Bullying, avoidance and narrative control are three mechanisms to consolidate and maintain power. They are the antithesis of the servant leadership to which Christ calls His people.
Donald Trump in Texas, United States, 27 February 2026. / Photo: [link]The White House, Flickr[/link].
Since Donald Trump began his second presidential term on 20 January 2025, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has been careful not to offend him. Starmer’s placatory approach – refraining from open criticism and arranging an unprecedented second state visit – has led some to call him the “Trump whisperer”.[i]
Opposition parties have criticised Starmer for being too close to Trump, but government ministers have defended his approach as an indicator of mature leadership that respects and preserves Britain’s long-term ‘special relationship’ with the USA.
For his part, Trump has spoken warmly of Starmer. In January 2025, he said that he and Starmer, “get along well”, despite differences in their values, and described him as, “a very good person” who had “done a very good job thus far”.[ii]
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Later that year, however, cracks surfaced in the relationship as Trump began to criticise Starmer’s decision to return sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius with a lease-back arrangement for the military base on Diego Garcia which the USA also uses.
This against a backdrop of record-low approval ratings for Starmer [iii] and the arrest of Lord Mandelson, who Starmer appointed as ambassador to the USA, reportedly against the wishes of Trump’s administration.[iv]
Then came the joint US and Israeli attacks on Iran on 28 February. Starmer initially refused to allow British bases, including Diego Garcia, to be used for the attacks.
At the time of writing, in response to civilian targets in several Arab countries and Israel being hit by Iranian missiles and drones, he has permitted their use for limited purposes, described as “defensive strikes”.[v]
For Trump, this is too little, too late
The President criticised the Prime Minister, describing him as “not Winston Churchill” and saying he had “not been helpful”.[vi]
He linked his obvious frustration with Starmer to the relationship between their countries, saying, “It’s very sad to see that the relationship is obviously not what it was”, and he, “never thought I’d see that from the UK”.
Whilst Trump’s tone was less aggressive than he often is, this is just the latest example of Trump’s tendency to attack the person rather than the policy – what is known as an ad hominem attack.
Rather than debating the merits of a person’s views, ad hominem attacks focus on the person’s character. It is certainly legitimate for Trump and others to disagree with Starmer’s decisions or even to question his judgement on this and other matters, but a comparison to Churchill is hardly helpful.
Three points of balance are in order here.
1. Trump may be well known for ad hominem attacks, but they are by no means restricted to him
Studies have shown that Trump’s opponent in the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton, used more ad hominem attacks in her advertising than he did in his.[vii]
Trump’s critics may well think her judgement that he was “unfit for office” was sound, but such strategies only reinforce deep divisions and do nothing to win voters over.
2. Trump’s ad hominem attacks are especially glaring because he tends to speak bluntly and publicly
He is not the first US president to express frustration in strong terms, but earlier presidents kept such comments behind the scenes.[viii]
On this side of the Atlantic, politicians are generally more circumspect, but this often means that ad hominem attacks are thinly veiled behind parliamentary convention.
For example, on 3 March 2026, in response to the Chancellor’s spring statement, shadow Chancellor Mel Stride asked the House of Commons, “What planet is the Right Honourable Lady on?”[ix] Suggesting someone lives on a different planet is hardly consistent with calling them honourable, let alone right honourable!
3. There is more than a little irony in Trump’s contrast between Starmer and Churchill
Churchill’s approach to the USA during World War Two bore similarities to Starmer’s approach to Trump, although in that case it was the Prime Minister who wanted to persuade the President to get on board with military action.
Frustrated that the USA had not entered the war, in 1940-41 Churchill walked a line of avoiding open offense whilst seeking to woo the American people and, especially, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.[x]
Another layer of irony is that in the eyes of some – as demonstrated by the recent defacing of his statue in London with graffiti calling him a “Zionist war criminal” [xi] – Churchill is not universally regarded as the great hero Trump, and many other people on both sides of the Atlantic, clearly believes he was.
Christian faith gives us unique resources to understand why leadership often goes wrong. We know that only God is all wise, all good and all powerful – the perfect leader.
We know that human beings are fallen and tainted by sin. We know that the heart is deceitful and that power is alluring and often tends to corrupt (see my earlier article on that theme here).
But, most of all, we know that the Lord Jesus is the authentic leader – indeed the authentic human being – we truly long for. When we consider Him, the true toxicity of ad hominem tactics is revealed.
As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we know that ad hominem attacks are nothing new. Jesus Himself faced this very strategy from His opponents.
They could not outwit him with their questions (see, for example, Matthew 22:15-22) or prove Him guilty of sin in His claims about Himself (John 8:46), so they attacked the man.
They called him “demon-possessed” and a “Samaritan” (John 8:48), said He was “out of his mind” (Mark 3:21), accused him of being a “glutton and drunkard” (Matthew 11:19), and suggested He was possessed by Beelzebul (Mark 3:22). Insane, immoral, demonic.
Thus, they evaded His claims. If the perfect, sinless Son of God could be dismissed on this basis, we know that innocent people today can be similarly mistreated.
We might be tempted to think these tactics are the preserve of powerful men on the world stage. They are not. Wherever there is something to protect — a reputation, a position, a mission, the same instincts emerge.
Having studied reports, read books and listened to Christian leaders across various countries, I am sorry to say that the same problems arise in Christian settings.
These patterns are not confined to any one denomination or country; they appear wherever accountability is weak and leaders are insulated from challenge.
In Christian settings, controlling leaders will seldom make public ad hominem attacks on people they perceive as threats in the style of Trump and Jesus’ opponents.
Such bully tactics would expose them. It is just too obviously pharisaic! This is not to say they do not happen, but that the cultures that permit this kind of open bullying are so far removed from Christian values that it is difficult to envisage redeeming them. Far more common than open bullying are subtle control tactics.
Most Christian leaders who will not risk losing control do one of two things. If they can, they simply avoid the person, often excusing non-engagement based on supposed busyness or vague claims of incompatibility.
If avoidance is not possible, they resort to strategies of narrative control that are hidden from the person they want to limit, sometimes at the same time as publicly praising that person.
Leaders who exercise unhealthy control will often preserve their position through narrative control through three tactics of increasing seriousness.
Unhealthy leaders will control access to the people who are supposed to hold them to account, ensuring that only they report on the activities of the organisation, while those they oversee have no direct line of report.
Rather than having a genuinely collective, team approach to making major decisions, they will ensure that they have the final say or power of veto.
Even if the decision on paper seems to have been made by a team or a supervising body, the individual leader’s will is the determinative factor.
Gatekeeping is even more effective if the ‘overseeing’ group is actually an inner circle of people, often selected or recommended by the leader and commonly from a narrow cultural, tribal or theological segment, who are unquestioningly loyal to the leader or see the leader as the person who is ‘too big to fail’.
If they perceive someone to be a threat, controlling leaders will undermine that person’s credibility by reframing their strategic concerns as emotional reactions.
Rather than engaging with the substance of concerns, legitimate questions are framed as evidence that the person is stressed or frustrated or just a bit difficult.
This alternative form of ad hominem attack can be surprisingly effective when the people who oversee do not hear the person in their own words and trust the controlling leader’s interpretations without challenge.
What makes this tactic even more effective is that it can be presented in the guise of ‘pastoral concern’ for the person raising concerns. Perhaps most concerningly of all, the controlling leader may not even realise what he or she is doing.
If controlling leaders fear that strategies of gate-keeping and emotional framing of strategic concerns are failing, they will engage in a direct ad hominem attack, assassinating the character of the person who dissented.
But this will not happen openly, with opportunity for the person to respond. It will be behind closed doors and off the official record.
By this stage, the controlling leader has often sown enough doubt about the person in the minds of the people who should hold them to account that the claims go unquestioned or are excused as a clash of personalities and styles or an unfortunate reaction to stress caused by a difficult subordinate.
The compliant board will do nothing to challenge the leader or defend the person who is being slandered. Instead, those whose legal and moral duty is to ensure fairness default to defending the leader and the institution.
Protecting the leader is equated with protecting the organisation, which is equated with protecting its mission, which is confused with protecting the cause of Christ.
In reality, though, those who do this have failed the people who are wronged and the leader who has slipped into harmful behaviour.
Bullying, avoidance and narrative control are three mechanisms to consolidate and maintain power. They often result from a deep insecurity in the leader who uses them, or at least that is how we like to excuse them since the alternatives of envy and bitterness seem less attractive, but they are inexcusable. They are the antithesis of the servant leadership to which Christ calls His people.
Controlling leadership must not be psychologised away. The insecurity and fear that may drive controlling leaders are symptoms of a deep-seated pride and lack of faith.
These control tactics cause immense damage to the reputation and confidence of the people they are used against and bring the gospel into disrepute when they are exposed.
I recognise that this analysis is weighty and dark. I want to be clear that I am not speaking of all Christian leaders, but the patterns I describe are not rare in the evangelical settings I am familiar with. I do want to make some practical suggestions for a better way, but, before doing so, I want to pause and acknowledge that some readers may have found the previous section difficult.
I want to acknowledge the deep pain and trauma mistreatment by Christian leaders causes. I do not want to put any pressure on those who have been harmed to put the problem right. My prayer for you is that you may know healing from the one Leader who never fails or disappoints. Perhaps for you the response is simply to grieve and to rest in the love of the Lord whose yoke is easy.
In the second part of this article, I put forward four practical proposals for shaping leadership cultures and governance structures in churches and Christian organisations.
Paul Coulter, author, executive director of the Centre for Christianity in Society in Northern Ireland. This article was first published on the author's blog, Connected Christianity. If you would like to be informed when the Christian Leadership Integrity Commitments are released, please subscribe to this blog.
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