A Field Guide to "Religious Leaders" In the Wild

Well, then https://t.co/OLxDF8wQT5

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) January 10, 2020

Over the target. https://t.co/YbCApX0Tlo

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) January 10, 2020

Trump here is just aping the media when he refers to "religious leaders."

The Bishop of Rome is a religious leader.

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in America is a religious leader.

Most American Protestant denominations have elected representatives to provide guidance to the denomination as a whole, but don't have a singular leader. This leaves the "leadership" to lay members of the local church (in the Reformed tradition). Protestant pastors are typically spiritual leaders, but answer to their congregation. This, of course, is too confusing to the American press, so they ignore it. Trump's religious advisers are "religious leaders" because they have T.V. shows, or large, singular congregations, or both.  It's a label created by the media and applied exclusively by them.  Barack Obama's pastor when he first ran for President was the pastor of a "mega-church" by any definition. But he never wrote a best-seller or had a TV show, so Jeremiah Wright was never labeled a "religious leader." He also wasn't arch-conservative in his politics or his theology so, again, he was never a "religious leader."

"Religious leader" is an empty designation with an extremely limited application that neither denotes anything specifically religious nor beig the leader if more than a handful of people. I attended colleges larger than the congregations of some of Trump's "leaders." They speak for themselves and for the people currently devoted to them, but nothing of that defines leadership or religious. Robert Schuller and Billy Graham were religious leaders, but their influence as such leaders died with them. I've known men and women who took leadership of their congregations, as outlined above, whose influence lives on long after them.

It's not a contest, it's more a matter of designation. A religious leader is not necessarily a public figure, but in the media that is the first requirement, and the only necessary one. Leadership, even being religious, has almost nothing to do with it.