisher lists a number of characteristics that empower the narrative paradigm to correct the rational paradigm's distortion of public discourse. He says:

The narrative paradigm insists that human communication should be viewed as historical as well as situational, as stories competing with other stories constituted by good reasons, as being rational when they satisfy the demands of narrative probability and narrative fidelity, and as inevitably moral inducements. The narrative paradigm challenges the notions that human communication – if it is to be considered rhetorical – must be an argumentative form, that reason is to be attributed only to discourse marked by clearly identifiable modes of inference and/or implication, and that the norms for evaluation of rhetorical communication must be rational standards taken essentially from informal or formal logic. The narrative paradigm does not deny reason and rationality; it reconstitutes them, making them amenable to all forms of human communication. (2)

The narrative paradigm, then, does not replace the rational paradigm; rather, it subsumes it, rendering the rational paradigm as the more narrow and specialized form of communication. Narrative is the primary, older means of making sense of the world, as the story of the ancient Persian King Cyrus illustrates.

The King Cyrus Story

King Cyrus the Great is a prominent historical and legendary figure, though historians believe that at least two different Persian rulers were called Cyrus the Great. Historians note him as "a conqueror who founded the Achaemenian empire" in about 550 BC, the largest empire to that date (Frye). This essay, however, focuses more on Cyrus' treatment in legend, first mentioned by the Greeks Herodotus and Xenophon, historians whose accounts of Cyrus involved legend as much as history (Frye). Like Oedipus, Cyrus was prophesied to overthrow his king father, but was given to a shepherd to raise, only to return as a man to fulfill the prophecy.

Cyrus is also mentioned prominently in the Jewish Bible, where he is credited with freeing the Jewish people from captivity in Babylonia and allowing them to return to Jerusalem to rebuild their temple (Frye, "Cyrus the Great in the Bible", and "Cyrus the Great"). The story has a somewhat fragmentary treatment in the Bible, being recounted in several different books: 

  • 2 Chronicles 36:22, 23 describes Cyrus' edict to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem ("Cyrus")
  • Ezra 1:1–4 describes Cyrus's decree to allow the Jewish people to return to their homeland (Frye).
  • Isaiah 45:1 says that Yahweh anointed Cyrus as a biblical messiah for this task ("Cyrus the Great").
  • Daniel: though many references to Cyrus are tangential, most of the accounts in Daniel take place at the end of the Assyrian rule of Babylon when the Medo-persian Cyrus conquers Babylon and installs his uncle Darius as his proxy.

Cyrus's actions had a lasting impact on Judaism, and he is the only non-Jewish figure in Jewish scripture to be called a messiah, an anointed deliverer of God's people ("Cyrus the Great", "Cyrus the Great in the Bible", and "Who Was Cyrus the Great?"). The classical Jewish historian Josephus details how the Jews returned to the Land of Israel and rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem, following instructions given by Cyrus in a letter to the repatriated Jews ("Cyrus the Great in the Bible").

King Cyrus as a Progressive Paragon

Cyrus has also been revered outside the Jewish tradition. Cyrus's progressive political practices, especially his tolerance and support of local customs among the people he conquered, have been legendary throughout history, and his policies are considered revolutionary ideas that are still emulated today (Frye, "Cyrus the Great", "Who Was Cyrus the Great?"). The Greek historian Xenophon casts Cyrus as the ideal ruler in Cyropaedia, his didactic and, at least in the case of Cyrus, largely fictional treatise on political leadership (Frye, Tuplin).

In 1879, archaeologists discovered the Cyrus Cylinder in the ruins of Babylon in  modern day Iran. The British Museum, which holds the original clay cylinder, says that the cylinder recounts how the Babylonian god Marduk used Cyrus to conquer Babylon and to relieve its people of oppressive rulers:

Nabonidus, the last King of Babylon (555-539 BC), had perverted the cults of the Babylonian gods, including Marduk, the city-god of Babylon, and had imposed labour-service on its free population, who complained to the gods. The gods responded by deserting Babylon, but Marduk looked around for a champion to restore the old ways. He chose Cyrus, King of Anshan (Persia), and declared him king of the world. (British Museum)

In honor of Cyrus' compassionate and inclusive practices of governance, a replica of the Cyrus Cylinder is currently on display at the United Nations in New York ("Who Was Cyrus the Great?"). However, as the British Museum notes, Cyrus' progressive rule may be as much legend as fact:

Because of its references to just and peaceful rule, and to the restoration of deported peoples and their gods the cylinder has in recent years been referred to in some quarters as a kind of 'charter of human rights'. Such a concept would have been quite alien to Cyrus's contemporaries, and indeed the cylinder says nothing of human rights; but the return of the Jews and of other deported peoples was a significant reversal of the policies of earlier Assyrian and Babylonian kings.

In his analysis of the reign of King Cyrus "Cyrus the Great, Exiles, and Foreign Gods: A Comparison of Assyrian and Persian Policies on Subject Nations," R. J. van der Spek notes that while modern praise of King Cyrus' progressive rule is valuable for challenging "the usual Eurocentric approach to the history of the near East in traditional scholarship, which tends to see all the blessings of modern civilization as coming solely from Greece and Rome" (234), he insists that "the worthy cause of deconstructing 'orientalism' … is not furthered by presenting … unhistorical and anachronistic reconstructions" (235). Van der Spek insists that the elevation of Cyrus as a paragon of progressive political values rests on three erroneous assumptions:

  1. "An anachronistic perception of ancient political discourse", in which "no discourse on religious tolerance existed." Like other empire builders, Cyrus was dealing with the practical problem of encompassing a variety of political constructs each with their inherent and conflicting religions. Sometimes Cyrus was harsh with conquered people, destroying their temples and practices, but often he accepted "multiformity in order not to provoke rebellion."
  2. Starting with tolerance as the defining characteristic of Cyrus' rule, even though it is "possible to describe his policy as positively pragmatic or even mild in some respects;" rather, "Cyrus was a normal conqueror with the usual policy of brutal warfare and harsh measures. The will of the Persian king was law, and no principal right of participation in government was allowed."
  3. Scholars falsely contrast the rule of Cyrus with that of the Assyrians he conquered. The Assyrian rule was not merely cruel and intolerant, and they did not impose their Assyrian gods on conquered people. (235)

If van der Spek is correct, and I accept his analysis and conclusions, then the stories modern historians are telling about Cyrus are more a reflection of their own progressive politics than of the realities of King Cyrus. As Amélie Kuhrt says in "Cyrus the Great of Persia: Images and Realities", the ancient texts cannot "be used to support the idea that Cyrus introduced radical new policies of religious tolerance …  Although the [archaeological] evidence is not immense, it is sufficient to counter the image of the Cyrus of modern European and Judaeo-Christian tradition. Instead of a young idealistic liberator, with a new vision for ruling the world, we can begin to define a king, heir to an already fairly significant realm, who deployed both brutal and placatory gestures in a calculated and effective manner." (10, 16). This enhanced story about Cyrus' supposed progressive political theories becomes an important point as I consider the stories Evangelicals currently tell about Donald Trump as a latter day King Cyrus.

King Cyrus as Donald Trump

I first heard about the Trump as Cyrus story from my brother, a retired Evangelical minister. Intrigued, I found an NPR interview with Robert P. Jones, president and founder of Public Religion Research Institution (PRRI) who says that many Evangelicals have compared Trump to:

the Persian king Cyrus from the Book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible. And that's important because there, Cyrus is presented as an ungodly king who nonetheless frees a group of Jews who are held captive in Babylon. So by comparison, Trump here is the powerful, strong, authoritarian liberator, someone who by definition and maybe even by necessity is even above the law and who alone is capable of liberating conservative, white Christians from their oppressors.

Jones should have also noted that a number of prominent national leaders and at least one international leader, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, have compared Trump to King Cyrus of Persia. The Trump as Cyrus story possibly originated in 2016 with a vision by Lance Wallnau in his article "Why I Believe Trump Is the Prophesied President" in which, three days before Trump won the 2016 election, Wallnau says:

This is the proposition I give to Christians who are dispirited by the failure of their favorite candidate to capture the nomination: Don't ask, "Who is the most Christian?" Instead ask, "Who is the one anointed for the task?" … From my perspective, there is a Cyrus anointing on Trump. He is, as my friend Kim Clement said three years ago, "God's trumpet." I predicted his nomination, and I believe he is the chaos candidate set apart to navigate us through the chaos that is coming to America. I think America is due for a shaking regardless of who is in office. I believe the 45th president is meant to be an Isaiah 45 Cyrus.

Whenever and however it originated, the story gained traction in Evangelical circles, though it is fading among Evangelicals since the first Trump presidency. What does this narrative offer Evangelicals that they will so readily accept it not just as a convincing story but as fact?

I think that, in general, repurposing an ancient story into contemporary times has several benefits for the community repurposing the story:

  • Reinterpretation: Any modern storyteller can retell the Cyrus story in a fresh way. This could be a play or a graphic novel, but in the case of modern Evangelicals, it has been mostly social media memes and sermons. The core message of persecution and liberation remains, but the format changes to resonate with a contemporary audience.
  • Local Application: The story can be adapted to reflect a modern community's struggles. I know first-hand – and any reading of modern social media and attention to Evangelical sermons will confirm – that Evangelicals perceive themselves as persecuted by the mainstream society (the World) and media (Fake News). Retelling the Cyrus story with a local twist can spark conversations among Evangelicals about how to confront persecution and to anticipate deliverance through a flawed Trump and by a beneficent and loving God.
  • Shared Values: Ancient stories remind us of the enduring human values we share across time. Cyrus's story highlights the hardships and eventual deliverance by an Act of God of the Israelites, a theme that transcends cultures and eras. The story also highlights Cyrus's emphasis on justice and tolerance, rare in ancient times, a justice and tolerance that Evangelicals see for every other social group, but not for themselves – except from Trump. Evangelicals can use this story to clarify their position in the World and to promote internal social cohesion.

According to Tara Isabella Burton in her Vox article "The Biblical Story the Christian Right Uses to Defend Trump", this "vessel theology" frames Trump as a divinely chosen instrument, regardless of his personal character or actions, to fulfill a specific historical purpose—in this case, the advancement of a "Christian America."

The ancient Jewish story of Cyrus is scattered across the Old Testament with mentions in 2 Chronicles 36:23, Ezra 6:3–5, and Isaiah 45:4–5, and in the histories of Josephus. Isaiah records how the Israelites had been conquered and exiled to Babylon. They felt forsaken by God and oppressed by their captors, yet the prophet Isaiah foretells that their deliverance will come through the most unlikely of sources - Cyrus, the Persian king who was not a believer in the Israelites' God. Isaiah 45 declares: "This is what the Lord says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of to subdue nations before him." Isaiah portrays Cyrus as an instrument of God, a messiah or savior of a people and the only non-Jew to receive that title, despite himself being ungodly and ignorant of the true God. Through this narrative, the downtrodden Israelites found hope that God still had a plan for them, to be delivered even by those who did not worship Yahweh.

Burton ultimately reveals how this narrative is both strategically employed today for political expediency and deeply rooted in centuries of Christian nationalism within the American identity. I can certainly see echoes of this narrative today in how some modern Evangelical Christian communities have interpreted the presidency of Donald Trump. The Cyrus parallels allow them to overlook perceived moral failings in their leader and instead focus on the ways Trump supposedly undermines secularism and enacts conservative policies they see as aligned with Christian values. Despite conceding that Trump is ungodly and immoral in his personal life and behavior, many Evangelicals nonetheless view Trump as ordained by God to protect their interests and to be an instrument for godly policy initiatives, just as the ungodly but similarly ordained Cyrus did for the captive Israelites. Trump is anointed by God to deliver His people. Trump is an anointed one, though Evangelicals would not use the term messiah, reserving that only for Jesus.

The story of King Cyrus, then, provides a narrative structure that Evangelicals can use to make sense of the miraculous victory by a political newcomer over the politically seasoned and hated Hillary Clinton, or the miraculous undoing of Roe v Wade to stop the wholesale murder of babies, or the heroic struggle at the border to stop the pollution and mayhem of illegal aliens. The story also makes sense of the rabid response of demonic Democrats to undermine the Champion of God, Donald Trump. Clearly, the Forces of Hell will do anything to stop God's Man of the Hour, but as in the Old Testament, God will prevail through His anointed champion, as He has done through the re-election of Trump.

King Cyrus is a handy story that helps Evangelicals define themselves and their relationships with the world, although the story has begun to lose purchase as many Evangelicals have come to see Trump as a born-again Evangelical, one of their own no longer requiring justification as an anointed outsider. As McKay Coppins says in his article for The Atlantic, "This [King Cyrus] analogy seems to have outlived its usefulness to the religious right: A 2020 Pew Research Center survey found that 62 percent of Republicans viewed Trump as “morally upstanding,” and in a Deseret News poll commissioned last year, 64 percent said they believed he is a “person of faith.” The former president no longer needs to be described as a blunt, utilitarian tool in God’s hand."

Affordances of the King Cyrus Story for Evangelicals

So why did Evangelicals take up the Trump as King Cyrus story, and then why did they abandon it? Answering those questions helps me understand how narratives work in society.

Evangelical Identity

First, Evangelicals took up the King Cyrus story because it expresses their identity, the image that they wish to present both to themselves as a group and to others. This concern with identity becomes clearer when we compare and contrast the ways that mid-twentieth century academics used the King Cyrus story with the way that Evangelicals use the story.

After the discovery of the Cyrus Cylinder, some academics and even certain political actors such as the Shah of Iran and UN leaders framed King Cyrus as a paragon of progressive political values. Unfortunately for those progressive academics, the United Nations, and the Shah of Iran, subsequent scholarly analyses of the historical career of Cyrus debunked much of the progressive narrative, but that debunking reveals that academics and world leaders are quite capable of taking up stories that can be made to support their preferred identity. Any community can repurpose a narrative to meet its own needs and to clarify its own identity. Evangelicals are not unusual in this respect; rather, they are typical.

Of course, unlike the progressive academics, modern Evangelicals do not emphasize the themes of tolerance and individual rights; rather, they emphasize persecution and restoration. While it's likely that none of these themes were on Cyrus' mind at the time he was conquering Babylon, emphasizing those different themes today reveals more about Evangelicals and about modern scholars than it does about Cyrus. The Cyrus story is a narrative structure, then, that both communities use to define who they are, both internally to themselves and externally to others. That both communities likely miss the historically factual King Cyrus is almost irrelevant to their use of the story.

That stories can help clarify and express the identity of a community is for me reminiscent of Dan P McAdams' concept of narrative identity in his article  "'First we invented stories, then they changed us': The Evolution of Narrative Identity". McAdams says that narrative identity is "a person's internalized and evolving story of how he or she has become the person he or she is becoming", except of course applied to a group rather than an individual. As McAdams notes, narratives, and in our case shared narratives, provide "the [group] with temporal coherence and some semblance of psychosocial unity and purpose". This is an important insight, I think, that emphasizes the personal aspect of narrative identity. Evangelicals see the attacks on their community as attacks on themselves and their families. When they see the government and popular media privileging other social communities such as illegal aliens and LGBTQ+, then they feel personally affronted and threatened not just for Evangelicals as a group but for themselves individually. This personal attack (it feels very much like an attack to them) opens them to anyone (for instance, Donald Trump) who will promise restoration, or to Make America Great Again. It also makes many of them willing to fight, to grab their guns and march on Washington to stop the steal of their country and their place in it. As most any psychologist will confirm, threats to one's personal identity are existential threats worth fighting against.

Narrative Coherence

The second reason that Evangelicals took up the King Cyrus story early in the rise of Donald Trump is because the story meets the three criteria for a worthy narrative listed by Fisher: coherence, fidelity, and context. Does the story of King Cyrus make sense in itself, or as Caldiero asks in his article Crisis Storytelling: "Is the story free of contradictions? Does it 'hang together?' Is it consistent?" For most Evangelicals, the answer is yes, the biblical story of King Cyrus is coherent, despite its fragmentary treatment in the Old Testament. It hangs together, especially for Evangelicals who view The Bible as the literal, inerrant, perfect Word of God. While many modern Biblical scholars find inconsistencies within many Biblical narratives, including those of Cyrus, most Evangelicals do not. For them, any perceived inconsistencies in the Word of God are the fault of the reader, not the Text. The text is sacred, and Evangelical exegesis is strongly involved with ironing out inconsistencies in Biblical accounts of creation, the nature of God, and so forth. If we modern readers see double or triple meanings within biblical narratives, then the fault is with us, not The Bible. For Evangelicals, the King Cyrus story in the Christian Old Testament is coherent and factually true, and they work very hard to read it as such.

But is the Trump as King Cyrus story coherent? Again, yes. If you believe that from time-to-time God involves Himself in the daily business of national politics to alleviate the suffering of His People, as He so clearly does in the Biblical narrative, then it is easy to see the parallels between the persecuted Israelites in Babylon and the persecuted Evangelicals in the United States. In the first case, God used King Cyrus to address the suffering of the Israelites, and in the second, God is using Donald Trump to address the suffering of Evangelicals. The parallels are obvious if one focuses on just a handful of data points such as oppression and liberation and ignores the other salient data points such as political expediency, social justice, or individual rights. This selective focus on just a few points can hardly be criticized, though, as it is a function of all narratives, which leave out more than they include, and what is left out of any narrative is often just as telling as what is included. We might criticize the points that a narrative includes or excludes, but we can hardly criticize a narrative for not including everything. Narrative coherence requires selection. Otherwise a story collapses into a wallowing morass.

Narrative Fidelity

Fidelity refers to whether a story aligns with other stories that the community already knows and believes. Caldiero asks: "Does the story exist on the same plane as other stories the reader has experienced? What are the 'truth qualities' of the story? Is the reasoning sound? How good is the reproduction of the story? What is its value?" If a story resonates with a community's existing beliefs and values, it is more likely to be accepted. For example, the King Cyrus story's presence in the Bible automatically grants it fidelity and relevance for Evangelicals, as they view all biblical stories as the literal word of God and relevant to their lives. 

The key seems to be a story's plasticity and adaptability, the ease with which a community can fit the story into an existing suite of stories. The King Cyrus story has shown its ability to match the stories favored by different communities with different stories. For instance, political progressives of the middle twentieth century saw in the Cyrus narrative inclusion, compassion, multiculturalism, and tolerance within King Cyrus' approach to governance, all values that these political progressives held dear. A half century later, Evangelicals see in the same story deliverance and restoration by God of His Chosen People, values that they hold dear. Clearly, the King Cyrus narrative can shapeshift to meet the demands of different communities 

Narrative Context

Both the coherence and fidelity of the Cyrus story are tempered by a person's own "history, culture, and perceptions about the status and character of the other people involved (all of which may be subjective and incompletely understood)" (Fisher, Narrative paradigm). Both coherence and fidelity — or what we might call the fit or feel of a story — is determined not solely by the characteristics inherent within a story but also by the life history of the people hearing the story. Stories that fit well with what people already know and value are more readily accepted. Those that don't fit require much more persuasion, if not coercion. Thus, we cannot think of a narrative argument as a discrete thing in itself with its own internal logic and probabilities as we can with a syllogism; rather, we must account for the ecosystem within which the narrative argument is expressed.

In this sense, the story of King Cyrus fits well with the life experience of Evangelicals both as a group and as individuals. Evangelicals perceive that their demographic is no longer the dominant group in America, and their experience with both mainstream and social media reveals to them that their group is regularly attacked and denigrated by others. They feel oppressed, just like the Israelites in Babylon. In Evangelical thought, Babylon is routinely used as a metaphor for the World, all of society that is not within the Evangelical community, and the World oppresses them.

Then, the character of Cyrus fits well with the character of Trump. In 2016, most Evangelicals knew that Donald Trump was not a born-again Christian Evangelical and that he does not claim to be; however, they see the Hand of God in his miraculous victory over hateful Hillary, his defense of strong borders, and his defeat of ungodly abortionists. They concede Trump's failures as a Christian Evangelical, but they accept how God is using him to combat the demonic forces oppressing them – just as God did with King Cyrus. Of course, as Evangelicals shift from from seeing Trump as an imperfect champion of God to a born-again Christian, the King Cyrus story loses its fit and finish within the community and fades from the community discourse.

Fisher argues that these three elements — coherence, fidelity, and context — determine a story's narrative rationality. This differs from traditional, formal rationality that relies heavily on logic and evidence. Fisher argues that narrative rationality is more fundamental to human understanding and decision-making, as people are naturally drawn to stories that resonate with their values and experiences [5].

It is important to note that even if a narrative exhibits coherence, fidelity, and context, it does not guarantee universal acceptance. The Trump as King Cyrus narrative is accepted by many Evangelicals, but not by those who do not share their beliefs and experiences. The effectiveness of a narrative depends on the audience's pre-existing beliefs and how well the story aligns with their worldview. Moreover, as we've already shown, as the community's view of Trump himself shifts, the salience of the Cyrus narrative for Evangelicals fades. Other biblical narratives such as those about King David become more salient and echo more strongly through the community.

Conclusions

Fisher's two communication paradigms, the narrative and the rational, while not mutually exclusive, can be useful for understanding how different communities process information, form opinions, and then respond to their worlds. 

Like Fisher and many others, I challenge the Western reliance on logic and reason as the primary mode of human interaction, arguing that narrative is not simply for entertainment and bedtime stories; rather, it is a fundamental aspect of human communication that is often more appropriate than is the rational paradigm for understanding and responding to human experience. As Fisher says, narratives do not merely entertain but actively shape our perceptions and understanding of the world. Thus, he argues, that narratives have a central role in public moral argument that is crucial for resolving moral disagreements and that they can offer a better understanding of the human condition than the rational paradigm can, as I think they demonstrated in the 2024 US general election.

This reversal of the relative importance of the narrative and rational paradigms can be problematic for many non-Evangelicals, particularly those with less regard for religious narratives and who may be more inclined towards the rational paradigm when evaluating Trump's presidency. These people, Rationalists, are more likely to:

  • Focus on Empirical Evidence: Rationalists may find Trump's policies and behavior contrary to their values and detrimental to society based on their interpretation of factual information and analysis from sources they deem credible.
  • Prioritize Logic and Expertise: They may rely on expert opinions, data analysis, and reasoned arguments from fields like economics, law, or political science to form their perspectives.
  • See the World as a Set of Solvable Problems: Rationalists may approach societal issues as challenges that can be addressed through knowledge, reasoned debate, and effective policy-making without divine intervention.

The Challenges of Bridging the Divide

These different communication paradigms can create significant challenges in communication and understanding between Evangelicals and non-Evangelicals regarding Trump's presidency, as evidenced by the widespread confusion among many non-Evangelical Rationalists about how anyone can find any political or moral virtue in such a corrupt figure and the widespread resentment among Evangelicals about their oppression by elitist culture. Most narratives, especially those deeply intertwined with identity and faith, can be highly resistant to change, even when confronted with contradictory evidence. All people, Evangelicals and non-Evangelicals alike, have stories that inform their sense of who they are, how they fit into the world, and how the world works. Any challenge to those stories threatens an individual's and a group's identity, whether they conceive of that identity as a soul or a psyche.

When engaging in discussions about Trump, then, Evangelicals and non-Evangelicals are likely to be operating from fundamentally different frameworks, making it difficult to find common ground. The stories we tell ourselves frame what we know and what we can know. If we do not work hard to learn and understand the stories that groups outside our own tell and believe, then we will likely talk, or yell, past each other, communicating little other than our antagonism to the other group's sense of self.

Finally, we should note that the narrative and rational paradigms are general trends in communication, and not all individuals within these groups will fit neatly into these paradigms. Most individuals within any group hold diverse views and tell diverse, sometimes conflicting stories, and factors beyond religion, such as political ideology, personal experiences, and social networks, also play significant roles in shaping their perspectives. But understanding the divergent tendencies of narrative and rational arguments can help us bridge the gap between alien points of view.

Works Cited

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