“I hear that this is an election year
And I suppose it’s true
Big world gonna get what little it has comin’ to her…”
– Bill Mallonee
I’ve largely abandoned political comment, much to my regret. I still feel like I have a lot of important things to say, and there’s a lot in our current moment in the United States that demands a person to stand up and make plain what they do believe and what they don’t, what it’s sufficient to rant and rave about and what needs to be lived out in the day to day.
Politics, contrary to popular belief, actually matters. What Bismarck once called “the art of the possible” is largely lost in the sturm und drang of what passes for our conversation – which passes for a lot of screaming at one another. And amidst all of the noise, we still have a host of problems that need to be solved this central-Appalachian part of the world – a workforce infrastructure that has to be rebuilt post-coal, a population that is underemployed, a lack of access to wealth that goes far beyond any stereotype or social group.
The temptation is to say that we just need to shut up, put our heads down, and get to work. The problems are too great, after all, and all hands ought to be on deck.
The problem is that the reason for all the noise isn’t just narrow disagreement over small things that don’t matter. The disagreement is fundamental; there’s no space to move forward without addressing it, and the willingness to address the disagreement on its own terms isn’t there. And that willingness ebbs the lowest among the people most impacted by the problems of my part of the world.
The disagreement, after all, is over the person so many of my friends and neighbors want to lead them.
At this point, we hardly need to re-litigate all the things that make President Trump unworthy of Christian praise. He has shown himself to be proudly against almost everything Christians claim to be for.
He is a vain and cruel man, obsessed with power and wealth. He sows fear and distrust, stoking the very worst impulses of our society. He is quick to speak and slow to listen. He notoriously has no respect for sexual morals or women’s bodies—be they Rosie O’Donnell’s or his own daughter’s. And as to the truth, well, you treat your washcloths with more respect.
He is, in other words, exactly the sort of person you would expect the Religious Right to lambast with their famous smear machine. That, as you may be aware, did not happen.
“Dying Before We Reach The Promised Land“, Tyler Huckabee
Not only have I run out of ways to protest this president, I ran out during the first week of his presidency.
I’ve lived much of the last three years in various stages of shock. I get no credit for being able to see this outcome coming – that scoreboard falls to other observers. I believed from day one that the man was a clown with no coherent beliefs, and I still believe the man is a clown who can’t even speak coherently – only “clown” is thoroughly inappropriate for a man who frequently stands in front of his supporters for no greater or lesser purpose than preying on their fears and making deranged pretense of his empathy.
The only thing I found more exasperating than enumerating the ways that I couldn’t accept any leadership coming from him was the extent to which people I’d invested in and considered important to me took my statements against him personally, like I was attacking them. Huckabee’s words were so comforting at the end of the awful first year of this presidency because at least I could recognize somebody else saw the self-evidence of his unfitness, not merely for the office, but for any place as any sort of representative of the Christian faith that I claim.
No, of course the man isn’t perfect. But he’s still being accepted as a defender of the security of Christianity in America – a security that we were never promised was in the hands of a human being anyway. We are human ourselves – we want a king, we don’t want to trust God for our safety. But knowing how many people want this king is so, so hard to take; knowing how many people I love and care about throw their lot in with this king is painful.
I don’t use that word lightly, either, and I don’t think this is understood as well as it should be. There is a population of evangelical Christians who have had to deal with the reality that 81% of white evangelicals voted for this president – whether they’re Black, Hispanic or other minority evangelicals who legitimately feel under threat because of the president’s rhetoric, or evangelicals like me, who simply feel like all of their leaders they grew up under lied to them about being a “moral majority”. Those of us who resist the majority in our community take damage, daily. And we’re told that damage doesn’t matter – or worse, that we simply need to get over the damage and accept that no president is perfect and we need to accept this president because he’s defending the status quo of Christian America like nobody else has before or since.
All that does is persuade me that the status quo isn’t worth defending, and maybe my faith is better off with Christians out of the majority. Because with this president as its representative, my faith looks to all the world like a fraud.
President Trump apparently had an affair with a porn star while his model wife was home with their newborn son. No surprise there. Keeping the affair out of the newspapers before the 2016 election reportedly cost him $130,000, around a measly 0.004 percent of his claimed net worth of $3.1 billion — nothing to him. The fact that you might be unsettled by this news also means nothing to him. Trump is impervious to scandal and immune to social censure. He is insulated from consequence by power, money and fame in a way not imaginable to the ordinary person. He is the freest man alive.
Americans like to think we invented freedom, but we really only extended it to an absurd conclusion in the person of Trump. The ancients had their version of freedom, and they were as fiercely protective of it as we are of ours. For Plato, people are free when they are fully in control of themselves, with their self-mastery uninhibited by passions or appetites. Much the same for Aristotle, who saw freedom in rational, intelligent self-direction. On that foundational principle, they and the other worthies of the ancient world formed the idea of democracy as a system balancing equality and responsibility, for, as Aristotle wrote, “where absolute freedom is allowed, there is nothing to restrain the evil which is inherent in every man.” How right he was.
“President Trump is the freest man alive“, Elizabeth Bruenig
The most disturbing thing about the fraud that’s being perpetuated is how easily it could be stopped.
Famously, ahead of his election, the longtime host of Focus on the Family, James Dobson, claimed that Donald Trump was a converted man, “a baby Christian.” No, of course he didn’t talk like a Christian or behave, like a Christian, but “I think that he’s open…He doesn’t know our language, he really doesn’t, and he refers a lot to religion and not much to faith and belief…[Y]ou’ve got to cut him some slack. He didn’t grow up like we did. I think there’s hope for him, and I think there’s hope for us.”
Set aside for a moment whether Donald Trump has ever made such a claim on his terms. Let’s just say that Dobson is right. If you grew up like I did, and somebody made a turn to Christ to receive saving faith, the next word you heard was discipleship. There is a process to becoming deeply invested in the church and with the body of believers. There is intentional reading of the Bible, and there is intentional prayer. There are older Christians who will call you out and pull you back in line if you step out – not in the name of becoming brainwashed, but rather becoming your best possible self.
This is one of the hardest things for me to explain about my own process of coming to faith and taking possession of a Christian walk of my own. It ultimately is my own relationship with God, and everything about it is my own responsibility. There is a real path of discipleship to walk where that works, and it involves people being around me who care about me and want to see me realize that relationship in the fullest. Being called out in that context doesn’t happen in public. It does happen behind closed doors.
But there is an expectation that I grow up in the process, and that I reach a point of health that allows me to carry on that relationship on my own – and not only to do so on my own, but to have the kind of public accountability and reproachlessness that allows me to lead others through the path of discipleship as well. Ultimately, the people who call you out aren’t doing so on a power trip of any sort. They really want you to be better.
I was so fortunate to have men around me at Rose-Hulman, where I received that saving faith in Jesus Christ in its fullness, that cared about me deeply enough to be brutally honest with me. I’m not going to tell you that they were perfect. I’m not going to tell you I didn’t challenge them right back sometimes, and I’m not going to tell you that I did everything they told me to flawlessly. But they cared about me, and I reflected on the ways they challenged me, and I grew up into a faith that’s been a fundamental part me for nearly thirty years now.
It’s been three years since James Dobson made his claim. The man he made that claim of has been on the most public stage possible, living out his transformation. What’s the most recent evidence of that transformation?
President Trump on Wednesday night cruelly mocked the late John Dingell, the longest-ever serving member of Congress in American history, suggesting he might be in hell during a fiery attack on his wife, Democratic Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell.
The alarming diss came during a roller coaster rally in Battle Creek, Mich. — which coincided with the House vote to impeach Trump — as the commander-in-chief whined that Debbie Dingell was over-the-top appreciative when Trump celebrated her husband after his death in February.
“I didn’t give him the B treatment, I didn’t give him the C, or the D — I could have,” Trump said of the widely respected lawmaker. “She calls me up: ‘it’s the nicest thing that’s ever happened, thank you so much. John would be so thrilled. He’s looking down.’”
Moments later, Trump added, to a response of cheers and gasps: “Maybe he’s looking up, I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe.”
Carelessness with words that leads to cruelty is a hallmark of this president’s behavior. That behavior takes place most often in rallies such as this, never-ending campaign speeches that ramble and land at frequent pot-shots at political adversaries.
But surely this crosses a line, right? Speculating on the eternal fate of a dead political opponent? Surely this is something that would merit some response, nearly four years beyond what was characterized as a conversion event?
I don’t know how pastors treat the president behind closed doors, and to a certain extent, it’s none of my business. But the behavior of the president is something I can see, day in and day out. I hear it on the news even when I try to avoid it. It’s a topic of conversation in the places where I live. It’s just as likely to be behavior that’s praised – even among those who claim faith – as it is to be behavior that’s condemned.
At a certain point, there are only two conclusions possible. Either those who have been discipling the president to grow in his faith aren’t seeing the results they were after, and are saying precious little about that (to the detriment of the president’s own faith at that), or there were never any attempts to disciple this “baby Christian” in the first place, and every statement that’s made about his defense of Christians is part of an awful bargain made to cynically gain and retain a seat that’s close to power.
Whichever is true, it’s very fair to ask whether those who have spoken in support of this president’s faith life really care about his faith at all – whether they desire to actually see the most powerful man in the United States spiritually grow, or whether they just desire to use him as an icon without concern to his ultimate fate.
In enabling his freedom to say or do whatever he wants, in helping to sustain an environment where this president is supported without question, you have to ask how much these men are saying that good discipleship doesn’t matter, to the harm of a nation of believers – and no harm greater than the harm to the President of the United States himself.
“Do you think because Jesus is coming soon that the environment doesn’t matter?” I eventually ask.
“Alex, the Earth is going to be all burned up anyway,” my aunt says quietly. “It’s in the Bible.”
“But according to billions of people, the Bible is not necessarily true.”
“All we can do is love them.”
“No, we can cut back on carbon emissions. There are a lot of things we can do.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re not going to be here.”
I try to think of how to reframe the conversation. “Imagine that you are someone who thinks that God doesn’t exist. You can’t say to that person, ‘Don’t worry about the fact that we’re ruining the world that your children and grandchildren live in, because this thing that you don’t believe in is going to happen.’ That’s not an argument a government can make.”
“Who’s in charge of climate?” my mom interjects. “Who brings the sun out in the morning?”
“You cannot base national policy about what is happening to the environment on one group of people’s religion,” I answer.
Finally, my aunt puts her hand on my knee. Her eyes are tender and her voice soft and trembling with emotion. “I just want them to know the truth.”
And it’s moments like this that shut the conversation down because I believe her. I believe — with faith and certainty — that this is what motivates her, politically and otherwise. “All we can do is love them,” she’d told me. In her mind, this was not about the history of evangelicalism or the Republican Party or American exceptionalism or Christian nationalism or how we got here. This was about her view of love — a tough love that would offer America salvation.
By the time my family hug each other tightly and say good night, it is well past midnight. The cicadas hum outside like blood rushing to the ears. The darkness is heavy. We go to sleep saying prayers for each other, which is the only thing left we can do.
“Why the Christian Right Worships Donald Trump“, Alex Morris
It’s because I know the arguments so well that I have the hardest time knowing where to start.
The reframing of arguments as I careen into a dead end is a process that I know well. But I also know the counters to those arguments. I know the mentality that America is exceptional – not in its conception, not in its government, but in the provision that’s been given by God – and I know the desperation that tells a believer that they’re living in the time of the last best chance to see the kingdom of God break through.
In that view, the ends justify the means. The very idea that is so inconceivable to me – that Donald Trump was sent for a time such as this, that the unrepentant man is here to clear the way for the Gospel to be heard for all – is easily understood by my friends and neighbors. It makes no sense to one, it makes all the sense in the world to the other.
What can you do when the two views are so deeply dug in – one side dug in because of self-evident morality, the other dug in because of existential threat? Am I even being fair to the two sides of the argument by casting one as self-evident morality and the other as existential threat?
The desperation of the true believer in this moment keeps us from finding the common ground that politics is supposed to be about in the first place. We have problems to solve. We can’t solve them while we’re desperately trying to persuade one another about the fitness or the danger of the man who is set out to leave us.
Impeachment proceedings stir no emotion in me at all – the necessity of impeachment was clear to me from the first week, and the fumbling to find the exact right grounds for impeachment and removal feels cynical and unpersuasive. Editorials speaking out against the man are worse than too little, too late – they’re another avenue to shift the argument to left-wing vs. right-wing and away from a man whose very presence destroys the capacity to do the political work that is so necessary.
And I’m still left with no words to persuade people who are absolutely unpersuadable. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do.
I live in East Tennessee. I live around friends and neighbors whose sole motivation is to make America great again.
I can’t persuade them that they very man they’ve put their faith in equates to their failure.
Another fine mess. 