When I was a child, my family had a cabinet full of board games. One of many options that we could play was the game Pretty Pretty Princess. I don’t remember the mechanism of the game, so much as I remember the materials that went along with it. Each player had a set of jewelry in a color of their choice: pink, yellow, blue, or green. As the game progressed, the players would earn more items– a ring, a bracelet, a necklace– until at last the winner of the game sealed her (or his) victory with an ornate plastic crown. More often than not, this game devolved into a simpler game of dress-up. But I still remember that plastic crown, and the unmistakable allure that it held.
What is it about humans and crowns?
Crowns are a manmade thing– a human-made device that we have used for millennia to signify power, status, and authority. The concept of crowns and kingship was widely known in the thousand years of history covered in the Old Testament, from roughly 1400 to 400 before the time of Christ. In fact, the arc of the Old Testament is more or less a story of failed kingship, as God’s chosen people consolidated their identity in a monarchy that eventually fell apart. The kingdom of Israel fractured in two around 900 BCE, and the kings of Israel increasingly carried out acts that were “evil in the sight of the Lord,” as the phrase goes in the books of 1 and 2 Kings.
But the story of crowns in the Bible does not end there. Before long, it wasn’t the Israelite kings who were wearing the crowns, but rather those who held power over the Israelites: the kings of Assyria and Babylon. By the time we get to the story of Jesus, the northern kingdom of Israel had been destroyed completely, and the southern kingdom of Judea had become a province of the Roman Empire.
The Roman Emperors were people who understood the value of crowns. They understood that the principle value of crowns wasn’t in gold or silver, but in what they represented: absolute power over others. After the fall of the Roman Republic, the earliest emperors, starting with Augustus in 27 BC, were at first hesitant to use the symbol of a crown. People might catch on to their project of centralizing power. Gradually, the imagery of crowns crept in– initially as a wreath, and later as an elaborately crafted crown of jewels.
The writers of the New Testament knew a lot about crowns. They would have recognized the crown of the emperor on coins like the denarius, and on statues that advertised Roman military might. They also knew about the crown of thorns that was placed on Jesus’ head at his crucifixion, as a mockery of “Jesus Christ, the King of the Jews.” Paul writes about crowns in his letters to the emerging Christian community, urging them to pursue the “victor’s crown” (1 Cor 9:25-27), the “crown of rejoicing” (1 Thess 2:19), and the “crown of righteousness” (2 Tim 4:8). While some Christian theologians have suggested these crowns are literal rewards reserved for the faithful in heaven, Paul would have balked at that interpretation. Each and every crown in the New Testament is ironic—a sucker-punch to the oppressive might of the Roman Empire.
One might expect Christians to be wary of crowns, especially in the age following Jesus’ death and sacrifice. The early Christian theologian Tertullian certainly expressed this view in his treatise “De Corona” (“On Crowns,” ca. 201 CE), in which he defends the actions of a Christian soldier serving in the Roman army who refused to wear a wreath given to his unit on the occasion of a military victory. This wisdom about crowns was soon forgotten after Christianity became the religion of empire during the reign of Constantine (272-337 BCE). From then onwards, Christians have conflated the power of kings and the will of God—as if the problem was with each individual ruler, rather than the ideal of absolute political authority itself.
How far we have strayed from the Christianity of Jesus’ time. How ironic it is, that the empires of today are often Christian ones– a fact that doesn’t make them any more holy, but only reveals how far we have wandered from the way of Jesus. This is the sin of Christian Nationalism, in a nutshell: Christianity has become the very system of oppression that put Jesus on the cross. While Jesus invited everyone to the table, Christian Nationalism maintains that only a few are welcome to sit and eat. While Jesus proclaimed peace, Christian Nationalism hangs its crown on the inevitability of war.
Christianity is incompatible with the way of kings. And yet, in the United States today as many as 30% of Americans are sympathetic to the views of Christian Nationalism. On October 18, 2025, nearly 7 million people took to the streets to protest President Donald Trump, the most recent in a series of “No Kings” marches that have criticized the president’s relentless consolidation of power and lack of regard for democratic principles. President Trump responded with a crass AI-generated video in which a crown-wearing Trump drops raw sewage from a plane onto the heads of protestors. Clearly Trump is unbothered by the implication that he is angling for a crown (Pretty Pretty Princess, anyone?), and many Americans seem all too ready to give him one.
The last Sunday in the liturgical year is often celebrated as “Christ the King,” a feast day established by Pope Pius XI one-hundred years ago, in 1925. This feast day honors the symbols of Christ’s Kingship in the Bible, but it also stands in stark opposition to the “kingship” of rulers on earth. The “kings” of Pope Pius’ time were Benito Mussolini in Italy, Adolf Hitler in Germany, and Joseph Stalin in Russia. There are would-be kings in our own day, and Donald Trump is among them.
Christ the King, from its very inception, has always been a response to the threat of fascism. It has always been a response to leaders who pursue a distorted vision of the common good, through the centralization and abuse of power. In this season in the church and in our country, we remember that Jesus was a king without a crown. He never asked for a crown; he never wanted a crown– whether it was made of thorns, a laurel wreath, or gold and silver. And why would Jesus want a crown, anyways? Crowns represent the opposite of Jesus’ Gospel: a Gospel that speaks of a kingdom where monarchy is flipped on its head; where everyone is invited to have a seat at the table of grace; where power is found not in pride but in humility.
Note: This piece is adapted from a sermon preached at Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven by the Rev. Heidi Thorsen on Sunday, October 26.
