“This is an awful man, waving a book he hasn’t read, in front of a church he doesn’t attend, invoking laws he doesn’t understand, against fellow Americans he sees as enemies, wielding a military he dodged serving, to protest power he gained via accepting foreign interference, exploiting fear and anger he loves to stoke, after failing to address a pandemic he was warned about, and building it all on a bed of constant lies and childish inanity.”
-Father Robert Hendrickson
“I am the chosen one”
-Donald Trump
“Test all things; hold fast what is good”
-1 Thessalonians 5:21
I have been fighting a bout of depression lately. There are many things in the world to be depressed about today with a pandemic, thousands dead, economic calamity, racial injustice, and looting in the streets. The world is on fire.
But I do not think that is the reason. I am thinking a part of what I used to be is being ripped out of me. What I used to believe was true I no longer think is reality. It hurts and I feel deceived.
I used to strongly embrace evangelical Christianity. When Colleen and I were married we left Albuquerque and moved to California. It was there I attended Medical School and, later, residency.
Like many young people I embraced a sense of spirituality about life although it was raw and undefined. My parents had divorced, my father abandoned his family, and moved to another country. We never saw him again, but would occasionally get hate filled missives about how wrong he felt he was treated. We were children. How do you respond to such things? My brother and sister moved to different parts of the country. We rarely saw each other. A grenade had gone off and the shrapnel destroyed our sense of family.
I was adrift.
So when the trials of residency began to close in on me Colleen and I found a church to attend. It was an evangelical methodist congregation blessed with a charismatic pastor and a small family group that become a bedrock for us.
I began to strongly embrace Christianity. The faith provided a firmament to navigate life that was black and white. It made sense and provided a lens by which I could view and , ironically, judge the world. Church felt safe and provided a sense of family that I was missing.
So I dove in head first. I began to read about other faith traditions and cult movements and learned how to argue my belief in a successful manner. I learned rudimentary biblical hermeneutics, not enough to be wise, but enough to win a debate. I was good at it. Such exercises provided affirmation for me and the choices I was making. I read the Bible from cover to cover enjoying the parts about how we Christians were chosen by God and skipping over the sections of 900 year old men and Noah’s Ark.
I would listen as Pastors explained how the world around us was decaying but here in our expensive room with a rock band choir we were safe. We were the club to belong to and the feeling was very gratifying. I never bothered noticing that the entire congregation was white and , for the most part, affluent.
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Some history is in order -
Alex Morris writes , “Evangelicals — a term that today refers to people who believe that Jesus died for their sins, that the Bible is the word of God, that every believer has a “born again” or salvation moment, and that the good news of Jesus should be widely disseminated — make up as much as a quarter of the country, or close to 80 million people. Around 60 percent vote, more than any other demographic, and among white evangelical voters, more than three-quarters tend to go to Republicans, thanks to wedge issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, and transgender rights.”
Evangelical Christians believe a “personal relationship” with Jesus is paramount. Everything else is secondary.
They also, at least in their past history, advocated that humanity held a spark of the divine. It is the value of this spark that would animate Christians to action in the world. Indeed Christians have a proud history in the shaping of the country in many good ways.
Christians would lead the charge for abolition of slaves, prison reform, humane treatment of the mentally disabled, and more. Christians helped organize the underground railroad, marched for civil rights, fought against child labor, poverty, war , and crime.
These progressive views were the dominant view of the church at that time. Morris goes on to say, “They believed that the kingdom of God could, through social-justice initiatives, be realized in the here and now.”
Prominent Protestants at the turn of the century also embraced science. As knowledge of the world grew they accepted the world was not created in six literal days and that humans were the result of evolution.
These were not battles that denied the faith or hills we needed to die upon. Evolution did not rule out divine purpose. However such theological liberalism created a backlash and would give rise to fundamentalism. The legalism of the conservative viewpoint was that the Bible was historically and scientifically true. It was this view that would drive conservative christians into isolation or enclaves only for ‘true believers’. Everything else was apostasy .
In the summer of 1925 the Scopes Monkey Trial took place. The great orator William Jennings Bryant would battle against the legendary lawyer Clarence Darrow. Bryant represented the Fundamentalist view point and would go on and win the case in court. But the press showed the Fundamentalist viewpoint as backward, full of ‘alternative facts’ delusional and worthy of scorn.
Billy Graham entered the world stage in the 1950’s. The world’s best known evangelist had a simple message. He was theologically conservative but “had a heart for the world”. He began to associate with Presidents regularly, famously being thrown out of the Oval Office by Harry Truman when he attempted to proselytize him. He traveled the world preaching “Jesus Saves” and come to the altar, “just as I am”. Through Graham’s Presidential associations of both parties, Christians became more politically active.
A young Jerry Falwell decided to start “I Love America” rallies in the 1970’s. In these gatherings he would decry America’s loss of morality.
What was the reason for the moral decline? In 1971, Falwell lost a court case Green v. Connally. The course determined that ‘A racially discriminatory private school is not entitled to federal tax exemption. Falwell had founded just such a school called Lynchburg Christian School, that was the precursor to Liberty University. Falwell believed it was his “God given right” to exclude African Americans from the school.
Morris writes, “...He (Falwell) teamed up with Paul Weyrich, a religious political activist and co-founder of the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, who had long been searching for an issue around which to forge a Christian voting bloc. Together, they reframed the debate, creating a playbook for a defense of white supremacy. “Weyrich’s genius lay in recognizing that he was unlikely to organize a mass movement around the defense of racial segregation,” argues Randall Balmer, an Episcopal priest and historian of American religion at Dartmouth College. “That would be a tough sell. With a sleight of hand, he recast the issue as a defense of religious liberty.”
The year I graduated High School in 1979, Falwell founded the “Moral majority’ and moved conservative fundamentalists into a powerful voting lobby. That same year, the film “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” was released which made the argument that abortion was infanticide.
A movement was started. The church changed from lessons on God’s love to we are engaged in spiritual warfare with the world that is forever trying to separate us from His will. The church became a ‘Fortress’ from the world while we all waited for “The Rapture”
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It was into this milieu that I found God.
Don’t get me wrong there was much still to love about the faith. I would enjoy finding new ways to view the world and how to be a more open and giving person. I wanted to be a better man. Most of all I did not want to take the path my father chose. The church helped me in many of these areas and shaped my world view for a long time. In my clumsy way, I tried to teach these things to my sons. I was not a good teacher. But, I tried.
So in the 1990’s, when Bill Clinton stained the presidency in such a lewd manner I reacted, as many in my church did, with moral indignation. I rejected attempts of society to question the goodness of America and it's attacks on the church. Maybe there was something to all this talk of persecution. I would listen to speakers that reinforced this world view. It shaped my politics for a long time. When Fox News appeared and said liberals were out to destroy America, I believed it.
I was blind
Margaret Renkl writes, “Since long before it was a country, our country has been in flames. When we arrived on our big ships and decimated this land’s original peoples with our viruses and our guns, when we used our Christian faith as a justification for killing both “heretic” and “heathen,” we founded this country in flames. And every month, every week, every day, for the last 400 years, we have been setting new fires.
White Christians who came before us captured human beings and beat them and raped them and stole their babies from them and stole their parents from them and stole their husbands and their wives from them and locked them in chains and made them work in inhuman conditions. Our spiritual ancestors went to church and listened to their pastors argue that these human beings weren’t human at all.
Our pastors don’t tell us that anymore, but we are still setting fires.”
I remember the night I learned Trump was elected. My first reaction was amusement. I disliked Hillary Clinton, as did much of the church, and my first thought was “Good, she lost to this rodeo clown”.
It was the first election I did not cast a vote for either candidate. Both were horrible choices in my view but deep down I thought Clinton would likely win and my vote would not matter.
Then I thought, “My God we just elected a reality show personality to the highest office in the land!”. I tried to comfort myself thinking that the weight of the office would keep his worst impulses in control. For awhile, I believed it.
It was not true.
George Will writes, “Those who think our unhinged president’s recent mania about a murder two decades ago that never happened represents his moral nadir have missed the lesson of his life: There is no such thing as rock bottom.”
Yet this morally compromised, vulgar, man-child remained the darling of the evangelical church! How can this be? Great leaders whom I had respected in the church have backed his administration. The same leaders who reacted with moral outrage to the Presidency of Bill Clinton where giving this savage immature bully a pass?
They would argue, “He gives us judges we want!”
“We didn’t elect a politician, he speaks from his heart.”
James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, a man whose books I read and recommenced to others told us, “Trump was sent her to protect us, he is like a baby Christian”.
Who is this vulgarian protecting you from? From what corner are you being assailed?
Other leaders, men whom I have heard speak, compared him to heroes of the Bible.
Sarah Sanders, the daughter of Mike Huckabee an evangelical pastor and former governor, said as Press Secretary , “Trump was sent by God”.
I am bewildered.
I am depressed and it seems that all those years I spent in the pews were a deception; a lie.
It feels it was never about the love of God. It was about power and the willingness to use it.
If you are supporting this terrible man, you cannot claim to be of the faith. The two are simply not compatible. How can you possibly conclude he is “of God?” Even if you compare him to a flawed hero of the Bible, all of them repented and changed their lives.
"I like to be good. I don't like to have to ask for forgiveness. And I am good. I don't do a lot of things that are bad. I try to do nothing that is bad.”
-Donald Trump
He goes on, “I Have Done More For Christianity Than Jesus’”
In response to the Christianity Today editorial calling for his removal, Trump called the magazine a “left-wing rag” and said, “I have done more for Christianity than Jesus.”
“I mean, the name of the magazine is Christianity Today, and who is doing more for Christians today? Not Jesus. He disappeared; no one knows what happened to him. But I’m out there every day protecting churches from crazy liberals.”
I now know this hypocrisy was always present at church when I was always there. Or, at least it was nearby. I just didn’t look for it because I was too absorbed in my own troubles to see another's pain.
I have traveled to many poor places in the world and seen acts of charity and kindness missing from Evangelical worship. Everyday, in a Sikh temple we visited, over 10,000 poor people are fed without question. Medical care is free. No proselytizing, no pre conditions, just comfort and an open hand. I asked his motivation and he looked at me and said simply, “We are all children of God. What else would we do?”
Then George Floyd was murdered in front of all of us. And from the homes and apartments of the streets of this nation people walked out together and cried,”No more!” It was a cathartic, moving and a deeply spiritual act. I believe here is where Jesus would be walking, among the crowd singing Hosannah.
“For a long time, I naively hoped that racism was a thing of the past. Those of us who are white have a very hard time seeing that we constantly receive special treatment [because of social systems built to prioritize people with white skin]. This systemic “white privilege” makes it harder for us to recognize the experiences of people of color as valid and real when they speak of racial profiling, police brutality, discrimination in the workplace, continued segregation in schools, lack of access to housing, and on and on. This is not the experience of most white people, so how can it be true? Now, we are being shown how limited our vision is.
Because we have never been on the other side, we largely do not recognize the structural access we enjoy, the trust we think we deserve, the assumption that we always belong and do not have to earn our belonging. All this we take for granted as normal. Only the outsider can spot these attitudes in us. [And we are quick to dismiss what is apparent to our neighbors who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color [BIPOC] from their lived experience.]”
-Father Richard Rohr
Where are the evangelical church leaders? Why are they not denouncing what has happened? Why are they not in the streets tending to the children of God?
I have come to believe that taking such a step would be to let go of power. It would be an admission that the original sin of this country, slavery, has never been fully addressed. While the church has many things to boast that they helped the poor and downtrodden, too much of the history of the Evangelical church’s lies to its dark roots and still unaddressed.
*************************************
One week ago, as riots were engulfing the nation, Trump gave a speech in the Rose Garden of the White House insisting he is the law and order president and the protestors must be dominated with military force if needed.
Across the street from the White hose on the North side is a park called Lafayette Square. For decades it is a location where protestors of all stripes have gathered. That Monday afternoon was no exception. Hundreds of Black Lives Matter protestors were gathered protesting police brutality. Many reporters and camera crews were in the crowd.
Then, without warning the crowd was charged by heavily armed policemen and federal troops. Munitions in the form of flash grenades, tear gas, and rubber bullets were fired. These were American citizens on American soil protesting peacefully.
A short time after the crowd was beaten back Trump walked out of the White house and walked on foot across the Square. He was protected by a phalanx of heavily armed troops. Various members of his cabinet walked with him.
He stopped at St John’s Episcopal Church but not before the Priest on duty that was handing water and food to the protestors was forcibly moved away. Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, produced a brand new bible from her $1500 purse and handed it to Trump.
He did not pray, he did not say any words of comfort. He posed for pictures holding the Bible aloft.
It was upside down.
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“There is no rock bottom.”
I remain a Christian. I accept the fundamental tenets of the faith that Jesus lived , died, and was raised again. His words still bring teaching and comfort to my very flawed soul.
However, I used to be a member of the Evangelical church. I am no longer.
I cannot abide with an organization that blindly supports such a vile man. He is so devoid of grace that it is appalling that anyone could follow such a man. I look at my books from all those years with a sense of regret that I did not see such things earlier.
Such is life, I suppose, wisdom doesn’t come without age.
I will continue my spiritual walk, but not with these companions.
Gandhi writes, “……I am prone to as many weaknesses as you are. But I have seen the world. I have lived in the world with my eyes open….”
I can see better now.
I have learned there is so much I still do not know. It is the mystery of God that I still find compelling.
"I am not a Christian because I have no doubts. I am a Christian because of my doubts"
-Phillip Yancy
Amen.
Postscript -
October 22, 2020
In less than two weeks we will hold a national election to determine if Trump deserves a second term. Pastor John Pavlovitz writes -
“Dear White Evangelicals,
I need to tell you something: People have had it with you.
They’re done.
They want nothing to do with you any longer, and here’s why:
They see your hypocrisy, your inconsistency, your incredibly selective mercy, and your thinly veiled supremacy.
For eight years they watched you relentlessly demonize a black President; a man faithfully married for 26 years; a doting father and husband without a hint of moral scandal or the slightest whiff of infidelity.
They watched you deny his personal faith convictions, argue his birthplace, and assail his character—all without cause or evidence. They saw you brandish Scriptures to malign him and use the laziest of racial stereotypes in criticizing him.
And through it all, White Evangelicals—you never once suggested that God placed him where he was,
you never publicly offered prayers for him and his family,
you never welcomed him to your Christian Universities,
you never gave him the benefit of the doubt in any instance,
you never spoke of offering him forgiveness or mercy,
your evangelists never publicly thanked God for his leadership,
your pastors never took to the pulpit to offer solidarity with him,
you never made any effort to affirm his humanity or show the love of Jesus to him in any quantifiable measure.
You violently opposed him at every single turn—without offering a single ounce of the grace you claim as the heart of your faith tradition. You jettisoned Jesus as you dispensed damnation on him.
And yet you give carte blanche to a white Republican man so riddled with depravity, so littered with extramarital affairs, so unapologetically vile, with such a vast resume of moral filth—that the mind boggles.
And the change in you is unmistakable. It has been an astonishing conversion to behold: a being born again.
With him, you suddenly find religion.
With him, you’re now willing to offer full absolution.
With him, all is forgiven without repentance or admission.
With him you’re suddenly able to see some invisible, deeply buried heart.
With him, sin has become unimportant, compassion no longer a requirement.
With him, you see only Providence.
And White Evangelicals, all those people who have had it with you—they see it all clearly.
They recognize the toxic source of your inconsistency.
They see that pigmentation and party are your sole deities.
They see that you aren’t interested in perpetuating the love of God or emulating the heart of Jesus.
They see that you aren’t burdened to love the least, or to be agents of compassion, or to care for your Muslim, gay, African, female, or poor neighbors as yourself.
They see that all you’re really interested in doing, is making a God in your own ivory image and demanding that the world bow down to it.
They recognize this all about white, Republican Jesus—not dark-skinned Jesus of Nazareth.
And I know you don’t realize it, but you’re digging your own grave in these days; the grave of your very faith tradition.
Your willingness to align yourself with cruelty is a costly marriage. Yes, you’ve gained a Supreme Court seat, a few months with the Presidency as a mouthpiece, and the cheap high of temporary power—but you’ve lost a whole lot more.
You’ve lost an audience with millions of wise, decent, good-hearted, faithful people with eyes to see this ugliness.
You’ve lost any moral high ground or spiritual authority with a generation.
You’ve lost any semblance of Christlikeness.
You’ve lost the plot.
And most of all you’ve lost your soul.
I know it’s likely you’ll dismiss these words. The fact that you’ve even made your bed with such malevolence, shows how far gone you are and how insulated you are from the reality in front of you.
But I had to at least try to reach you. It’s what Jesus would do.”
John Pavlovitz
January 15, 2021-
Trump has lost reelection. For over 2 months he has peddled a lie that the election was stolen from him. This repeated falsehood has whipped his supporters into a fury. The US Capitol was looted by Trump supporters on January sixth. There are 20,000 soldiers guarding Washington DC for Biden's inaugural. That is more troops than are currently in Iraq and Afghanistan combined . David Brooks describes the war currently raging in the Evangelical church.
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