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Having spent the last three weeks across the Atlantic, I'm relieved to be back in Britain where there is more in the news than the profiles and promises of Mr Trump and Mrs Clinton. The American public – with still three months to go to the general election – are being pummelled every hour with the latest revelation of everything from the past fashion trends to the psychological profiles of the presidential contenders. In all of this it seems as if the message is becoming a massage not just of potential voters but of the egos of the candidates themselves.

Political leadership is something about which the Jewish-Christian tradition has long been concerned. Indeed, it comes as a surprise to many to see the unlikely range of suspects who assume power in the Bible.

Let me cite three extreme examples who were named judges of Israel – Abimelech (who slaughtered seventy of his step-brothers) Jephthah (who sacrificed his own daughter) and Samson (who had a peculiar penchant for annihilating people, animals and crops). Each would have made an interesting case study had Jung or Freud been around to psychoanalyse them. There's also a long list of kings dubbed with the sorry epitaph, 'He did what was wrong in the eyes of the Lord.'

These are not the paragons of justice, integrity and good faith of which the casual reader might presume the Bible is replete. Rather those who aspire to power within its pages show the same range of egocentric tendencies, psychological instabilities, as well as laudable virtues as are evident in any array of present and potential world leaders.

What seems to me to separate the political sheep from the goats is to whom leaders past and present avow themselves accountable. Power of any kind – political, economic, military - is too seductive a reality to be wielded without some system of checks and balances. I wouldn't trust a Christian dictator or CEO any more than I would trust their atheist equivalent, if he or she made decisions in a vacuum, claiming that either the voice of God or a clear conscience guided them. Such a defence of inviolability is scary.

Great leaders have always depended on wise counsellors: whether that be King David of Israel who took advice from women as well as men, or Nelson Mandela who governed in concert with both his proponents and opponents; or the present Pope whose papacy is consultative rather than magisterial.

The Biblical writings consistently proclaim and celebrate that all power belongs to God. Such a teaching suggests that, like life and time, power is an entity which is not ours to possess, but rather to use accountably and always for the benefit not of the ego but of others.

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