The call has gone out for unity. Public figures are talking about the necessity of unifying a divided nation. Religious leaders lament the divisions within their fellowships. Somehow or another everyone is now supposed to find a way to come together, to put their differences aside, and to find common cause.
But the question is, What is the unifying cause?
Unity for unity’s sake is doomed to failure. Its fabric is too thin to hold. The innumerable differences that distinguish us one from another are too sharp. They will not long remain suppressed by the artificial gauze of abstract mantras like “unity.”
Genuine unity, like authentic community, emerges as the byproduct of a common purpose, a shared mission. Why are we here? What moves us? Where are we going? How do we get there? Why is it worth the effort?
The many Trump supporters who remain convinced that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from their leader know how to answer those questions. They are already united, and they have little if any interest in compromising their political principles – however unprincipled anyone else may think them to be.
The fusion of white evangelicalism with conservative, Republican politics – especially with devotion to Donald Trump – means that millions of church goers now measure spirituality by the yardstick of fervor for a particular set of political outcomes.
Working for those outcomes, such as prayer in school, outlawing abortion, denying homosexuals the right to marry, is what unifies political conservatives and white evangelicals in their spiritual mission. They labor together for (what they believe is) a righteous cause.
No “true believer” is going to compromise their conservative commitments for unity. Unity smunity! That kind of unity is actually compromise in the world of the Religious Right.
White evangelical faith now most powerfully appropriates the immaterial realm of conspiracy theories, evidence-free assertions of election fraud, and the ipsissima verba of Donald Trump. The most important moments of fellowship throughout the week occur as everyone sits at the feet of Fox News, Newsmax, OANN, Breitbart, and Infowars. These are the prophets and spiritual leaders of white, American evangelicalism.
I heard a sermon a few months ago calling the church to unity. “We need to come together!,” we were told. But we were never told why or how.
The New Testament, however, is very clear in addressing those issues.
Scripture tells us that the adoration, service, and glorification of Jesus Christ is the purpose for unity in the church.
A community of saved sinners collectively overwhelmed by God’s abundant grace, working to conform themselves to the example of Jesus of Nazareth, ready to suffer, to serve “the least of these,” to lift up the downtrodden, and to cultivate humility, that is the brand of unity pleasing to God.
So, when I am told to seek unity within the church, my first question is, “Which Jesus are we linking arms around?” Is he the suffering, crucified Jesus of the gospels or the gun-toting, warlord Jesus who attacks his enemies in the streets? Is it the Jesus who “came not to be served but to serve” or the macho Jesus who ridicules others with demeaning nicknames. cursing, and licentious hands that assault innocent women?
I am sorry. Genuine unity is a function of a common cause, a shared adoration. And I simply do not find that commonality with the vast majority of the white evangelical church today. We are now worshiping different God’s. We serve different Saviors. Our expectations for sanctified living have drifted eons apart.
The evangelical church has crossed a watershed in this nation’s history. The Religious Right has proven itself victorious; victorious in convincing far too many that exchanging their devotion to the kingdom of God for a bowl of secular, political pottage is the right thing to do.
No, now is not the time to call for unity.
Now is the time to call for confession and repentance.
Now is the time for real leaders to require authentic discipleship in following the real Jesus of the New Testament.
Now is the time to emphasize that neither patriotism, nationalism, militarism, nor American exceptionalism have anything to do with service in the kingdom of God. In fact, they are all enemies that work to undermine God’s kingdom, every last one of them.
I cannot be “unified” anyone who does not understand these basic theological truths. I can help them to understand, if they are willing to learn. I can teach the scriptures to them. I can pray with them as we together seek the Holy Spirit’s correction and maturity.
But shapeless, amorphous, contentless calls for abstract unity…well, that’s just a waste of time.
As Trump’s Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos has worked very hard to dismantle public education in this country. She and her husband, Rich, have
Betsy DeVos
also been reliable, big-money donors to Republican politicians and their causes, including Trump’s presidential campaign.
This week journalist David Sirota published a report at his blog, The Daily Poster, detailing the DeVos’ substantial financial contributions to the two Michigan legislators now being pressured by Donald Trump to overturn the results of Michigan’s presidential election (Biden won).
The DeVos’ are utterly unscrupulous billionaires with a long track record of ignoring the law whenever it suits their political ambitions. They also lamentably call themselves Christians, and Betsy is a graduate of Calvin College. The place where I use to teach.
Below is an excerpt from Sirota’s article:
The Republican legislators that Donald Trump is relying on to overturn Michigan’s presidential election results have been bankrolled by the family of Trump’s current education secretary who would lose her job if Trump leaves office.
On Friday, Trump is scheduled to meet with Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and House Speaker Lee Chatfield. Michigan Republican Congressman Paul Mitchell “said he expects Trump is bringing Shirkey and Chatfield to the White House to pressure them to appoint pro-Trump electors to circumvent the popular vote as well as lean on the state’s GOP canvassers not to certify the election,” according to the Detroit Free Press.
President-elect Joe Biden won Michigan by roughly 150,000 votes, according to data compiled by the New York Times.
The family of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is collectively Shirkey’s third largest career donor and Chatfield’s fourth largest career donor, according to data compiled by the nonpartisan Michigan Campaign Finance Network. Chatfield also co-chairs a caucus of the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), a group bankrolled by corporate interests, nonprofits tied to Trump’s judicial adviser, and the DeVos family as well.
Shirkey and Chatfield have previously pledged to honor the results of the popular vote. However, the Associated Press reports that “if Trump succeeds in convincing Michigan’s state board of canvassers not to certify Biden’s victory in the state, state lawmakers could be called on to select electors.”
That would put Shirkey and Chatfield in a position to boost or block a slate of Trump electors.
Key Lawmakers Bankrolled By The DeVos Family
During their careers, Shirkey and Chatfield have received nearly $140,000 from the DeVos family. Those donations represent only a fraction of the money the DeVos family has delivered to Michigan Republican legislators who could decide the fate of the state’s elector slate.
In the 2020 election cycle alone, Michigan’s Republican House and Senate campaign committees received nearly $1.2 million from the DeVos family members, according to data from the Michigan Secretary of State’s office. That made the DeVos family the largest donor to Michigan’s Republican legislative committees by far — the next largest source is a family whose relatives sent $125,000.
DeVos family members also delivered a combined $100,000 to a series of committees called the Chatfield Majority Fund (1-4).
During her confirmation hearing, Betsy DeVos pledged that she and her husband would halt their campaign contributions — but the Detroit Free Press recently reported that her husband has subsequently donated more than $500,000 to campaigns and political causes. The newspaper noted that the family has donated $1 million to a super PAC backing Trump.
DeVos also publicly campaigned for Trump’s reelection in Michigan, as Trump administration officials traveled around the country openly flouting a longstanding federal law designed to deter government officials from explicitly political activities.
[I am indebted to John Fea and his excellent blog, The Way of Improvement Leads Home, for drawing my attention to this study. I have excerpted his post below.]
“It is a very thorough study. Read it here. A few things the study tells us about White Evangelicals:
“7 out of 10 “white evangelicals” believe that most opponents of Donald Trump are “socialists.”
“9 out of 10 “white evangelicals” believe that the Democratic Party wants to transform the nation into a “socialist nation.”
“86% of African Americans believe racism is a serious threat to America and its future. 70% of Hispanics believe this. 68% of White non-evangelicals believe this. But only 36% of “White Evangelical Protestants” believe racism is a serious threat to America and its future.
“86% of African Americans believe economic inequality and poverty are serious threats to America. 68% of Hispanics believe this. 66% of White non-Evangelicals believe this. But only 37% of White Evangelicals believe inequality and poverty are serious threats to America.
“91% of Blacks believe “the police and law enforcement unfairly target racial and ethnic minorities.” 60% of Hispanics believe this. 57% of White non-Evangelicals believe this. But only 17% of White Evangelicals believe this (83% disagree).
“78% of African Americans favor some kind of “financial compensation to African Americans for their historic mistreatment of White Americans” (reparations). 41% of Hispanics favor reparations. 34% of non-Evangelical Whites favor reparation. But only 7% of White Evangelicals favor reparations.
“The authors of the report write:
“In sum, yes, there is a racial divide in America. Whites, Hispanics, and
African Americans do not share the same or even similar perspectives on
the history, experiences, and issues surrounding race, and the consequence
of this is misunderstanding, a lack of respect, and ultimately prejudice in
the everyday experience of Blacks and other minorities. But these points
of division are not equally or uniformly distributed across the population. The deepest and most consistent racial division is found between White Evangelicals and Blacks. Reconciliation begins with mutual understanding,
and by these lights, it is a long way off. (emphasis mine)
“. . . The authors of the study conclude that White Evangelicalism, a movement that once was at the center of American religious and cultural life, has become a “cultural other” in the United States.”
Just a few reminders for anyone calling him/herself a Christian:
Jesus of Nazareth brought the kingdom of God into this world.
Authentic Christians understand that living obediently in God’s kingdom takes priority over every other group, party, and allegiance.
Politics can never establish, empower, or extend God’s kingdom.
Jesus was not white. He was a Palestinian Jew with dark skin and (probably) kinky hair.
Jesus’ teaching and personal behavior overturned a great deal of the social and religious status quo normalized in his culture.
Jesus defied conventional legal authority on numerous occasions and paid the ultimate price. That is what obedience to God commonly looks like.
In this way, Jesus did not “respect” authorities that disrespectfully abused their power and mistreated others.
Jesus taught his followers to show mercy and kindness to everyone without exception.
Jesus taught his followers never to cooperate with wrongdoing, no matter how “official” its proponents.
Jesus taught his followers to stand for justice and righteousness on behalf of those from whom it is withheld.
Jesus insisted that his people give practical assistance to those in need of help.
Jesus rejected violence and taught his followers always to do the same.
Anyone who imagines that a political agenda, especially an agenda that sanctions violence, will somehow help God in accomplishing his work is sorely mistaken and is NOT following Jesus.
Leaders who do not condemn injustice, whether individual or corporate, do not understand what it means to live as citizens of God’s kingdom.
Neither do they understand their responsibility as leaders.
Jesus never exalts or approves of those who commit violence. He always condemns it.
Jesus always condemns any thought, word, or action (e.g. Tweets and Facebook posts) that demeans or dehumanizes another human being.
Jesus insists that his followers always uphold the truth.
Upholding the truth requires confronting lies whenever possible, confronting lies with truth, and challenging others when they are caught spreading lies among God’s people.
[For example, John MacArthur needs to confess and repent for the lies he has repeated about the Center for Disease Control and his potentially lethal claims from the pulpit (!) that the covid pandemic is a hoax.]
Following Jesus and living in God’s kingdom requires more than faith. Jesus demands faithfulness — a Christian virtue that seems to be in increasingly short supply in the church today.
Billy Graham’s granddaughter, Cissie Graham Lynch, spoke at the Republican National Convention last night to recite the predictable pablum of the Religious Right.
No, it was worse than that. Mrs. Lynch spewed rank idolatry for the Republican party. It’s the kind of behavior that got Old Testament Balam scorched by the Lord.
But nowadays, she is only one among many, for Trump seems to keep a kennel of false prophets on hand for every conceivable occasion.
Lynch opened her speech with a declaration on the importance of “our faith.”
She didn’t mention whose faith happens to be our faith, but the confusion was quickly clarified. She meant the pagan, American faith placed in our blasphemous civil religion.
This became evident as she listed her topics of concern. They were all the gems of Religious Right activism: abortion, the Supreme Court, and transgendered civil liberties.
Lynch’s flawless interweaving of (1) her descent from Christian evangelist, Billy Graham, (2) a rote recounting of Religious Right political priorities, and (3) the themes of American civil religion all stamped Mrs. Lynch as yet another immoral Siren working hard to bewitch the innocent, the ignorant, and the depraved into shipwrecking themselves against the rocks of bogus national piety.
Alas, if only the Christian faith WAS being persecuted in America today! Perhaps the genuine church could finally shed itself of this dead wood and dull-witted false teachers.
Notice that Mrs. Lynch’s examples of what she means by the Christian faith being “bullied” in the public square all consisted of threats, not to Christian faith or practice, but to the various privileges that church institutions enjoy at public expense.
I am fairly certain that Jesus never commanded his disciples to build religious institutions like schools or hospitals while demanding tax breaks or other special dispensations denied others operating in the same public arena.
Tax breaks and exemptions are nice, if you can get them.
Just as religious institutions (operating in a world unto themselves, ignoring the standards to which others are held) are beneficial, if you can build them.
But PLEASE stop pretending that those things have anything to do with either religious freedom or practicing the Christian faith. They don’t.
Just as losing those privileges has nothing to do with a loss of religious liberty.
So, Cissie, listen up:
No one is stopping you from following Jesus through the American public square.
No one is prohibiting you from living out your faith to your heart’s content.
Stop confusing religious privileges with religious freedoms. They are very different animals.
And please stop the horrible confusion of American civil religion with the Christian gospel.
I fear that you’ve set your grandfather spinning in his grave.
One of my daughters lived in Portland, OR for many years.
She keeps in touch with many of her friends in the area, a good number of whom have been out in the streets protesting. Some of them have been arrested. All of them tell the same story.
You can read much of this for yourself on Facebook. Just check out the hashtags #WallOfMoms, #WallOfVets, #WallOfDads.
The story goes like this:
Mixed groups of demonstrators have been in the streets regularly ever since George Floyd’s murder and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement across the country.
The demonstrations have been overwhelmingly peaceful. When unknown agitators destroyed property, group leaders told them to stop and to go away. They were damaging the cause.
Then Federal troops appeared on the scene and began arresting people for no apparent reason, putting them into unmarked vehicles, and locking them up without charges. Some have been kept jailed in undisclosed locations for several days, while family and friends wondered where they were.
These unconstitutional actions by the Feds energized more citizens to march in the streets. Yes, a small group of agitators ramped up their property destruction. But both black and white organizers regularly tried to stop their activities, and were typically unsuccessful.
It is not surprising that this small minority of agitators garner most of the headlines and nearly all of the time on the TV networks, making it look as if Portland is in chaos. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Feds have escalated the confrontations unnecessarily, with their rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, unnecessary aggression and violence against protesters.
It is totally unnecessary.
This is when the Wall of Moms was created, intentionally putting themselves between the demonstrators and the Feds. At this point, a
This protester-mom, was standing, linking arms with fellow demonstrators, when a Federal agent shot her in the face with a rubber bullet
portion of the protests became focused around the Federal courthouse, because that was were the Federal agents were concentrated.
Now the focus of the demonstrations became bifurcated.
The movement’s leaders worked to maintain their focus on Black Lives Matter and police brutality. You don’t have to watch many Facebook videos and pictures to see and hear large crowds chanting “Black Lives Matter.”
But, with the unsolicited intervention of Federal agents, another section of the movement gave their attention to demonstrating against the “police state” activities of Trump’s anti-demonstration forces. The increase in violence is due entirely to the brutal behavior of these Federal marshals and Border Patrol agents.
Yes, a minority of people get out of hand. After the Feds erected a fence in front of the courthouse, a few people focused their anger there and began to build fires under the fence. Again, the organizers consistently tried to stop this from happening.
But, get real! Have you seen the fires? They hardly pose a real threat to anyone, especially to the courthouse!
As the Feds continued to attack both the BLM demonstrators and the Wall of
The bruises on this mom’s body were made by the many rubber bullets fired at her by Federal “police.” Obviously, the Feds don’t hesitate to shoot a woman at close range when her back is turned
Moms, two additional sectors of society began spontaneously to appear: military veterans and dads.
Many veterans, understandably upset at what they were seeing, began to show up in support of the protesters and the moms. A number of videos show how brutally they too have been treated by the Federal agents, beaten with clubs for simply trying to speak to the officers.
Then dads appeared with leaf blowers to fend off the clouds of tear gas being fired by the Feds at unarmed civilians.
Naturally, conservative outlets such as Fox hateall anti-establishment movements, especially when they call for racial justice and condemn police violence.
By definition, conservatives support the establishment.
That is what conservatism means. It’s who they are. Their reporting is pure propaganda, tailored to anger their like-minded viewers, and to condemn the protesters.
Also, remember the old journalistic motto: “if it bleeds it leads.” All the news networks succumb to this principle. They would rather show us the few violent clashes than the masses protesting peacefully. It’s the way news/journalism has always worked in this country.
So, if you want to get angry, then get angry at our government. Get angry at “law enforcement” run amuck, attacking fellow citizens who are exercising their constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of assembly.
Get angry at our president for intentionally making a difficult situation worse, as he manipulates civil unrest for his own personal, political advantage.
Trump is using the predictable FASCIST strategy of generating violence so that he can run on a “law and order” platform in November. You can count on it. This is how he hopes to win reelection.
John Fea is a professor of American history at Messiah University in Pennsylvania. Professor Fea has an excellent blog called “The Way of Improvement Leads Home” which I follow regularly.
Evangelicals tend to believe that “spiritual revivals” or “Christian awakenings” will provide the ultimate solution to all of society’s problems.
Christian media promotes this story-line regularly:
Protests aren’t the answer. Boycotts aren’t the answer. New laws aren’t the answer. What we need is a spiritual awakening! If everyone will only come to Jesus, then all our problems will begin to solve themselves!
Or so we are told, over and over and over again.
Professor Fea’s important post draws from the story of a great American, Frederick Douglass.
Douglass’ autobiography tells the story of his own conversion to Christianity, and why he did not see “personal conversion” as the cure all for the the sins of slavery.
Douglass was a slave who witnessed his master’s spiritual conversion. And then marveled at how the master’s new-found faith in Christ made him a more abusive master than he had ever been before.
Quoting from a recent biography of Douglass, Fea notes:
“A recent convert himself to Christian faith, although now struggling to
Frederick Douglass
understand whether God intended any justice on earth, Frederick witnessed the spectacle of master Thomas’s wrenching emotional breakdown and confession in that pen. Blacks were not allowed in the pen, nor in front of the preacher’s performances, but Douglass tells us that he imposed his way close enough to hear Auld “groan,” and to see his reddened face, his disheveled hair, and a “stray tear halting on his cheek.” Here festered the dark heart of the moral bankruptcy of slaveholders that the future abolitionist would make his central subject. . .
“Douglass converted this memory into angry condemnations of the religious hypocrisy of the entire Christian slaveholding universe, especially the little microcosm of Auld’s household, where the young slave now had to listen daily to loud praying and testifying by the white family, and to participate in hospitality extended to local preachers who were sometimes housed at Auld’s home, all the while enduring the good Methodist’s verbal and physical cruelty. For Douglass, the proof of any sincerity in Auld’s ‘tear-drop’ manifested in his actions. In his deeds and his glances, wrote Douglass, it was as if the pathetic master had concluded, ‘I will teach you, young man, that, though I have parted with my sins, I have not parted with my sense. I shall hold slaves, and go to heaven too.’”
I am sorry, but the naive, ignorant belief that “spiritual revival” alone will solve all of society’s problems is merely another symptom of our crippling addiction to American Individualism.
More than that, it reveals an extremely simplistic view of both human nature and the work of the Holy Spirit.
All of these intellectual and theological mistakes serve as chains locked around the ankles of American evangelicalism. They prevent us from genuinely following after Jesus as we should.
When the church ought to be in the lead of the Black Lives Matter movement, talking about the Image of God and His new kingdom come, most evangelical leaders sit on the sidelines calling for more prayer and waiting for revival. The exceptions to this hackneyed response are extremely admirable but very, very few.
Sometimes the best way to pray is to get off your butt and march with those who suffer, publicly condemn the “masters” who want to control us, and work for social revolution — all in the name of Christ.
Cascade books (the publisher that will eventually release my forthcoming book on Israel-Palestine) recently released a significant book entitled The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump.
The book is a timely collection of 30 essays by prominent, and not so prominent, evangelical Christians in the hope of convincing evangelical voters NOT to vote for Trump in November.
I hope and pray that the book will be a great success.
If you have family, friends – or even complete strangers our regularly see at the coffee shop – who voted for and continue to support Donald Trump, they are the target audience for this book. Go out and buy a box load and distribute them widely in your local evangelical, fundamentalist churches.
It will be a worthy act of responsible citizenship in a country desperately in need of a genuinely moral majority.
The majority (but not all) of the book’s 30 essays are written by conservative, Republican, evangelical Christians. Some of them admit that they voted for Trump in 2016 and have come to regret that decision.
All of them offer substantial, pointed, evidence-based denunciations of Trump’s egregious moral and political failures over the past 3 1/2 years. Several essays document Trump’s habitual misogyny, his pathological lying, his malignant narcissism, his public, petty demeaning of those who disagree with him, his race-baiting and endorsement of white supremacy, the abuse of immigrants and asylum seekers at our southern border, the financial profiteering from his presidency, his consistent abuse of executive power, and his utter disregard for the constitution.
I was happy to see that a few of these Republican authors even condemned the Republican controlled Senate for acquitting Trump at the end of his impeachment trial.
The best essays, for my money, are Randall Balmer’s chapter on the long (and nearly extinct) history of evangelical social activism.
He offers an important history lesson for the entire evangelical church, reminding us of evangelicalism’s past commitments to pacifist, anti-war activism, anti-capitalist economics, anti-big business, anti-slavery, prison reform, public education, universal health care, women’s rights, and much more.
I found Balmer’s dissection of the Religious Right’s origins to be especially interesting. He argues that the modern juggernaut of religious, conservative, political power was not sparked by the anti-abortion sentiments that we see today — as so many imagine. In fact, the Religious Right began as a white, pro-segregationist movement fighting against the desegregation laws emerging from the civil rights movement, especially in the south.
It was no accident that both Bob Jones and Jerry Falwell were running segregated, all white educational institutions at the time. The seeds of the Religious Right sprouted and grew in the soil of racism, the degradation of life, not “pro-life” activism.
Against this backdrop, it’s not very surprising to see how many of today’s evangelical leaders continue to condemn the Black Lives Matter and anti-police brutality movement.
Steven Hayns’ chapter about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and contemporary evangelicalism’s distortion of Bonhoeffer’s social, political theology – especially at the hands of moral miscreants like Eric Metaxis, the deluded, self-proclaimed Bonhoeffer “expert” – is particularly helpful for anyone who wants to think more deeply about Christian political engagement.
(Ahem…my book, I Pledge Allegiance, would also be a great follow-up read for those who are interested in thinking more deeply.)
John Fea provides a refreshing chapter entitled “What White Evangelicals Can Learn About Politics from the Civil Rights Movement.” It is the only chapter I read twice.
If you are looking for a good resource explaining the spiritual dangers of the Trump presidency, written by conservative Christians for other conservative Christians, then look no further. This is the book to give to family and friends (even if they are not Christians) at the 4th of July family barbecue, summer outings, fall dinner parties, and everything else in between.
Now for a brief critique.
For a reader like me, the book’s strength is also its weakness; and it’s a serious weakness.
Written by conservatives for other conservatives, the majority of its criticisms against Trump predictably conform to the standard conservative, evangelical view of the world.
Only a few of the contributors (thankfully there are a few) indicate that Trump’s moral failures have led them to re-frame, or re-imagine, what their expectations of a Christian moral politics/politician might look like beyond the old, evangelical culture wars.
For most of the book’s contributors, America’s #1 moral failing is abortion. Full stop.
A handful of essays thankfully include racism, poverty, and income inequality to this list of corporate sins, but they are a small minority.
No one calls out the corporate, structural oppression created by American imperialism, the military-industrial complex, our global war mongering, the economic sanctions that kill tens of thousands of people in other nations, or America’s continuing sponsorship of military coups…and that is only the short list of issues ignored here.
The majority of the book’s criticisms focus on Trump’s personal demeanor, individual immorality, and its personal consequences.
I very much agree that all of these are serious issues.
Yet, it is also symptomatic of evangelicalism’s obsessive individualism, something that offers them very few tools for knowing how to construct a more just and equitable politics for the whole of our society and our global partners.
Trump’s principle problem, it seems, is that he has stretched the elastic, moral boundary of evangelicalism’s ethical code beyond its very flexible breaking point.
For too many contributors (but again, not all), Trump himself is the problem — as opposed to being a symptom of deeper political problems in our country. Once he is replaced by a morally acceptable Republican candidate (no Democratic could ever fit the bill, of course) the nation’s troubles will be solved – provided he (or she?) continues to fill the Supreme Court with conservative, anti-abortion justices.
For instance, whenever a contributor offers examples of good vs. bad candidates, the opponents are always Republican vs. Democrat. Apparently, with the exception of Donald Trump, Republican candidates who fight abortion are always good by definition, whatever their other policy positions may be.
Bill Clinton was a bad president because he was an adulterer, not because his draconian crime bills stoked the prison industrial complex, helping to put 1 of 4 African American men in prison, most of them for no good reason.
George H. W. Bush was a great president, despite the fact that he supervised numerous atrocities while head of the CIA, as well as several dirty wars in South and Central America that slaughtered thousands of innocent people.
But at least Bush didn’t swear in public.
Many of the contributors rightly condemn Trump’s womanizing, his multiple marriages, and his extra-marital affairs.
Yet, none of these folks would condemn their iconic Ronald Reagan, a prolific Hollywood fornicator and twice married star whose second wife regularly consulted a spiritualist medium in the White House. Never mind that Reagan’s administration was subject to more ethics violations inquiries (up to that point) than any previous presidency.
At least Reagan didn’t swear in public.
I know, I know. None of this is the point of the book.
Yet, the fact remains, only a select few of the contributors have a broad enough Christian vision to poke their heads up beyond the pious horizons of American, evangelical culture.
Not long before this blasphemous photo-op Trump gave a speech in which he expressed his support for every American’s right to protest. (As if the constitution needs any president’s endorsement).
Then, shortly before he spoke on the steps of this well-know church, D.C. police fired tear gas into a nearby group of peaceful protesters, dispersing stragglers by force. I watched the video.
Now, safely rid of those pesky, peaceful demonstrators, the president awkwardly waves a Bible like an unfamiliar talisman and utters the basest expressions of civil religion for the feverish media.
All in all — another disgusting episode from a wicked man who needs to repent, yet is enabled by so-called evangelicals blinded by secularism, self-centeredness, and power politics.
I believe that political engagement is an important task for the Christian church. I don’t buy the rationale that says secular politics is a distraction from gospel priorities. On the contrary. Political engagement is demanded by gospel priorities when properly understood.
If believers in Jesus Christ take his Lordship seriously, then submission to our Savior King requires us to behave as citizens of God’s kingdom in every element of our earthly citizenship. Politics in the public square is unavoidable.
The question is, what does that mean in practice?
I know that I am not alone in believing that the church needs to be
Rev. Jerry Falwell
politically active. The African-American church has always understood this fact. Jerry Falwell helped American fundamentalists and evangelicals finally come to grips with this, too. Obviously, maintaining this conviction makes for strange bed-fellows nowadays.
So, is Christian political activism nothing more than the public expression of privately held religious preferences; preferences created by the kind of neighborhood you grew up in and whether it was on the right or the wrong side of the tracks?
Answering this question is crucial in the present era of “Christians for Trump.”
I am firmly convinced, and quite happy to debate anyone who cares to
MIAMI, UNITED STATES – JANUARY 03, 2020: Evangelical supporters of Donald Trump are being led in prayers inside the El Rey Jesus church. – PHOTOGRAPH BY Adam DelGiudice / Echoes Wire/ Barcroft Media (Photo credit should read Adam DelGiudice / Echoes Wire / Barcroft Media via Getty Images)
disagree, that the evangelical church’s uniform support for Donald Trump, the Republican party, and their policy agenda, has exposed the thorough-going secularization of American Christianity.
It is symptomatic of the wholesale debasement of genuine Christian faith into unabashed, nationalistic civil religion. And that is the definition of American apostasy.
This damning secularization of Christian thought and action is, perhaps, the most influential legacy of the Religious Right. Anyone who takes his/her
Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith & Freedom Coalition
marching orders from partisan political strategists (like Ralph Reed, for example) has abandoned the Lordship of Christ. The ethics and righteousness of God’s kingdom do not align with any of the Republican or Democratic party agendas given to us.
Obviously, many religious conservatives think otherwise. I don’t doubt the sincerity of their convictions, but sincerity alone doesn’t manufacture truth. Aristotle and Ptolemy sincerely believed that the sun orbited around the earth, and they were sincerely wrong.
The question becomes: Which partner is leading in the evangelical dance with politics?
Is your partisan, political commitment leading your life of discipleship?
Or is your citizenship in the kingdom of God leading your political commitments?
We all know what the correct answer is. And, of course, members of the Religious Right insist that they are living out that answer, for example, in their support of the “pro-life” movement, their fight for staff-led prayer in public schools, and their hostility against equal rights legislation for LGBT human beings.
All of this begs the question. How should the Christian’s citizenship in God’s kingdom transform the way we live out our American citizenship? If Jesus’ teaching about kingdom righteousness becomes our benchmark for public engagement, then what elements of our partisanship (whether to the right or the left) must be thrown away and replaced with Jesus’ new kingdom ethic?
Here is an historical example:
Members of the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer is in the 2nd row at the far left
When the “Confessing Church” (composed of German, Protestant leaders who opposed Hitler’s attempts to control their churches) began its resistance against Nazi religious policies, debating these questions eventually led to a deep divide in their movement.
Everyone agreed that resistance to Nazi attempts at manipulating Christian worship services and determining church membership was every leader’s duty before God. But where should they draw the boundaries? The leaders often disagreed over which acts of resistance were (a) necessary expressions of Christian faith (so everyone could support it) and which actions were (b) merely an expression of personal political preferences. Seldom was there unanimity on this question. In fact, bitter arguments sometimes erupted threatening the organization’s future.
Of course, those accused of being “too political” or “unspiritual” in their
A Nazi German “Christian” flag
proposals responded by pointing out that it was impossible to separate the gospel’s ethical requirements from one’s evaluation of a patently immoral government policy. (I will ignore the ghastly role played by Martin Luther’s “two kingdoms” theology in the German church’s submission to Hitler).
The angry differences that erupted among these sincere, committed
churchmen exposed the differing horizons of their moral universes. After all, isn’t immorality in the eye of the beholder? Well, it shouldn’t be if everyone claiming to be a disciple of Jesus actually “fixes their eyes on Jesus,” as the writer to the Hebrews insists we should (12:2).
Every Christian’s moral universe ought to align with Jesus’ example of living as a righteous citizen in the kingdom of God.
Among all the members of the German Confessing Church, the leaders most remembered and applauded today are those who traced out the most expansive moral universes, with boundaries unconstrained by partisan politics or subservience to government authority.
After the war, surviving members of the Confessing Church sometimes admitted that, for all the risks they had taken (and some were imprisoned and/or executed), they had not gone far enough. Their ethical boundaries had been too narrow. They had not always acted as faithful citizens of God’s kingdom.
Martin Niemöller (who was imprisoned) became one of the most outspoken in lamenting the fact that the Confessing Church had never publicly
Karl Barth’s statement on the failure of the Confessing Church to defend Jews throughout Europe
condemned Hitler’s policies of anti-Semitism. They had never publicly defended their Jewish neighbors. Nor had a single church leader publicly opposed the Nazi eugenics program that took thousands from their medical asylums and sent them off to die.
This is our challenge today.
Every Christian’s lifetime goal must be the conformation of one’s own moral universe to the righteousness of God’s kingdom as taught and modeled for us by Jesus of Nazareth. As our Lord said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Seek first the Father’s kingdom and his righteousness, and everything else will follow” (my paraphrase, Matt. 6:33).
I once preached a message on those words of Jesus in a white, middle-class, Protestant church where the elders nearly banned me from the pulpit. [There were two services. An elder walked out of the first service in protest. I was summoned to a meeting with the others before the second service. At least one of them believed that I ought not to preach again).
The goal of my message was to pose this challenge: How should our commitment to live as righteous citizens of God’s kingdom here and now shape the ways we think and behave as earthly citizens of an imperialist nation with a massive military budget that loves to make war?
IF we want to take Jesus’ words seriously, that we seek God’s kingdom righteousness first, then we MUST grapple with these kinds of questions. And change our behavior accordingly.
Tragically, those church elders were spiritually crippled, straight-jacketed inside a minuscule moral universe grossly deformed by their American first, nationalistic, Republican party world-view. They were not interested in seeking the Father’s kingdom and righteousness FIRST in EVERY area of life. They were not thorough-going disciples of Jesus Christ.
We are currently facing a spiritual pandemic that is killing evangelicalism and its public witness.
An American “Christian” flag
The church is infected with a deadly political virus called partisanship. That partisanship is an ugly symptom of our deeply rooted secularism. In pursuing the cause of militaristic nationalism, we have taken our eyes off Jesus.
Huge swaths of the church have been coopted by the commercialized, smoothly marketed messaging created by high-paid political operatives who began courting evangelicals during the Reagan presidency. Rather than seeking God’s kingdom, we seek victory for their side, predominantly Republican, in the next political campaign.
This brand of herd loyalty is easy to implement. Whereas, conforming our lives to the pattern given to us by the suffering, crucified Jesus of Nazareth is far more difficult and costly.
Following a crucified Savior entails suffering, but it also demands carefully focused, consistent thinking, from top to bottom. How must Jesus’ kingdom-directed life and teaching transform the way we address our contemporary problems? There is no political playbook from any party providing easy answers to that question.
Take for instance the “pro-life” movement. The label itself is an example of a very self-conscious political framing. The words pro-life do not honestly describe the movement. As many others have pointed out, the pro-life movement is not actually pro-life. It is anti-abortion and pro-birth, but the movement’s pro-life interests vanish quickly once a baby is delivered.
For example, it is a demonstrable fact that publicly funded preschool programs, the WIC nutrition program and Head Start, to name only a few, make significant improvements in the future prospects, health and well-being of young children, especially those growing up in poor communities.
Yet, conservative “pro-life” voters typically back policies intended to defund these sorts of community assistance programs that give a leg up to our most vulnerable citizens. In this regard, supposedly pro-life conservatives most often vote anti-life.
Worse yet, these faux pro-lifers support politicians who want to slash the budgets of social benefits programs and in order to channel those funds to
A US bomber over Afghanistan
the ballooning budgets for military contractors and our wasteful Pentagon. Instead of helping to enrich the lives of America’s most vulnerable, our tax dollars are spent on expanding assassination programs, and devising new weaponry intended for the efficient slaughter and impoverishment of hungry people around the world who happen to stand in the way of American empire.
That is the opposite of pro-life. It is pro-death, pain, exploitation, and suffering.
But what about the Supreme Court?! (I hear certain readers ask). This is the new clarion call among today’s pro-lifers. Overturning Roe vs. Wade is the end-all-and-be-all of to a pro-life political victory.
It’s true. Adding anti-abortion advocates like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to the court may eventually lead to that result. But in the meantime, America’s highest court is now stacked with justices who regularly act to strengthen corporate power against the interests of the working class.
For example, Justice Kavanaugh only appeared on the president’s list of nominees after his decision as an appeals court judge to support a trucking company’s decision to fire one of their drivers. The driver violated
Brett Kavanaugh at his Senate confirmation hearing
company policy by leaving his truck unattended in order to walk to a nearby convenience store. The truck had broken down in a blizzard. After calling for help and waiting, the driver soon found that he could no longer feel his legs. He feared that he might die of hypothermia as he waited. Should he stay with his truck? Or should he walk to a nearby convenience store to warm up?
What would you have done?
Judge Kavanaugh, the latest pro-life darling, determined that the company was justified in firing an employee who refused to lay down his life for their sixteen-wheeler. That ruling won Kavanaugh his contentious nomination. And the vast majority of evangelicals stood to cheer. (I won’t even begin to comment on the vile conservative abuse spewed out against the women who accused Kavanaugh of sexual abuse).
Was Kavanaugh really a pro-life nominee?
America’s broken, corrupted “justice” system serves the political purposes of bi-partisan mass incarceration laws filling our jails and prisons with people of color who are slapped down by onerous convictions, while white people – especially wealthy white people – receive a slap on the wrist for committing identical offenses. This country’s “injustice system” has become a calcified showcase for the most racist, Jim Crow artifacts in a nation where all people are notequal before the law.
Why did the NYC police department implement its “stop and frisk” policy in black neighborhoods but never on Wall Street? I suspect they would have collected more cocaine stashed comfortably in the sleek suit pockets of hedge fund managers than they ever discovered in the hands of African-Americans walking to the market.
Yet, American evangelicals regularly rally around the bi-partisan flag demanding that officials get “tough on crime” – excepting, of course, the white-collar crime flagrantly committed by men like Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, and their corporate donors.
Tell me again. What, exactly, is pro-life about any of this behavior?
America’s population is now separated by the greatest economic divide between the haves and the have-nots since the Great Depression. That divide expands and deepens year by year as a result of government, economic boondoggles ensuring that wealth redistribution is always moving upwards to further enrich the already rich. All the while, most evangelicals link arms with the wealthy, corporate interests who exploit the poor and the working class.
There simply is no excuse for any Christian supporting the policies of either party which perpetuate national behaviors so cravenly antithetical to Jesus’ teaching about the righteousness of God’s kingdom.
Let’s call such public behavior for what it really is, especially when it is endorsed by a majority of evangelicals: grotesque displays of hypocrisy, partisan blindness, and anti-Christian thinking.
Such misguided thinking is an investment in the work of the anti-Christ. The resulting behaviors reveal the overt repudiation of Jesus’ Lordship over his church.
Genuinely pro-life behavior begins among the citizens of Christ’s kingdom who live it out in the streets by enhancing the lives of those who most need help. That includes influencing the culture around us, our society, our leaders, and our nation, by working to enact consistent pro-life policies for all people everywhere.
To further stretch our moral boundaries, evangelicals should be in the forefront of calling for the US to abandon its budget-breaking quest for global supremacy, a quest that tramples other nations underfoot like discarded human refuse left behind for global scavengers to devour.
Now that would be pro-life.
Jesus is clear. His kingdom’s pro-life values declare:
The first will be last, and the last will be first
Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your reward
Woe to those who neglect to do justice
Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry
Our Lord welcomes every immigrant and asylum seeker with open arms.
Our Lord prioritizes the poor. He picks them up and cares for them. He does not ridicule them as lazy creators of their own hardships.
How can any society be positively influenced by a secularized church that long ago exchanged the mind of Christ for the distorted thinking of this evil age?
How can the church show others the importance of thorough-going pro-life policies when we are incapable of implementing them among ourselves?
American evangelicalism has become the useless salt described by Jesus: You are [supposed to be] the salt of the earth, but once that salt loses its saltiness, it becomes useless, good for nothing. It can only be thrown out onto the dirt (my paraphrase, Matthew 5:13).
Jesus’ words address the American church today.
No, Donald Trump is not the church’s greatest friend. He is another in a long line of anti-Christs. He is a parasite who has attached himself to the Religious Right in order to exploit their evangelical base for his own political benefit.
Evangelicals are president Trump’s useful idiots.
I am sorry, but any purported “Christian” who cannot perceive these facts about our president, American politics, and our nation’s behavior throughout the world has become a spiritual alien who knows little if anything about God’s kingdom.
Such people are spiritually malnourished, perhaps even dead, after suckling at the swollen teats of American civil religion, that secular, bastardized gospel which subverts Jesus’ kingdom values while substituting the depraved values of this fallen world.
God’s kingdom is what truly matters. The church is its citizenry. All of which entails much, much more than simply “getting people saved.”
Saved for what?
Jesus calls us to love indiscriminately. To prioritize people in need, no matter who they are. Yes, personal acts of benefaction are crucial, but that is not enough. The scale of America’s social problems is so vast that our government must play a major role in rectifying our problems. Only true citizens of the kingdom of God possess the vision necessary for developing the required solutions.
Will a mass movement of the Christian church stand up to demand that our government take greater and greater steps towards mercy and justice for all?
George Floyd’s murder and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement across the country.
advantage.
Pennsylvania. Professor Fea has an excellent blog called “The Way of Improvement Leads Home” which I follow regularly.
evangelical Christians in the hope of convincing evangelical voters NOT to vote for Trump in November.
(Ahem…my book, I Pledge Allegiance, would also be a great follow-up read for those who are interested in thinking more deeply.)
their support of the “pro-life” movement, their fight for staff-led prayer in public schools, and their hostility against equal rights legislation for LGBT human beings.
everyone claiming to be a disciple of Jesus actually “fixes their eyes on Jesus,” as the writer to the Hebrews insists we should (12:2).
describe the movement. As many others have pointed out, the pro-life movement is not actually pro-life. It is anti-abortion and pro-birth, but the movement’s pro-life interests vanish quickly once a baby is delivered.
of bi-partisan mass incarceration laws filling our jails and prisons with people of color who are slapped down by onerous convictions, while white people – especially wealthy white people – receive a slap on the wrist for committing identical offenses. This country’s “injustice system” has become a calcified showcase for the most racist, Jim Crow artifacts in a nation where all people are not equal before the law.
collected more cocaine stashed comfortably in the sleek suit pockets of hedge fund managers than they ever discovered in the hands of African-Americans walking to the market.
Let’s call such public behavior for what it really is, especially when it is endorsed by a majority of evangelicals: grotesque displays of hypocrisy, partisan blindness, and anti-Christian thinking.
long line of anti-Christs. He is a parasite who has attached himself to the Religious Right in order to exploit their evangelical base for his own political benefit.