Reverend Jerad Morey serves as Director of Strategic Relationships with the Minnesota Council of Churches.
In times of crisis and chaos, faith communities regularly find ourselves on the front lines. We are often trusted peacemakers and mediators with our members, communities, and local officials. We are stakeholders in conversations on important and occasionally divisive political, social, and cultural debates.
In these divided and polarized times, many faith leaders can feel isolated and alone. Despite core values of peace and love, we sometimes lack formal resources and tools to support us in living out the calls of God and of our community. We may find ourselves challenged by our positions as spiritual leaders to congregants - themselves divided across political and social divides – and by our responsibility to serve as "Golden Rule Ambassadors" in the broader world.
It can be wearying. Yet there is a rising movement of faith-based and secular organizations who exist to support just this kind of peacebuilding.
In the midwest, Minnesota Council of Churches leads MCC Respectful Conversations for congregations, universities, municipalities and other groups who confront deep divides. 84% of participants say these conversations help them “empathize with others on polarizing topics” (social science shorthand for “love your enemy?”). We are one of many groups engaged in the National Week of Conversation.
The National Week of Conversation, April 17 -22, is an important opportunity for faith leaders and others to not only dialogue across lines of difference and bridge our current divides, but also to do so in a manner grounded in respect and belonging. Moreover, it is an opportunity to find like-minded individuals who are also working within and on behalf of their own faith communities.
The Week brings many opportunities to learn and practice together. Groups such as Resetting the Table will engage participants around their film Purple, the story of Americans with opposing viewpoints investigating their differences. The National Institute for Civil Discourse will host paired conversations built around the Golden Rule. Dialogue training opportunities will come from the Guibord Center with their Conversations from Your Spiritual Core and Ideos Institute with their Dialogue Lab to help cultivate empathy as a pathway toward peace and human flourishing. Find these and other events at https://conversation.us/.
Founded by the Listen First Project, the National Week of Conversation is supported by hundreds of organizations that bring Americans together to build bridges of understanding and empathy in our polarized country. Faith leaders who join will learn about engaging our differences respectfully and productively. To my eyes participation is an act of faith and hope: I am living out my core beliefs when I strengthen my own ability to be a blessed peacemaker; in so doing I also demonstrate my hope that there exists a path through the present crisis and chaos leading to a better future.
To shore up the torn and tattered social fabric that serves as a foundation for our democracy, faith leaders and representatives from across America’s religious communities have a unique and important role to play: We can bring the healing needed in our nation at this time.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
____
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.