Category Archives: Politics and religion

Can the Right Please Stop Taking God’s Name in Vain?

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Fra Bartolomeo, St.Dominic (c. 1506-7), Museo di San Marco, Florence.

How hath man parcel’d out thy glorious name,
And thrown it on that dust which thou hast made …

— George Herbert, “Love (I)”

I sometimes meditate on a poem by George Herbert in my morning prayers, assisted by Helen Wilcox’s marvelous annotations [i] (the poet’s 17th-century idioms can be obscure for the contemporary reader).  And although “Love (I)” is not one of Herbert’s best poems, these lines jumped out at me when I read them today, for the debasement of the divine Name by American extremists has been very much on my mind. 

For example: Last week on Newsmax, a far-right cable channel, Eric Bolling (fired by Fox News in 2017 for sexual harassment) was interviewing conspiracy fabulist Lara Logan (“dumped”—her words—by Fox six months ago). Their subject was immigration at the southern border, which Logan said was a plot “to dilute the pool of patriots” in the United States. 

Bolling: “How does it end?”

Logan: “… this is a spiritual battle. I am a firm and solid and immovable believer in God and I believe that God wins.… and if you fight for god, god will fight for you.”

Bolling: “I have to ask you, because my audience is very god-fearing, god-loving, etc. Final thought, please, just a couple seconds: Is god ok with a closed border?”

Logan: “… God believes in sovereignty and national identity and the sanctity of families and all the things that we’ve lived with since the beginning of time, and he knows that the open border is Satan’s way of taking control of the world through all of these people who are his stooges and his servants … the ones who want us eating insects, cockroaches and that while they dine on the blood of children.”

Bolling (nervously): “Ha, ha, yeah.” [ii]

A day later, the opening prayer at the “ReAwaken America” tour in East Hempfield Township, Pennsylvania, went like this:

“Father god, we come to you in the name of Jesus. We’re asking you to open the eyes of president Trump’s understanding, that he will know the time of divine intervention, that he will know how to implement divine intervention, and you will surround him, father, with none of this Deep-State trash, none of this RINO trash. You will surround him with people that you pick with your own mighty hand. In the name of Jesus.”

The crowd, including Eric Trump, Michael Flynn (his father’s disgraced national security adviser), and the current Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor, repeated this evil prayer phrase by phrase.

White “Christian” nationalism is on the rise in America. It’s a toxic mixture of xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, resentment and rage, thinly dressed in pious nostalgia, theological ignorance, and historical lies. For the increasingly extreme right, these are features, not bugs: 61% of Republicans—and 78% of Republican evangelicals—believe the United States should be declared “a Christian nation.” [iii]

I shudder to imagine what they have in mind, but I’m sure it has more to do with reactionary tribal identity and fear of the “other” than with the gospel, or love, or justice, or caring for the vulnerable, or welcoming the stranger, or healing God’s creation. And it’s not just a disgruntled and deluded mob that wants a more theocratic and less inclusive America. The defilement of both democracy and religion extends to the highest levels of government. 

I have written previously about the Supreme Court rushing in where angels fear to tread, substituting highly contested theological assertions for legal reasoning. If Republicans have their way in upcoming elections, it will only get worse. In a carefully argued response to the Dobbs decision on abortion, legal scholar Laurence Tribe warns, 

“… as the Court continues on the path of replacing long-settled individual rights with religiously inspired mandates, the odds would increase that the rules under which we live will reflect the preferences of ever smaller minorities.” [iv]

Gilead, here we come. 

In the January 6 insurrection, the rallying cry was “God! Guns! Trump!” The mob carried signs and shouted slogans proclaiming the will of God and the will of Trump to be identical. One attacker later told the Wall Street Journal how he sought divine guidance before storming the Capitol: 

“Lord, is this the right thing to do? Is this what I need to do?” He says he felt God’s hand on his back, pushing him forward. “I checked with the Lord,” he says. “I checked with Him three times. I never heard a ‘No.’” [v]

Insurrectionist wanted photo.

It is distressing to hear the word “god” on the lips of the wicked. But not shocking. Taking God’s name in vain is an ancient sin, from the Crusaders and Inquisitors of the past to the terrorists and extremists (including elected officials!) of our own day. Whether they sincerely believe that ultimate reality is backing them up, or cynically employ the word to authorize their own seething id, “god” on their lips becomes drained of meaningful content. It refers to nothing outside themselves. To borrow Herbert’s image, they have “parcel’d” out the divine Name, cut it into tiny pieces and tossed it into the trash.[vi]

Of course, “God” has never been a proper name. It’s more of a nickname, enabling us to talk to or talk about the “ground of our being” (Paul Tillich) or the “Love who loves us” (my personal favorite[vii]) without thinking we have reduced the Real to the dimensions of language. The Holy One has many such nicknames: Kyrie, Deus, Abba, Creator, Deliverer, Father, Mother, Spirit, and countless others. In Herbert’s poem, the “glorious name” is “Immortal Love.” If “love” had been invoked instead of “god” by the mob at the Capitol, might it have tempered their violence or extinguished their rage? Or would Love, too, have been thrown so carelessly into the dust?

Seventy years ago, Jewish philosopher Martin Buber wrote a moving defense of the problematic necessity of “God” language in human discourse. I first heard this passage read aloud in a theology class by one of my great mentors, the saintly Robert McAfee Brown. It touched my heart then, and has remained with me through the years: 

“‘God’ is the most heavy-laden of human words. None has become so soiled, so mutilated. Just for this reason I may not abandon it. Generations of men have laid the burden of their anxious lives upon this word and weighed it to the ground; it lies in the dust and bears their whole burden. The races of man with their religious factions have torn the word to pieces; they have killed for it and died for it, and it bears their finger-marks and their blood. Where might I find a word like it to describe the highest! … We may not give the word ‘God’ up. How understandable it is that some suggest we should remain silent about the ‘last things’ for a time in order that misused words may be redeemed! But they are not to be redeemed thus. We cannot cleanse the word ‘God’ and we cannot make it whole; but, defiled and mutilated as it is, can raise it from the ground and set it over an hour of great care.” [viii]

[i] Helen Wilcox, ed., The English Poems of George Herbert (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Each poem is accompanied by extensive notes and a survey of modern critical views.

[ii] I have not capitalized “god” in these kinds of statements, since they speak of something quite other than God. https://twitter.com/JasonSCampbell/status/1583069972267696134?s=20&t=KwdkjkDH7hvg0GSnYm79NA

[iii] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/09/21/most-republicans-support-declaring-the-united-states-a-christian-nation-00057736

[iv] Laurence Tribe, “Deconstructing Dobbs,” New York Review of Books, Sept. 22, 2022, p. 81.

[v] Michael M. Phillips, Jennifer Levitz, and Jim Oberman, One Trump Fan’s Descent Into the Capitol Mob, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 10, 2021, www.wsj.com/articles/one-trump-fans-descent-into-the-u-s- capitol-mob-11610311660 I found it in Andrew L. Seidel, “Attack on the Capitol: Evidence of the Role of White Christian Nationalism,” which contains many such examples. Seidel’s article is Part VI of a highly recommended report and analysis, “Christian Nationalism and the January 6 Insurrection”: https://bjconline.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Christian_Nationalism_and_the_Jan6_Insurrection-2-9-22.pdf

[vi] Herbert’s poem was contrasting the immensity of divine love with the trivializing reductions and diminishments of love we creatures of dust make when we apply it to the wrong object. But as I say at the outset, his lines seem a perfect match for the misuses we make of “God” in our political life.

[vii] From Terence Malick’s film, The Tree of Life (2011).

[viii] Martin Buber, The Eclipse of God (1952), 8-9.

Another Bad Decision: The Supreme Court and School Prayer

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Post-game ritual with Coach Joseph Kennedy, Bremerton High School, WA, October 16, 2015 (Attribution: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals)

A recovering alcoholic reciting the Serenity Prayer, a Catholic nun telling her beads, a child crossing himself before a meal, a quaking Shaker, a meditating yogini, a Huichi Indian chewing a peyote button, a Zen monk in satori, a Lubavitcher dancing with the Torah, Saint Francis receiving the stigmata, a bookie crossing his fingers before the final race, Ebenezer Scrooge pleading for just one more chance, dear God, just one more chance: all this is the work of prayer. In this world one may sit, stand, run, kneel, fall prostrate, dance, faint, or whirl in imitation of the cosmic spheres. One may chant, sing, shout, mutter, groan, or keep silent. One may make use of nuts, beads, books, flags, wheels, shells, stones, drums, idols, icons, jewels, incense, flowers, blood, and fruit, for all these belong to the armamentarium of prayer. 

— Ann and Barry Ulanov [i]

“I wasn’t going to stop my prayer because there was kids around me.”

— Joseph Kennedy, football coach

If January 6th is the coup that failed, the Supreme Court is the one that has succeeded. The extremist majority, abandoning both precedent and good sense, has gone rogue, wreaking havoc with a barrage of malignant decisions. While the recent decisions on abortion and climate change are the most broadly calamitous, I want to address the case of Kennedy vs. Bremerton School District, a poorly considered ideological gambit with unsettling implications for both politics and religion.

Joseph Kennedy was an assistant football coach at Bremerton High School, a few miles by water from my island home in Washington State. Hired in 2008, he began to kneel in silent prayer at midfield after the game. He got the idea from a televised movie about a coach at a Christian school who prays and witnesses with his team as he leads them to the state championship. 

At first, Kennedy prayed alone, but over time he was joined by most of his players, as well as members of the visiting team. At some point he began to add religiously flavored “motivational” speeches to this postgame ritual and, it seems, his prayers were no longer entirely silent. It took seven years for the Bremerton School District to take notice, but when it did, it expressed concerns about upsetting the delicate balance between private religious expression and the religious neutrality mandated by the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution.  

In September, 2015, the District instructed Coach Kennedy to refrain from religious talks and prayers with his players, and to keep his personal religious activity “nondemonstrative” while on duty, “to avoid school endorsement of religious activities.” At first he agreed to the terms, but while driving home after a game, he felt he had “broken [his] commitment to God” by not praying on the field after the game. So he returned to the empty stadium to kneel at the 50-yard line for a brief prayer. 

But that would not be enough for him. On October 14, two days before the Homecoming game,  he informed the District that he planned to resume his “private” postgame prayer practice, insisting that he would not invite or encourage anyone to join him. This was disingenuous, since he had been throwing gasoline on the fire through social media, complaining to the world that he was being persecuted for praying. And his choice of the well-attended Homecoming for his defiant display ensured maximum attention. 

Predictably, he was joined in “prayer” not only by players and news cameras, but also by spectators who jumped fences in a rush to midfield (knocking over some band members in their stampede). This “prayer” circus continued for another two weeks, joined by the sort of politicians who profit from religious resentment. 

By the end of October, Kennedy was out of a job. He likes to say he was fired for praying, but the record reflects a more complicated story. As Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor would note in her carefully argued dissent, there were a number of reasons for Kennedy’s suspension:

“In Kennedy’s annual review, the head coach of the varsity team recommended Kennedy not be rehired because he ‘failed to follow district policy,’ ‘demonstrated a lack of cooperation with administration,’ ‘contributed to negative relations between parents, students, community members, coaches, and the school district,’ and ‘failed to supervise student-athletes after games due to his interactions with media and community’ members. The head coach himself also resigned after 11 years in that position, expressing fears that he or his staff would be shot from the crowd or otherwise attacked because of the turmoil created by Kennedy’s media appearances. Three of five other assistant coaches did not reapply.” [ii]

The head coach’s fear of being “shot from the crowd” might have raised eyebrows in 2016, but it would surprise no one today. The rise of white “Christian” nationalism in the United States has made home-grown terrorism a significant threat. And given the Trumpian swerve of so many white Evangelicals, a lot of that terrorism is tied to twisted religious rhetoric. The Supreme Court’s decision in Kennedy, along with its dismantling of Roe and other radical rulings, will only encourage the Guns-and-God crowd further. Inch by inch, we are slouching toward Gilead.[iii] Lord have mercy. 

In his opinion for the Supreme Court majority, Neil Gorsuch began with a lie: “Joseph Kennedy lost his job as a high school football coach because he knelt at midfield after games to offer a quiet prayer of thanks.” But a lower court judge, in the ruling subsequently overturned by SCOTUS, drew a more honest picture: 

“No case law requires that a high school teacher must be out of sight of students or jump into the nearest broom closet in order to engage in private prayer, but it cannot be denied that this football coach’s prayer at the fifty-yard line, immediately after a game, under stadium lights and in front of players and spectators, objectively sent a public message.” [iv]

Joseph Kennedy poaes with a football in front of the Supreme Court. (After a photo by Win McNamee)

Personal prayer, which Jesus called praying “in secret” (Matthew 6:6), has no human spectators, and any self-consciousness about one’s appearance to others is an interruption of prayerful attention. But liturgical prayer, performed with others in public, is meant to be seen. Worshippers are strengthened and encouraged by the knowledge that they are bound together in ritually shared speech and practice. At the same time, public worship makes a visible statement to the world.

But liturgical prayer requires a common language and worldview. In a pluralistic society, such specific religious commonality is rarely possible. Worship is most authentically and effectively situated within each particular tradition. In the United States, therefore, the government should neither restrict the diversity of worship practices, nor endorse or favor one religious expression over any other. 

Given the importance of religion in American history and culture, and the large number of religious believers in public life, the separation of church and state lacks a firm and absolute boundary. There are Inaugural prayers, Congressional chaplains, funerals for public figures at the “National Cathedral,” and the frequent invocation of divinity by political speakers. Some of that is boilerplate civil religion, but no one can doubt the formative effect of religious belief and practice on our political life, for better or worse. For the record, all six justices who voted against abortion and for school prayer are conservative Catholics, although Gorsuch has been attending an Episcopal church. Sonia Sotomayor is also Catholic, with the remaining justices comprised of one Jew and one Protestant. 

For a long time, public schools have had relative clarity about the Establishment Clause. Justice Sotomayor, in her Kennedy dissent, cited the precedents:

‘The public school is at once the symbol of our democracy and the most pervasive means for promoting our common destiny,’ meaning that ‘[i]n no activity of the State is it more vital to keep out divisive forces than in its schools.’ Families ‘entrust public schools with the education of their children . . . on the understanding that the classroom will not purposely be used to advance religious views that may conflict with the private beliefs of the student and his or her family.’ Accordingly, the Establishment Clause “proscribes public schools from ‘conveying or attempting to convey a message that religion or a particular religious belief is favored or preferred’ or otherwise endorsing religious beliefs.

I myself went to an Episcopal elementary school where every day began with worship. From 7th to 12th grade I attended an Episcopal boys school. We had religion courses, and two chapel eucharists each week. The popular chaplain, Father Gill, conducted a gorgeous Sarum rite, and our hymns were propelled by a youthful desire to make loud sounds in a resonant space. When I returned for my 40th class reunion, I found a school mostly secularized by its merger with a non-religious girls school. When we visited the chapel in a campus tour, I asked our student guide what remained of the school liturgies. “I don’t really know,” she said. “I’ve never been in here before.”

That made me sad, since my religious schools had been so formative and joyous for my own faith. But I know that public schools are neither appropriate nor feasible venues for common prayer. Inclusivity and diversity are a part of their strength, and in matters of religion they must remain neutral ground. That is why the SCOTUS ruling in Kennedy is so unsettling. It opens the door to some very undesirable outcomes. 

The overview provided at the top of the ruling states, “Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic. Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a personal religious observance, based on a mistaken view that it has a duty to suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech.” I have no idea what is meant by “comparable secular speech.” Does it mean anything not involving religious language, or any human rituals—like football games, for example—which do not invoke the divine? The misleading fiction of competition here feels like an absurd whine: They get to be secular, but we don’t get to be religious! 

The Bremerton School District was not trying “to punish an individual for engaging in a personal religious observance.” I can’t judge the sincerity or quality of Coach Kennedy’s initial silent prayers, but once he became the presider at a public ritual as a school employee in a school setting, eager to display himself as a visible and symbolic champion of white Evangelical grievance, it was no longer a private act. Gorsuch argued that non-Evangelical, non-Christian, or non-religious students would be mature enough to feel no pressure to join the prayer circle, whether to please their coach (and get more playing time), or to blend in with their peers. Nope, no pressure at all to conform! Apparently, Gorsuch never went to high school. 

There are many nuances to explore in this case and the Establishment Clause in general. If you want to dive deep, you can read the lower court decision here, and the Supreme Court decision here. But one question in particular interests me. When people say they want prayer back in the schools, what are they imagining? As a liturgist committed to eloquence, poetry and theological depth in verbal prayer, as well as the beauty of holiness in public rituals, I’m not sure I would want to trust an ad-libbing football coach with bad grammar to set the standard for spiritual expression in my community. I suppose that’s my elitism showing. 

But seriously, where do you draw the line? If we sanctioned prayers in schools, who would write them and who would critique them? Can you imagine the state prayers if white Christian nationalists ever seize power? In any case, who would decide what could or could not be included in officially approved forms of prayer? Would there be a government liturgical commission? How would we arrive at the government definitions of such broad and inexact terms as “religion” and “prayer”? And should SCOTUS manage to reestablish prayer in public schools, would any and all forms of religious expression then be acceptable, or only the ones favored by conservative Catholics and white Evangelicals? 

The best prayers are rooted in specific traditions. Generic prayers risk a bland vagueness. But there are occasions—mostly tragic—when some ritual spiritual expression as a nation is regarded by most as a good and necessary thing. President Obama’s singing of “Amazing Grace” during his eulogy for the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, murdered in a mass shooting by a white supremacist in 2015, is a powerful example. 

Might we draw inspiration from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Transcendentalist vision of “unlocking at all risks [our] human doors and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through [us].” [v] (Kids, don’t try this at home!) Or is it possible to emulate the broad sweep of Martin Luther King’s elegantly inclusive phrasing?

“Whether we call it an unconscious process, an impersonal Brahman, or a Personal Being of matchless power and infinite love, there is a creative force in the universe that works to bring the disconnected aspects of reality into a harmonious whole.” [vi]

But what about the “religious speech,” say, of Allen Ginsberg, who after taking acid in the Sixties burst naked out of Timothy O’Leary’s bedroom to declare: “I am the Messiah. I’ve come down to preach love to the world. We’re going to walk through the streets and teach people to stop hating.” [vii]  How would that go over on the 50-yard line of your local high school?

The Supreme Court has lifted the lid on this rabbit hole—and many others. May we find a way to curtail the ambitions of that power-mad cabal before they drag us all into the dark. 

Luckily for us, I’m not a government official, nor are you, dear reader, under any coercion whatsoever. After so much talk about prayer as a political question, let us simply consider the nature of prayer in the wise and powerful words of Native American poet Joy Harjo:[viii]

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you
And know that there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always a sound but other 
Circles of motion
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care 
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we 
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning 
Inside us. 
We pray that it will be done
In beauty. 
In beauty.

[i] Ann and Barry Ulanov, Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer (Westminster John Knox Press, 1982), 10.

[ii] Citations from the Supreme Court opinions and dissents can be found at https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-418_i425.pdf

[iii] Gilead was the new name given to the former United States after a violent takeover by a patriarchal Christian theocracy in Margaret Atwood’s harrowing novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. Of course the original reference for my phrase is from W. B. Yeats’ poem, “The Second Coming,” where an apocalyptic beast, a hideous antichrist, is “slouching toward Bethlehem to be born.”

[iv] Judge Morgan Christen, 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. For the court’s full text: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2021/03/18/20-35222.pdf

[v] David R. Williams, Searching for God in the Sixties (Newark: Univ of Delaware Press, 2010), 116.

[vi] Ibid., 116.

[vii] Ibid., 109.

[viii] Joy Harjo, “Eagle Poem” from In Mad Love and War (Wesleyan University Press, 1990).

Living by the Sword: Putin and the Perils of Messianic Politics

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Vladimir Putin and the icon of the Savior “not made by hands,” (Attibution: AP Photo/RIA Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky, Pool)

“The hour is late. The world is choked with weapons, and dreadful is the mistrust peering from all men’s eyes. The trumpets of war may blow tomorrow. Who knows if we shall see each other in another year? What are we waiting for? Peace must be dared. Peace is the great venture.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (August 1934)

At a pro-war rally in Moscow last month, Vladimir Putin praised his troops for their embodiment of Christian love. “And this is where the words from the Scriptures come to mind,” he said. “‘There is no greater love than if someone gives up his soul for his friends.’ The heart of the message is that this is a universal value for all the people and all the confessions of Russia …. Shoulder to shoulder they are helping and supporting each other and when it’s necessary they cover as if it was their own brother, they cover each other from the bullets. We haven’t had such unity in a long time.”[i]

The crowd loved the speech. “Forward Russia!” they chanted. Jesus! Love! Unity! Was this a political rally, or a religious revival? Some of each, I would think. For a thousand years of Russian history, politics and religion have been closely entwined. In 988, after the Christian conversion of Prince Vladimir of Kievan Rus’—the original Russian state—his subjects waded into the Dnieper River to be baptized en masse.

The fact that this birth narrative of Slavic Orthodoxy took place in Kyiv helps explain the lingering Russian attachment to the Ukrainian capital. It’s their Jerusalem. Even though the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was granted independence from its Russian counterpart in 2018, one third of the Orthodox churches still loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate are situated in the Ukraine, and Putin has argued that his army is coming to their defense. 

The mythology of Holy Rus’, a divinely ordered “kingdom” of Slavic believers—a “Third Rome” inheriting the world-transforming mission of its failed predecessors in Europe and Constantinople—became a staple of Russian identity. In contrast to the perceived decadence, individualism, and secularism of the West, Holy Rus’ was thought to preserve communal spiritual values for the sake of all humankind. In a famous speech given in 1880, Dostoevsky said:

“[T]o be a true Russian does indeed mean to aspire finally to reconcile the contradictions of Europe, to show the end of European yearning in our Russian soul, omni-human and all-uniting, to include within our soul by brotherly love all our brethren, and at last, it may be, to pronounce the final Word of the great general harmony, of the final brotherly communion of all nations in accordance with the law of the gospel of Christ!”[ii]

When Russia seized Crimea in 2014, such Third Rome mythology seemed alive and well when Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed the protests of the “godless West, hostile to the Russians because we [remain] Christian traditionalists.”[iii] Many observers think the invasion of Ukraine is fueled by the same mythology. If so, Putin’s nostalgia for the old Russian Empire would be more than the product of personal and political ambition. It would amount, in that case, to a crusade to recover the lost lands of Holy Rus’ and restore the Third Rome to its proper glory. To let Ukraine drift away into western decadence would betray the myth.

Historian Anna Geifman dismisses any speculation about Putin’s mental stability:

“He’s not crazy — he’s messianic,” she says. “What Putin says is logical, and consistent with his entire policy since 2008 … To sustain his legitimacy, the regime chose to delineate a more national-patriotic and anti-Western direction, grounding its appeal on a strong conservative, Orthodox [Christian] foundation …  He may not use that term [the Third Rome], but he talks about the corruption of the West, with its ‘everything goes’ lifestyle that no longer differentiates between good and evil … Disregarding historical evidence to the contrary, Putin views Ukraine as part of the Russian family. Their independence is a slap in the face to his ideology.”[iv]

Vladimir Putin observers an Orthodox Epiphany ritual imitating the baptismal immersion of Christ.(Attribution: Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo)

Putin is coy about his personal beliefs, though he wears a cross around his neck and makes a public display of his Orthodox rituals. Is his employment of Holy Rus’ rhetoric just a cynical ploy to move the masses, or is he a religious crusader at heart? And which would be worse? Either way, the resulting atrocities have been horrifically evil. The Russian messiah is a war criminal.

Empty strollers in Lviv represent the children killed in the war’s first 3 weeks.

The unholy matrimony of religion and violence is always toxic, poisoning both church and world. We have seen too much of that right here in the United States. Many of the violent seditionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, thought they were enacting God’s will. They blew shofars to make “the walls of corruption crumble.” They waved Jesus banners and Bibles, dragged large crosses into the fray, erected a gallows for their enemies. Their madness was driven by a core belief: “God, guns, and guts made America.”[v]

MAGA Jesus at the January 6 insurrection.

It wasn’t just the confused angers of the mob at work. The madness was deployed by the highest levels of government. As Capitol police were being beaten and killed and politicians were running for their lives, the President’s Chief of Staff sent an email from the White House to the sedition-enabling wife of a Supreme Court justice: 

“This is a fight of good and evil … Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues …”[vi]

For the seditionists, and a majority of white Evangelicals overall, Trump was a messianic figure, seeming to offer deliverance and rebirth to a desperate and despised people. “Donald Trump is in the Bible,” a rioter told a journalist. “Get yourself ready.”[vii]

The moral and theological collapse of right-wing Christianity in America echoes the capitulation of the Protestant German Church to the Third Reich. In the 1930s, most German clergy and theologians joined the Nazi party. Some were just playing it safe, but others were swept up in the nationalistic fervor. It became customary to conclude the baptismal rite by praying “that this child may grow up to be like Adolf Hitler.” And the head of the government Ministry of Church Affairs declared in 1935 that the Führer was “the bearer of a new revelation … Germany’s Jesus Christ.”[viii]

In the face of such absurd and blasphemous perversions of Christianity as we have seen in Russia, Germany, and the United States, what are God’s friends to do? Some would have us abandon religion altogether. Recent American studies have shown that many of the “nones” cite bad politics as their primary reason for rejecting Christianity, while many churches are themselves retreating from public life to avoid the contaminating risks of political action.[ix]

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian and pastor who came of age during the rise of the Nazis. During a fellowship year at Union Theological Seminary in New York, he absorbed Professor Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian realism. If you avoid history’s messy struggles to preserve your purity, Niebuhr warned, the vacuum you leave will be filled by the demonic. 

Attending an activist black church in Harlem also had an enormous impact on young Bonhoeffer. As his superb biographer Charles Marsh has written, “No longer would he speak of grace as a transcendent idea but as a divine verdict requiring obedience and action. The American social theology … had remade him into a theologian of the concrete.”[x] When, a decade later, he joined a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, “he would abandon any hope of innocence, incurring the guilt of responsible action. Of the two evils, it was the one he could abide.”[xi] The failed plot would cost him his life. He died in a concentration camp two weeks before it was liberated by the Allies. His body was never found. 

Bonhoeffer had assented to a selective use of violence in order to interrupt mass murder. The unspeakable suffering of the many outweighed his own need for innocence. But he did not do it lightly, and the political captivity of the German Church made him keenly aware of how religion’s engagement with culture can easily go off the rails. He thought deeply about the ambiguities involved in repairing a broken world, but he knew that we cannot just think our way out of the human condition. We need something more, something divine. And words he wrote during the dark days of World War II still point the way:

“Who stands firm amidst the tumult and cataclysms? … The huge masquerade of evil has thrown all ethical concepts into confusion … The failure of ‘the reasonable ones’—those who think, with the best of intentions and in their naïve misreading of reality, that with a bit of reason they can patch up a structure that has come out of joint—is apparent. With their ability to see impaired, they want to do justice on every side, only to be crushed by the colliding forces without having accomplished anything at all. Disappointed that the world is so unreasonable, they see themselves condemned to unproductiveness; they withdraw in resignation or helplessly fall victim to the stronger … Who stands firm? Only the one whose ultimate standard is not their reason, their principles, conscience, freedom, or virtue; only the one who is prepared to sacrifice all of these when, in faith and relationship to God alone, they are called to obedient and responsible action. Such a person is the responsible one, whose life is to be nothing but a response to God’s question and call.”[xii]

[i] https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/europe/2022/03/18/putin-rallies-stadium-crowds-and-lauds-troops-fighting-in-ukraine/ The quotation is a paraphrase of Jesus’ words in John 15:13, just after he says, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Putin used the Russian word for soul (душу (dushu) instead of the biblical “life.”

[ii] Dostoevsky’s speech, given in honor of Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837), can be found here: http://web.archive.org/web/20050207093332/http://www.dwightwebber.com/pushkinspeech.html

[iii] Quoted in Binyamin Rose, “Russia’s Deep-Seated Messianic Complex,” Mishpacha: Jewish Family Weekly (Mar. 15, 2022) https://mishpacha.com/russias-deep-seated-messianic-complex/

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Emma Green, “A Christian Insurrection” (The Atlantic, Jan. 8, 2021).

[vi] David French, “The Worst Ginni Thomas Text Wasn’t from Ginni Thomas (The Atlantic, March 25, 2022).

[vii] Jeffrey Goldberg, “Mass Delusion in America” (The Atlantic, Jan. 6, 2021).

[viii] Charles Marsh, Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (New York: Vintage Books, 2014), 283, 271.

[ix] Ruth Braunstein, “The Backlash against rightwing evangelicals is reshaping American politics and faith” (The Guardian, Jan. 25, 2022).

[x] Marsh, 135.

[xi] Ibid., 346.

[xii] Ibid., 341.

“It is what we do.”—Ash Wednesday in a Troubled America

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St. Anthony the Abbot in the Wilderness (Osservanza Master, Siena, c. 1435)

For your hand was heavy upon me day and night;
my moisture was dried up as in the heat of summer. 

— Psalm 32:4 [i]

Ash Wednesday is a border crossing. Our foreheads, like passports, are stamped with ashes, and we step bravely into the forbidding wastes of Lent’s strange land. By the time we reach the other side, we will be someone else. 

The Lenten journey is commonly viewed as a time of personal growth and transformation, a solitary immersion in the refiner’s fire, a testing and cleansing of our innermost heart. We learn to travel light, shed the inessentials. We face our demons. We renounce regrets and angers, and interrogate our desire. We listen patiently, till the Silence speaks. The desert saints, who fled the corruptions and distractions of the Roman Empire to meet God on open ground, modeled the classic regimen: 

“[G]et up early every day and acquire the beginning of every virtue and commandment of God. Use great patience, with fear and long-suffering, in the love of God, with all the fervor of your soul and body. Exercise great humility, bear with interior distress, be vigilant and pray often with reverence and groaning, with purity of speech and control of your eyes… Do your work in peace. Persevere in keeping vigil, in hunger and thirst, cold and nakedness, and in sufferings.”[ii]

This year, however, Lent’s collective dimension comes to the fore. The pandemic has made our social behavior a literal choice between life and death. Thoughtless selfishness about masks and social distancing, however trivial it may seem in the moment, may have murderous results. Necessity has forced us all to live, as Thoreau advised, “deliberately.” At the same time, climate change, racism, economic dysfunction and political crisis continue to issue their own relentless summons to collective conversion. 

Return to me with all your heart, says the Lord, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts, not your garments.… Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people.…Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep. Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations.” [iii]

These words of the prophet Joel, recited aloud in the Ash Wednesday liturgy, seem so well-aimed this year. Although the United States is not the biblical chosen people, Joel’s words do hit home. Our toxic national quagmire should put us all in sackcloth and ashes, rending our hearts and crying “Mercy!” for 40 days of public atonement. 

It’s not enough to blame Trump, Hawley, Cruz, McConnell and rest of that sorry mob of schemers and traitors. However despicable their betrayals of democracy, however pathetic their black hearts and shrunken souls, those individuals are but the rotten fruit of our unaddressed national sins, what Martin Luther King called “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism.” [iv] The common response to the violent insurrection unleashed at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 has been a claim of innocence: “This is not who we are.“ And yet, in the words of one candid observer, “It is what we do.” [v]

Writing about coming of age during the Vietnam War, Patricia Hampl describes her attempt to identify with the American ideal rather than its present reality. Walt Whitman was her guide. “Out of the ashes of the Civil War … Whitman fashioned his thrilling American conception, …  envisioning a country full of charmed lovers with arms around each others’ waists.” Distressed by napalm abroad and civil strife at home, Hampl wanted to cling to America’s best idea of itself.

“I could escape American history which was a bad dream and enter the dream of America which I wished could be history. A sleight of hand, a last-ditch attempt to return to the purity of abstraction, to the Mayflower moment, the radiant arrival in paradise before anything had happened. Ourselves—but rinsed of history.” [vi]

No such luck. We the people can only be rinsed on the far side of the Lenten desert. For now, nothing but ashes, sand, and dust, as we endure our dryness with broken and contrite hearts, engage our demons without evasion or fear, renounce our innocence, and surrender to grace. 

Alleluias burned by worshippers on the Last Sunday after Epiphany, 2013.

Related posts:

Ash Wednesday: A Time for Self-Compassion

Is Holiness a Lenten Obligation?

[i] Daily Office Psalm for Ash Wednesday, Episcopal Book of Common Prayer.

[ii] The Apophthegmata (Sayings of the Desert Fathers), in William Harmless, S.J., Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 199-200.

[iii] Joel 2:12-13, 15-17. This passage is one of two choices of Ash Wednesday texts from the Hebrew prophets. The other, Isaiah 58:1-12, is also a cry for collective repentance, adding a list of corporate sins well-known in our own day: injustice, oppression, neglect of the poor, hungry and homeless. 

[iv] Martin Luther King, Jr., from a famous sermon at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967. The text (with audio) is here: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm  A superb article by Andrew Bacevich in June 2020 shows the continuing relevance of King’s sermon today: https://billmoyers.com/story/martin-luther-kings-giant-triplets-racism-yes-but-what-about-militarism-and-materialism/

[v] Mark Danner, “’Be Ready to Fight,’” New York Review of Books (Feb. 11, 2021), 4-8.

[vi] Patricia Hampl, I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), 49. Hampl is one of my favorite writers and storytellers. 

Should “God” Be Spoken at a Political Convention?

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“I alone am God; there is no other.” (Phrygian Sybil, Vito de Marco, pavement of Siena cathedral, c. 1482)

I always cringe when political figures conclude their speeches with “God bless the United States of America.” In that context it is not a prayer; it is an assertion of privilege and dominance, invoking divine consent and protection for a sinful status quo. At best it is a formulaic trivialization of divine-human communication, lacking the humility, attentiveness and depth proper for addressing the Holy. At worst, in the mouths of scheming hypocrites and cruel tyrants, it’s blasphemy.

How many times, at this week’s Republican National Convention, did we hear the word ‘God’ on the lips of angry, hateful, lying partisans? I don’t know which is worse—the cynicism of unbelievers who speak the word only to dupe the gullible, or the bizarre piety of those who seem to believe that God blesses corruption, deception and violence.

One might debate degrees of difference between Democrats and Republicans regarding the promiscuous appropriation of “God” in their rhetoric. No one is without sin in the world of politics, and the abuse of rhetorical piety is a bipartisan failing. It’s hard to remain spotless when it comes to power struggles. But can we at least agree that anyone who has committed, condoned or enabled the torture of caged children should never dare to cry “God!” unless they are lying prostrate on the ground, weeping bitter tears, begging forgiveness in fear and trembling?

Time magazine cover, July 2, 2018.

When I was a young man studying theology with Robert McAfee Brown, he read us a passage from Martin Buber’s Eclipse of God. Fifty years later, I still remember the passionate wisdom of the Jewish theologian’s words. He was responding to a friend who thought “God” to be a word so defiled by centuries of misuse that its utterance should be suspended indefinitely, giving it time to recover its proper purity and depth. Buber replied:

“Yes,” I said, “it is the most heavy-laden of all human words. None has become so soiled, so mutilated. Just for this reason I may not abandon it. The generations have laid the burden of their anxious lives upon this word and weighed it to the ground; it lies in the dust and bears their whole burden. Human beings with their religious factions have torn the word to pieces; they have killed for it and died for it, and it bears their finger marks and their blood.

“Where might I find a word like it to describe the highest! If I took the purest, most sparkling concept from the inner treasure-chamber of the philosophers, I could only capture thereby an unbinding product of thought. I could not capture the presence of the One whom the generations have honoured and degraded with their awesome living and dying. I do indeed mean God whom the hell-tormented and heaven-storming generations mean. Certainly, they draw caricatures and write ‘God’ underneath; they murder one another and say ‘in God’s name.’ But when all madness and delusion fall to dust, when they stand over against Him in the loneliest darkness and no longer say, ‘He, He,’ but rather sigh ‘Thou,’ shout ‘Thou,’ all of them the one word, and when they then add ‘God,’ is it not the real God whom they all implore, the One Living God, the God of the human race? Is it not He who hears them?

“And just for this reason, is not the word ‘God’, the word of appeal, the word which has become a name, consecrated in all human tongues for all times? We must esteem those who interdict it because they rebel against the injustice and wrong which is so readily referred to ‘God’ for authorisation. But we may not give up. How understandable it is that some suggest we should remain silent about ‘the last things’ for a time in order that the misused words may be redeemed! But they are not to be redeemed thus. We cannot cleanse the word ‘God’ and we cannot make it whole; but, defiled and mutilated as it is, we can raise it from the ground and set it over an hour of great care.”

The Deposition (early Gothic; Leon cathedral on the Camino de Santiago)

On the Brink of War: “Choose life.”

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Matteo di Giovanni, The Slaughter of the Innocents (detail, floor panel, Siena cathedral, 1481)

A madman has brought us to the brink of war. No one can predict where we go from here. If we’re lucky, the U.S. and Iran will both back off and stand down. If we’re not, hello Armageddon. But the fact that a psychologically unstable and dangerously impulsive ignoramus is steering us toward disaster, while Congress and public seem powerless or unwilling to relieve him of his command, should both terrify and sicken us. The “shining city on a hill” has become a rogue state: cruel, murderous, and––if we allow ourselves to be drawn into a war with Iran––clearly insane. 

Politicians and pundits are debating the reasons and guessing the consequences, but who is talking about the madness of a president who commits murder during his golf vacation? Who is calling out the evil of a president who would invite apocalypse to evade impeachment? Pretending not to notice these things is a form of enabling, if not its own kind of madness. 

People say Soleimani deserved death for taking so many lives. Do we really want to go down that road? If the death toll from the administration’s dismantling of health care and environmental protections should produce more fatalities than those caused by the Iranian general, what then would Trump deserve? 

We must say no to murder, and no to war. State-sponsored assassination is both repugnant and counterproductive. And military violence has become virtually obsolete as an instrument of national policy, as we have seen over the last three decades of endless and fruitless conflict. Will we never learn?

Twenty-nine years ago this month, I preached against Desert Storm, four days after we began to assault Iraq with the terrifying technology of “shock and awe.” It was not a popular sermon––over 80% of Americans took the opposite view.

I cited a declaration of the Anglican conference of bishops in 1978: “War as a matter of settling disputes is incompatible with the teaching and example of our Lord Jesus Christ. The use of modern technology of war is the most striking example of corporate sin and the prostitution of God’s gifts.” But in 1991 our country was in love with our sophisticated weapons, and people were intoxicated by the smell of victory. 

For those who watched Desert Storm on television, it seemed like a video game. The “enemy” were just blips on the screen, bloodless and abstract, vaporized by noisy explosions. In my sermon, I tried to humanize the conflict: 

In Baghdad’s art center, there is a painting of Jesus, gazing at the world around him with an expression of profound sadness and pain. He wears a Palestinian scarf around his neck and he is handcuffed.

If a Christian bomber pilot knew Christ was in Baghdad, would he deliver his payload? Of course, war is not run by the personally motivated decisions of soldiers. War is organized from above. Soldiers just play their assigned part. But they can only function as long as the enemy remains a mere target, rather than a brother or a sister. They must practice indifference to the stories of their victims. Don’t see. Don’t feel.

But you and I cannot let this war be a video game. Instead, let us see and know that it is Christ being crucified in every victim. Let us watch Christ’s hands being pierced; let us hear his cry of anguish. Let us witness the Madonna and Child blown to bits in the air raid. 

As I said, it was not my most popular sermon. 

We pray every day to be delivered from evil. May that be so in our present danger. But if war comes, may we have the courage and the faith to choose Christ over the “powers” of this world, and say no to the violence. As Martin Luther King reminded us, “Our ultimate end must be the creation of the beloved community.” Ironically, Desert Storm began on Martin Luther King Day, seeming to mock the way of nonviolence. But faith takes the long view. Violence has no future. 

Today I give you the choice of life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life.

                         –– Deuteronomy 30:19 

Festo Kivengere, the Ugandan bishop whose people suffered greatly under the unspeakably barbaric rule of Idi Amin, was once asked: “If you were sitting in Idi Amin’s office with a gun in your hand, what would you do?”

“I would give him the gun, “Kivengere replied. “I would tell him, ‘This is your weapon. My weapon is love.’”

When Love is the Way

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Magnus Zeller, The Orator, Germany c. 1920 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art)

The Episcopal “Daily Office” provides prayers and Scripture for various times of day. Derived from medieval monastic liturgies, the practice of hallowing the beginning, middle and end of our days with both corporate and private prayer can offer refuge and refreshment, lifting us out of the relentless rush of time to remember what it’s all about and deepen our connection with the holy One, who is our Source, our Companion, and our End.

This venerable prayer practice is not an escape from the world, but a way of attending to it with clearer vision. Thus the Daily Office offers challenge as well as comfort. The God of history will not let us ingore the calamity and suffering wrought by what the original Book of Common Prayer called “the devices and desires of our own hearts.”

Sometimes the biblical readings seem ripped from the headlines, like this week’s Wednesday reading from Proverbs:

There are six things that the Lord hates,
seven that are an abomination to him:
haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
and hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked plans,
feet that hurry to run to evil,
a lying witness who testifies falsely,
and one who sows discord in a family.[i]

I have to confess that in the midst of my prayer time I succumbed to uncharitable amusement when I read these words. They describe the American president––and his corrupt and cruel minions––so perfectly! But neither righteous outrage nor satirical jesting––and certainly not any presumption of our own goodness––will deliver us from the menace of these times.

Of course we must take sides against the malicious designs of evil tyrants in order to defend the vulnerable and preserve the common good. As Reinhold Niebuhr reminded my generation of theology students, trying to keep one’s own hands clean in a dirty conflict can be a form of capitulation. Sometimes our innocence must be sacrificed in the historical struggle for a better world. Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew this when he joined the plot against Hitler.

But engaging the powers of darkness solely on their own terms is toxic, perhaps fatal, in the long run. If our goal is community and communion, we cannot make division and opposition our primary weapons. On the day following the assassination of Martin Luther King (and two months before his own violent end), Bobby Kennedy made this point boldly to an audience afflicted by passions of grief, fear and rage.

“We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. . . . violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.”[ii]

The United States has weathered dark and dangerous times before. But with the exception of the Civil War, has there been another time when our nation’s very survival has been in such doubt? Institutional and legal norms are under daily assault by the White House and Congress; Republicans turn a blind eye to corruption and the clear threat to democracy; racism, hatred and fear are fostered and encouraged by “the most powerful man on earth,” and a third of this country lives in a fact-free bubble, impervious to reason and morality. A recent headline called us “The Banana States of America.”[iii]

Bells of warning should ring out Danger! in every city and town. Prophets should shout The end is near! on every street. Pundits may worry, dissenters object, and activists resist, but where is the widespread public cry of peril and alarm? Imagine such passivity after Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Are most of us still taking for granted our national stability? Do we simply assume everything will return to normal after the next two elections?

In a recent Washington Post column, “Watch What Happens in Rome,” Anne Applebaum examines current Italian politics as a disturbing cautionary tale for the United States. After finally ousting a corrupt authoritarian leader, Italy failed to revert to a more benign and centrist public order.

“Reeling from the flood of broken promises, electorates did not turn back to honest realists who told them hard truths or laid out the hard choices. On the contrary: In Italy, as in so many Latin American countries in the past, the failure of populism has led to greater dislike of “elites,” both real and imaginary; a greater demand for radical and impossible change; and a greater sense of alienation from politics and politicians than ever before.”

Applebaum then wonders what we all should be wondering:

“In President Trump’s wake, we too are not necessarily going to return to the status quo ante, to a tame trade-off between centrist conservatives and centrist liberals, all of whom respect the Constitution, believe in the old definitions of patriotism and get elected based on their experience and political views. It is just as likely that national politics becomes a patchwork of competing, incompatible single-issue groups and causes; that otherwise disparate groups meet one another online and form temporary alliances. It is just as likely that irresponsibility and irrationality become something that people vote for, not something that they reject. Watch what happens in Rome, because it could be America’s future.”[iv]

Whether this or some other equally destabilizing scenario should come to pass, what are the friends of God called to do? Sadly, many of my Christian brothers and sisters are only making things worse. As another columnist, Leonard Pitts, lamented last week:

“Having seen putative Christians excuse the liar, rationalize the alleged pedophile, justify the sexual assaulter and cheer as walls are raised against the most vulnerable, it’s obvious that many of those who claim that name embody a niggardly, cowardly, selfish and situational “faith” that has little to do with Jesus.”[v]

In encouraging contrast to such shameless apostasy, an ecumenical group of Christian leaders has issued a timely manifesto, “Reclaiming Jesus: A Confession of Faith in a Time of Crisis.” Click the link to read the whole text, and share widely. It’s a good theoretical foundation for a gospel-based resistance.

The Confession is structured in six sections, pairing what we believe as disciples of Jesus and what we reject. Yes to imago Dei, no to racism; yes to compassion and kindness, no to neglect or abuse of the vulnerable; yes to servanthood, no to domination; yes to communion, no to division and oppression; yes to truth, no to lies; yes to global community, no to “America first.”

The last of these may be the most challenging for those who subscribe to the great American heresy of exalting nation over God. As Clarence Jordan observed many years ago, the biggest lie told in America is, “Jesus is Lord.” But “Reclaiming Jesus” aims higher: “Our churches and our nations are part of an international community whose interests always surpass national boundaries. We in turn should love and serve the world and all its inhabitants rather than to seek first narrow nationalistic purposes.”

Tonight the framers of this Confession are processing to the White House gates for a candlelight vigil. As they have written,

“We are living through perilous and polarizing times as a nation, with a dangerous crisis of moral and political leadership at the highest levels of our government and in our churches. We believe the soul of the nation and the integrity of faith are now at stake.”[vi]

Among the many church leaders marching in that procession will be the Most Rev. Michael Curry, the Episcopal Presiding Bishop whose sermon on love’s redemptive power, at last week’s royal wedding, invited a global audience to imagine the world as God made it to be:

Imagine our homes and families when love is the way.
Imagine neighborhoods and communities when love is the way.
Imagine our governments and nations when love is the way.
Imagine business and commerce when love is the way.
Imagine this tired old world when love is the way.[vii]

Let all the people say: Amen!

 

 Related posts

7 Spiritual Practices: A To-do List for the Time of Trial

Dante and Lewis Carroll Walk into a Dark Wood

 

[i] Proverbs 6:16-19.

[ii] Remarks to the Cleveland City Club, April 5, 1968: https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/RFK-Speeches/Remarks-of-Senator-Robert-F-Kennedy-to-the-Cleveland-City-Club-Cleveland-Ohio-April-5-1968.aspx

[iii] Patrick T. Fallon, “The Banana States of America,” Washington Post, May 22, 2018.

[iv] Anne Applebaum, “Watch what happens in Rome. It could be our post-Trump future,” Washington Post, May 18, 2018.

[v] Leonard Pitts, “Oregon school district forced LGBTQ students to read the Bible––how Christian,” Miami Herald, May 17, 2018 (http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article211384374.html).

[vi] “Reclaiming Jesus: A Confession of Faith in a Time of Crisis” (http://www.reclaimingjesus.org)

[vii] https://www.episcopalchurch.org/posts/publicaffairs/presiding-bishop-currys-sermon-royal-wedding

Wars and Rumors of Wars

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Antiwar poster, World War I

With a cornered President governing by tantrum and a National Security Advisor eager for Armageddon, storm clouds are gathering––and peacemakers are on the alert. A recent article by Stephen M. Walt in Foreign Policy magazine provides the “Top Five Warning Signs We’re Going to War”:

  • The danger is grave and growing.
  • War will be easy and cheap if we act now.
  • War will solve our problems.
  • The enemy is evil and/or crazy.
  • Peace is unpatriotic.[i]

 Sound familiar? Read the whole article here. And while you’re at it, consider Laurence Lewis’ cautionary piece, “Wars are easy to start. They’re not so easy to end,”[ii] as well as Michael Klare’s “The New ‘Long War,’” which notes a strategic shift in military planning, away from counterterrorism toward old-style great powers confrontation.[iii] These days, it’s natural to be fully absorbed by the downward spiral of American democracy, but the dogs of war are barking as well. Whether the prospect be endless quagmire or sudden apocalypse, we ignore the prophets’ warnings at our peril.

In 1991, Desert Storm rained down fire on Iraq in the name of who-can-remember-what. Twenty-seven years later, we’re still in the global violence business. But after so much blood, treasure and toil, are things better, worse, or the same––not only in the Middle East, but in an America which has been living by the sword for far too long?

In going through some old files last week, I came across the sermon I preached in an Episcopal parish on the first Sunday after the launch of Desert Storm, which had received an overwhelming 79% approval rating from the American people (the war, not the sermon!). In the wake of the recent missile attacks in Syria, it was interesting to re-read that ancient text in light of what has changed––and what has not––in the world, in my country, and in myself over the past three decades. It also made me wonder what God’s friends ought to be saying and doing in our present time of trial.  

I’d be interested to hear your own thoughts on these questions. Meanwhile, here’s what my younger self said so many years ago:

A sermon preached at Christ Church in Ontario, California, on January 20th, 1991.

I would speak to you of war. This war. Our war. Let me say at the outset that I do not believe it to be a just war.

We have been told that Saddam Hussein is a Hitler. But for the last seven or eight years, he was our ally. In violation of U.S. law prohibiting arms sales to terrorist nations, the Reagan-Bush administration secretly provided Iraq with weapons by laundering them through countries such as Jordan. Saddam is a bad and brutal man, no doubt. But is Assad of Syria [Haffez al-Assad, the current president’s father] any better? And Assad, for now, is our ally.

We have been told that we are there to liberate Kuwait, but I doubt that a free Kuwait is what the Emir-in-exile as in mind. So let us be spared the pieties invented to solicit public opinion. This is a war of power politics.

To put it in its best light, we want to demonstrate that the sovereignty of nations cannot be taken lightly if we are to have a stable “new world order.” That is fine as far as it goes. Now you might say, in the light of 52 cases of border-crossing aggression since World War II––most of which the United States ignored––that we might not have paid as much attention to this one if Kuwait’s chief export were broccoli.

But purity of intent is not the issue to be addressed here. What much concern us today is the means employed to achieve our ends. Is this war necessary?

Last Tuesday, George [H. W.] Bush, who worships according to the Book of Common Prayer as we do, spoke with Presiding Bishop Edmund Browning by telephone. We don’t know what was said. But hours later, President Bush unleashed the dogs of war, while his bishop led a march of protest from the National Cathedral to the White House gates.

President Eisenhower once said that “every war is going to astonish you.” The anxiety of these terrible days exists because we don’t know just where the dogs of war intend to go. Perhaps this war will be quick and cause only a minimum of pain for the sake of the greatest good. But what if the greatest air assault in the history of the world has already functioned as a recruiting program for a new generation of terrorists?

Or what if Israel is drawn into the conflict, the coalition falls apart, and the war escalates into a chemical or even nuclear conflict? What if we take out Hussein, only to see another demon take his place, or find the vacuum of Iraq’s defeat filled by Iran? What if Hussein burns the oil fields, throwing world markets into chaos and creating environmental disaster from the massive smoke that would result? What if the war drags on into a war of attrition, causing immense loss of life on both sides and deeply dividing the American people? And what if we can’t foot the bill for this war without robbing the poor and neglecting the environment?

The scenarios of disaster multiply. We pray that none of them will come to pass. But once we started the war, they all became possibilities.

According to the CIA and other experts advising the President, sanctions were working. And serious diplomacy had not even been attempted. This war was nowhere close to being “necessary.”

But this war is not only unnecessary. It is, in the words of the National Council of Churches, “a failure of the human spirit.” It is immoral to punish a dictator by killing innocent women and children. As the Anglican bishops declared in the Lambeth Conference of 1978:

“War as a matter of settling international disputes is incompatible with the teaching and example of our Lord Jesus Christ. The use of the modern technology of war is the most striking example of corporate sin and the prostitution of God’s gifts.”

On a purely pragmatic level, it should be added that the destructiveness of modern weapons has made war obsolete as an instrument of national policy. War has become eschatological. The suicide of the planet seems to be an excessive price to pay for the settling of a border dispute. And even if this war remains “limited,” there can be no winning in the long term.

Violence breeds violence. Americans all suffer from amnesia. We don’t understand cultures with long memories. But I have met Arabs in the Middle East who are still mad about the Crusades.

Americans love winning. “We’re number one!” and all that. But there is a new attitude gaining acceptance in recreational circles today, which is this: “If your opponent stops having fun, you lose.”

Heavy-handed violence––the big guy pushing the little guys around––not only leaves all the essential conflicts unresolved, but it inflames the passions that obstruct fruitful dialogue and resolution. Beware of “victory.” And if our victory is quick and painless, we face another danger: our faith in violence will grow deeper.

Sam Nunn, Chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, said last week that our faith in weapons technology has been vindicated. All those defense contractors who took so much heat for cost overruns and other problems can now stand up and take a bow.

Simone Weil defined violence as the transformation of a person into a thing. When the warrior had to look his victim in the eye, this depersonalization required some work. But weapons technology has made such detachment effortless.

Desert Storm is a great video game. Iraqis are just blips on a screen––abstract, bloodless targets in an electronic arcade. Eighty-three percent of Americans, according to the polls, are caught up in this game. Television, which the military is treating as an instrument of policy, is leading the cheers. Hey, our weapons work! We’re going to win one for a change! I myself am not immune to this. I can feel the predators in my past, singing in my blood.

What, then, is a follower of Jesus to do? First of all, we must look for the cross in this. Where is the crucified Christ to be found? Where Christ is always to be found––in the suffering of the sons and daughters of God. At the cross, there are no Americans, there are no Iraqis. There is only the One who suffers.

In Baghdad’s art center, there is a painting of Jesus, looking over the world with an expression of profound sadness and pain. He wears a Palestinian scarf around his neck, and he is handcuffed. If a Christian pilot knew that Christ was in Baghdad, would he deliver his payload?

Of course, war is not run by the personally motivated decisions of individual soldiers. War is organized from above. Soldiers just play their part. But they can only function as long as the enemy remains a mere target, rather than a brother or sister. Executioners must be indifferent to the stories of their victims. Don’t see. Don’t feel.

You and I cannot let this war be a video game, bloodless and abstract. Let us see Christ crucified in every victim. Let us see whose hands are pierced by the nails, whose cry of anguish rends the heavens. Let us see the Madonna and Child blown to bits in the air raid. Let us see Christ in the foxhole, taking the bullet meant for his buddy.

But let us also see beyond the cross, to the risen life already present in the hope of the faithful. The saints have illumined even the darkest times by holding fast to this hope. Christian Century magazine gives a striking example of this from our own day:

Festo Kivengere, Anglican bishop in Uganda, was a witness to, and in many ways a victim of the barbaric rule of Idi Amin. While in exile he was asked: ‘If you were sitting in Idi Amin’s office with a gun in your hand, what would you do?’ He responded, ‘I would give the gun to Amin, saying, ‘This is your weapon; my weapon is love.’

The peacemaker does not retreat from the struggle against evil. But the peacemaker responds to hate and aggression in ways that create community rather than enemies. When Lincoln was urged to wreak vengeance on the leaders of the Confederacy at the end of the Civil War, he said, ‘Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?” And Martin Luther King, whose birthday was so disgracefully dishonored by the bombings last week, said, ‘Our ultimate end must be the creation of the blessed community.’

What then is a follower of Jesus to do? Here are the recommendations of the Anglican bishops who met at Lambeth in 1978, calling on Christian people everywhere:

  1. To reexamine as a matter of urgency their own attitudes towards, and their complicity with, violence in its many forms.
  2. To take with utmost seriousness the questions which the teachings of Jesus places against violence in human relationships and the use of armed force by those who would follow him, and the example of redemptive love which the Cross holds before all people.
  3. To engage themselves in non-violent action for justice and peace and to support others so engaged, recognizing that such action will be controversial and may be personally very costly.
  4. To commit themselves to informed, disciplined prayer, not only for all victims of violence, especially for those who suffer for their obedience to the Man of the Cross, but also for those who inflict violence on others.
  5. To protest in whatever way possible at the escalation of the sale of armaments by the producing nations to the developing and dependent nations, and to support with every effort all international proposals and conferences designed to place limitations on, or arrange reductions in, the armaments of war of the nations of the world.

I would add to this list a call for immediate cessation of hostilities and the beginning of real and constructive diplomacy in the Middle East.

Last Sunday night I joined with 1500 Christians, Jews and Muslims for a service of peace. The very fact of such a gathering was extraordinary. We listened to each other’s scriptures, we prayed each other’s prayers. And, at the end, we stood to make a common affirmation which concluded with these words based on the Book of Deuteronomy:

Before us this evening are set life and death.
We choose life
so that we and our children
may live.
Let it be so.

 

Window detail, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Virginia City, Montana (1903)

 

[i] Stephen M. Walt, “How to Start a War in 5 Easy Steps,” Foreign Policy online, April 2, 2018: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/02/how-to-start-a-war-in-5-easy-steps/

[ii] Laurence Lewis, “Wars are easy to start. They’re not so easy to end,” Daily Kos, April 15, 2018: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/4/15/1756334/-Wars-are-easy-to-start-They-re-not-so-easy-to-end

[iii] Michael Klare, “The New ‘Long War’”, April 3, 2018: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176406/

One Year Later: 7 Spiritual Practices for the Time of Trial

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Albrecht Dürer, Knight, Death and the Devil (1513)

And though this world, with devils filled,
should threaten to undo us;
we will not fear, for God hath willed
his truth to triumph through us;
the prince of darkness grim,
we tremble not for him;
his rage we can endure,
for lo! his doom is sure,
one little word shall fell him.

— Martin Luther

Save us from the time of trial . . .

— The Lord’s Prayer

 

One year ago today, the United States did the unthinkable. The ugliest impulses of the American psyche, abetted by Russian meddling, delusional propaganda and a broken electoral process, handed the presidency to a seething cauldron of vanity and malice. This is not just a national embarrassment; it is inflicting enormous and lasting harm on our people, our natural resources, our democracy and our planet. Everything I wrote in a pre-election post, Ten Reasons to Stop Trump Now, is proving depressingly accurate.

After picking myself up off the floor last November, I composed a list of Seven Spiritual Practices for this dark and threatening time. It is not so much a guide to personal survival as it is a call to action, with due attention to the self-care necessary to sustain our collective Resistance without burning out, or succumbing to anger and despair.

So I am posting it again, in the hope that it may still prove relevant and helpful. And I would welcome your own feedback about the practices which have sustained and empowered you over the last year.

In thinking about what images to select for this re-posting, two came immediately to mind. The first is Dürer’s Knight (above), riding steadfastly through a “world with devils filled.” It seems a perfect image for today’s resister, and may well have been inspired by Erasmus’ advice to the faithful soul, written nine years before Dürer’s engraving:

“In order that you may not be deterred from the path of virtue because it seems rough and dreary … and because you must constantly fight three unfair enemies—the flesh, the devil, and the world—this third rule shall be proposed to you: all of those spooks and phantoms which come upon you as if you were in the very gorges of Hades must be deemed for naught after the example of Virgil’s Aeneas … Look not behind thee.”

My second image for our “time of trial” is Theodore Géricault’s “The Raft of the Medusa,” depicting the aftermath of a shipwreck in 1816, when 147 sailors were set adrift on a makeshift raft with little hope for rescue. Only 15 survived the ordeal. When I look at this painting, I see the Trumpian future, unless we can find the resolve––and the means––to end this nightmare.

Theodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa (1818-1819)

So here again is my post from November 18, 2016, offered in a spirit of hope:

Last week’s question was, What happened? This week, we are beginning to ask, What now? After the tears and the shock, the heartache and the nausea, how do we pull ourselves together and begin to resist the downward spiral of hate, fear, and planetary suicide?

As I was refilling the birdfeeders in our backyard on 11/9, choruses of chickadees and juncos signaled their pleasure. The beauty of the natural world provided welcome solace on a grim morning, and for a moment I imagined myself an insular neutral in a remote Swiss valley during World War II, or a cloistered monk during the Dark Ages, quietly tending my little Eden while chaos raged somewhere far away.

But retreat isn’t really an option. It’s not just love of country that makes me unwilling to concede our future to “the power of the dog” (Psalm 22:19). The fate of the entire world is at stake. This country has enormous influence and impact. If the American heart gets painted black, the suffering will be universal.

A friend in Virginia sent me a Mexican proverb after the election: “They thought they’d buried us, but they didn’t know we were seeds.” Exactly! We carry the power of springtime within us, to outlast the darkest winter and “restore earth’s own true loveliness once more.”[i]

Thinking about where to begin, I have reflected on seven verbs of spiritual practice. It’s a small offering to our ongoing collective conversation, and comments, arguments, and shares are welcome.

Pray

When evil threatens and courage fails, prayer remembers a greater power, the life-giving Source enabling us to endure and flourish. Both privately and in community, let us make daily intercession for our country, its leaders, and all who work to make it better. Let us also ask for the strength, patience, wisdom and courage to navigate the next four years. Our fiercest energies, anxieties, longings and passions are cries that will pierce the heavens. God support and save us!

But the prayerful life is not just a matter of words and devotional practices. It is a way of being, an all-consuming relationship of deep trust in the infinite and unconquerable Love who loves us. Even in times of suffering and doubt, the prayerful ones speak as if they are being heard. “Thy will be done,” cry the prisoners of hope. And, as Scripture promises, God provides.

If we are seeds, faith makes the best soil. We are not alone. It’s not entirely up to us. God will outwit our worst failings. Resurrection has the last word.

Fast

I have had to fast from the news since the election. The awfulness of the presidential appointments, the childish tweets, the widespread outbreaks of bigotry and bullying, the sneering of the haters and the fears of the vulnerable—it is all so ugly and maddening. Many of the discussions on social media are equally distressing. So many trolls, so much ignorance and bitterness. If I drink too much of the stuff, I’m soon spinning down the rabbit hole into a dystopian Wonderland. Curiouser and curiouser, to say the least.

But the peace of my soul is not the only reason for a news fast. Evil is like Medusa’s face. Gaze too long and you turn to stone, transfixed by horror. How do we hate hate without becoming hateful ourselves? The rage provoked by repugnant beliefs, bad behavior and delusional assertions can become addictive. It feels good to denounce the rascals and villains. It’s even entertaining to watch others do it. We think we are resisting evil, only to discover we are actually increasing its power as we succumb to its mesmerizing grammar.

Of course we need stay informed if we are to resist effectively. But bad news, whether fact or fiction, is like a plague. We should be mindful of its infectious toxicity. Remember to fast from evil and feast on goodness.

Repent

Every day ought to include honest self-examination: Where and how have I impeded or ignored the divine project of transforming lives and sanctifying the universe? How can I change my life to cooperate more fully with Love’s unfolding future?

Righteous indignation is natural right now, but it is also dangerous, because it may fail to “include itself in the problem against which it reacts. It judges in a divisive way, pitting ‘me’ against the rest . . .”[ii]

It is very tempting to point fingers and call people names, but that is not a constructive path to addressing the pain and anger festering in the American psyche. I’m not sure exactly how to pursue that path in a divided nation, but believe that the repentance of the “righteous” is an important step. Whatever injustices, slights, resentments or pathologies may underlie this election, we all have all played some part, even if only by passivity and default. However noble our intentions or wishes may be, we are all participants in a society where suffering is unequally distributed and great damage to people and planet is done every day in our name.

As Simon Tugwell writes in his book on the Beatitudes, even the “innocent” and the “good” are implicated in “the whole situation of wrongness, in which we and everybody else are caught up from the very moment of our birth.”

The saving image that comes to mind for me is the scene in The Brothers Karamazov when that dysfunctional K family is arguing and posturing in the monastic cell of Father Zossima. Their loud bickering, as bullying and shameless as a Trump rally, is especially shocking in the presence of such a holy and gentle man. The elder remains silent, making no attempt to intervene. Then, suddenly, he stands up, steps forward to one of the brothers—the one he intuits to be suffering the most—and kneels before him. Bowing his forehead to touch the ground, he says, “Forgive me! Forgive me, all of you!”[iii]

Prophesy

The practice of forgiveness and compassion does not mean we remain silent about what is wrong, unjust, or destructive in our common life. And we must never allow Trump’s behavior or crazy talk to be normalized. His promised actions, from mass deportations to torture to environmental destruction, are not the customary swing of the pendulum. And his proto-fascist attack on democracy has no precedent in our history. Such things are evil-minded folly, “leading us straight to tragedy.”[iv]

Like the biblical prophets and their American successors like Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and the Berrigans, we must denounce evil, confront the powers, envision the good, and exhort the better angels of our nature. Over the next four years, the unemployment rate among prophets should reach an all-time low.

That a majority of white Christians voted for Trump does raise troubling questions about the efficacy of religious teaching. As Clarence Jordan said fifty years ago, the biggest lie told in America today is, “Jesus is Lord.” But God is surprisingly resourceful, and the Trump years may be a refiner’s fire, forging a more faithful witnessing Church out of the flames. In any case, Jesus’ friends do not have the luxury of an uninvolved, privatized religion. We are being called most urgently to raise our voices, practice our faith, and minister to the vulnerable in the public square, whatever the cost.

As Thomas Merton wrote when the national conscience was being seriously tested in the 1960s, Christians must either “face the anguish of being a true prophet” or “enjoy the carrion comfort of acceptance in the society of the deluded by becoming a false prophet and participating in their delusions.”[v]

Love

In times of great calamity or loss, the need to connect intensifies and conversations multiply. In recent days, many of us have engaged with friends and strangers over coffee, on social media, at worship and in the streets, seeking comfort, encouragement, shared concern and collective wisdom. As labor activist Joe Hill told his supporters just before he was murdered by the state of Utah, “Don’t mourn. Organize!”

But Love won’t let us stay huddled in circles of the like-minded. In a 1969 BBC production of the gospel story, many are bewildered when Jesus commands them to love their enemies. They start to grumble at such a hard teaching. “It is easy to love only those who love you,” Jesus tells them. “Would I come to tell you easy things? Do you want me to tell you easy things?”[vi]

How do I love my enemies even as I reject and resist the harm they inflict? As hard as it may be to cross the divide between ourselves and those who offend or outrage us, God will not let us do otherwise. There is no “us” and “them” in the Kingdom. Simon Tugwell puts this as well as any:

“It is theologically and philosophically disastrous to envisage heaven and hell sitting side by side forever, each bearing witness to the failure of the other . . . According to the classic Christian ascetic tradition, it is always futile to squander our anger on one another. That is a waste of anger. Anger is made to be directed against the demonic, not against our fellow men and women.”[vii]

Let it begin with our crazy relative at Thanksgiving dinner, but eventually, like it or not, we’ll have to work our way up to loving Steve Bannon and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as well. Unimaginable? Jesus never said it would be easy.

Serve

In the Book of Common Prayer, the newly baptized commit to a lifetime of service, to “persevere in resisting evil … to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself . . . to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.”[viii]

In all my post-election conversations, my friends have expressed a fresh resolve to be changemakers, to take on some new commitment that will make a difference. Episcopal priest Bill Teska, a friend in Minneapolis, offered a longtime activist’s suggestions on Facebook:

“It is time to get busy. Go to meetings. Go to demonstrations. Give whatever you can to organized non-violence resistance. I would say that qualifies as almsgiving, because the end is the defense of the poor and helpless.”

And another priest-friend, Gary Hall, posted this on his blog:

“We must, like the earliest Christians, be prepared to present ourselves as a counter-force and counter-culture to imperial values and norms… As alienated as we may now feel, we will find our antidote to depression in civic engagement on behalf of the gospel, confident that a new day is coming to be born.”[ix]

There are countless ways to light candles in this darkness. Find yours.

Hope

 Last weekend many of us were wondering how the first post-election Saturday Night Live would find anything funny in what America had just done. But instead of the expected opening comedy skit, the brilliant Kate McKinnon simply sang Leonard Cohen’s aching lament:

… And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Thanks be to God, history’s outcome is not up to us. Whatever follies we commit in sin or ignorance, God’s kindnesses are never exhausted. Should heaven and earth pass away, the Love who loves us remains. Kill the Author of life and she will rise again. This is our radical, wild hope. It is why we sing Hallelujah even at the grave. Even in the deepest hell.

Practice this hope every day, every hour. And pass it on.

 

 

 

[i] From an Advent hymn, “On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry”, words by Charles Coffin, tr. Charles Winfred Douglas after John Chandler. The Episcopal Hymnal 1982, #76

[ii] Simon Tugwell, The Beatitudes: Soundings in Christian Traditions (Springfield, IL: Templegate Publishers, 1985), 87

[iii] Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, tr. Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Vintage Classics, 1991), 74-5

[iv] Marty Kaplan,” Taking Our Country Back,” Moyers and Company website, Nov. 15, 2016: http://billmoyers.com/story/taking-country-back/

[v] Thomas Merton, Faith and Violence (68), q. in The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001), 374

[vi] Son of Man (BBC Television, 1969) With an interesting script by Dennis Potter, this can be found on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9atVsTh4C-0

[vii] Tugwell, 87-9

[viii] Rite of Holy Baptism, Episcopal Book of Common Prayer (New York: (Oxford University Press, 1979), 304-5

[ix] Gary Hall, “Responding to the Election” (Nov. 15, 2016): http://figbag.blogspot.com/2016/11/responding-to-election-paper-for-madres.html

A Land of Crippling Nonsense

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Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life: Manhood, 1842 (National Gallery)

A mob cannot be a permanency:
everybody’s interest requires that it should not exist,
and only justice satisfies all.

––– Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Politics”

 

In my last post I suggested that the Christian understanding of God as Trinity––the self-diffusive love of interdependent communion––is incompatible with the manifestly unloving actions of America’s ruling party: “Pretty much everything the White House and the Congressional majorities are trying to do now is a grievous offense against the Divine Trinity whose very being is communion. Attacking immigrants, inflaming racism and violence, abusing women, starving the elderly, sentencing tens of thousands to early death by taking away their health care so the rich can get richer, poisoning the wells of public life, telling the planet to go to hell––the list of injuries to God’s desire grows daily.”

Some readers––not, I suspect, regular visitors to my site––did not find this a self-evident statement, and posted their bitter complaints on The Religious Imagineer Facebook page:

This sounds so anti-American. You people need to stop that crap. Get this in your head, climate change is a hoax, global warming was a hoax. Affordable Care Act was a hoax. Your site is a hoax.

You guys sound like communist [sic]. No thanks.

You people are sick. President Trump and the First Lady and families are Christians. Love the USA and want to protect it. How can you spew filth and lies and look at yourself in the mirror? God is watching you and you will have to answer to him. It will not go well for you! The Democrats lie and cheat and do not care because they do not believe in God.

President Trump and his voters are Christians who just want to save America from Islam so their children and grandchildren will be able to practice their religion freely.

Romans 13. All authority is appointed by God at the appointed time. Unfortunately, because of our Falling Away, God appointed Obama to weaken and divide America because God knew Obama would play his part. The truth is the US’s role is defined in Rev 12: to prepare and secure Israel’s place in Jerusalem and on the Temple Mount. Trump moving our embassy to Jerusalem will be a good start. I’ve often wondered how Europe, the Holy Roman Empire, the iron mixed with clay, would turn against Israel. Now we know. The Marxist Pope has fallen away and is preaching ecumenism aka interfaithism. He has fallen for the world’s message of Coexist. But if he truly understood Prophecy he would know that the lies of political correctness, tolerance, and diversity are Satan’s agenda to amalgamate the world to destroy Israel. We must resist Satan’s agenda, not Trump’s agenda of Nationalism and Capitalism so we can fulfill our God Given Destiny. Go Trump!!

Your site is a tool of Satan. God is not “a dance we do.” He is THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE.

You’re a liar.

Your [sic] nuts.

Although I did write in that same post, “we should be dismayed but not surprised by those who want to make America hate again,” I have to admit I was pretty surprised. In my accustomed insularity from the dark side of the American id, living as I do on a blue island in a blue state, and belonging to a church which both favors the biblical justice tradition and encourages critical thought­­, I rarely venture into the dark swamps of inchoate political rage. Reading these comments, I felt like Dante crossing the Styx in Delacroix’s painting, where tormented souls gnaw on the poet’s frail craft. It’s a pretty unnerving ride.

Eugène Delacroix, Dante and Virgil in Hell, 1822 (Louvre)

A recent poll gave Trump a disapproval rating of 60%––a record for a new president––but it also showed that 36% continue to approve his presidency. That’s still a lot of Americans giving a thumbs up to what I term “injuries to God’s desire.” So I have to wonder: How many of this 36% are cynics and hypocrites who tolerate Trump’s dark side in order to achieve a conservative agenda? How many are using a man whose defects they may detest as a club to bash a system which has left them behind? How many are simply unaware of the degree to which they have voted against their own self-interest, like the Trump voters who may soon lose their health care? And how many do, in fact––without any shame––embrace authoritarianism, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and planetary suicide as justifiable within their eccentrically constructed worldview?

Some of my angry correspondents merely lashed out like the childish bully they adore. Some asserted ‘alternative facts,’ because it is always easier to dismiss accurate information than surrender an entire worldview. But a couple of people did offer a kind of argument. One took the clash-of-civilizations approach favored by ISIS, making Trump the chief Crusader against an invading Islam. The other glorified “Nationalism and Capitalism” with a strange brew of Romans 13 (a favorite authoritarian text), Revelation apocalyptic, anti-papist tropes, and a little anti-modern nostalgia for the good old days when tolerance and diversity were not the norm. The Holy Roman Empire even made a cameo appearance! This kind of thing, once all the rage in mid-twentieth century Europe, belongs in the trash heap of history.

I deleted most of the angry comments from this blog’s Facebook page. Their ill-mannered tone didn’t seem to merit any permanence on my site. But they did make me wonder about the degree to which Christian teaching and formation have failed to counter the entrenched biases and practices of human sinfulness. Donald Trump is certainly not the first moral degenerate to be proclaimed a defender of the faith. And Christian history provides sadly numerous examples of WWJD (What would Jesus do?) receiving wildly incorrect answers.

We like to think that the baptized have made some progress in the historical quest to live a godly life. However, while Christians may no longer burn witches or practice slavery, there are still a lot of pious people whose politics are just as monstrous and cruel, even if well disguised as tax and health “reform,” rollbacks of environmental protection in the name of “freedom,” a system heavily rigged against the most vulnerable, and a profit-driven militarism making perpetual fear and violence good for business.

When someone votes or makes a policy decision, he or she may be acting in good faith, based on serious reflection and high principles. But the cumulative result of multiple decisions, however well reasoned, may turn out to be something unintended and undesirable. Sometimes we need to step back and say: Look where our choices have landed us. Is this where we actually want to be? Is this what God has in mind for human flourishing?

Civil War historian Bruce Catton once described this potentially ruinous process in his vivid account of the battle for Charleston’s Morris Island, which in 1863 became “the deadliest sandpit on earth. It was dug up by spades and high explosive, almost sunk by sheer weight of metal and human misery, fought for with a maximum of courage and technical capacity and a minimum of strategic understanding; a place of no real consequence, lying at the end of one of those insane chains of war-time logic in which men step from one undeniable truth to another and come at last to a land of crippling nonsense.”[i]

Sound familiar? We too are shocked to find ourselves in a land of crippling nonsense. A narcissistic, unstable ignoramus holds the most powerful office on earth. Economic inequality has reached insane proportions. Political norms and standards of truth are undermined with impunity. Discourse has devolved into rancorous discord. Racist and fascist tribalisms are on the rise. Even nuclear war is back on the table. And prominent in the insane chain of choices leading us to this moment are the votes of countless Christians who thought Donald Trump to be God’s chosen instrument for a divine agenda.

Can we argue those folks back into a more biblically faithful worldview with some serious Bible study or powerful preaching? The evidence so far is not promising. One Facebook respondent to my last post thought preaching on the difference between the ruling agenda and the Trinitarian imperatives of love would only be “alienating to a lot of people,” since his parish was “about 50/50 Trump Clinton.” He’s probably right, at least about his local situation. So then what? Should we say and do nothing, in order keep the peace? In a family, that’s called dysfunctional.

“Your nuts” is certainly a fatal opening for dialogue. But within faithful Christian communities, is it not possible to appeal to biblical norms of love and justice in a spirit of humility, mutual listening and prayer? However, merely pointing out the contradiction, say, in receiving the Bread of Heaven on Sunday and voting against Meals on Wheels on Monday, will only get us so far. Being called to account often produces more resistance than penitence.

It is insufficient––and often alienating––to teach or argue generalities and cherished ideas in the abstract. We need to tell the stories which enable us to grasp each other’s realities with compassion and respect. I don’t mean an open forum for crazy worldviews or hateful attitudes, but rather an attentive hearing for the authentic narratives of the “other.” If we truly desire a viable future for our common life, we must make space for the concrete specifics of storytelling and storylistening, in order to walk in each others’ shoes and see through each others’ eyes before we presume to advance our own perspectives. A mob cannot be a permanency. Only communion has a future.

Listen to the stories of those who are afraid or angry or deprived. Listen to the stories of the poor, the immigrants, the marginalized and stigmatized. Listen to the stories of believers from other faiths, and listen to those for whom belief is hard. Listen to the witness of the saints among us who labor in the hot zones as peacemakers and justicemakers. Listen to your neighbor. Listen to the stranger. Listen without interruption or judgment. And within all these stories––and in the prayers and silences that surround them––listen for the Holy Spirit. Churches are uniquely positioned to nurture such transformative story spaces, and I pray that more and more of them will take the initiative to do so.

And a little child shall lead them. My favorite American vision of a redeemed common life comes from Natalie, an 8-year-old Hopi girl, who described her recurring daydream to Robert Coles for his remarkable book, The Spiritual Life of Children:

All the people are sitting in a circle, and they are brothers and sisters, everyone! That’s when all the spirits will dance and dance, and the stars will dance, and the sun and moon will dance and the birds will swoop down and they’ll dance, and all the people, everywhere, will stand up and dance, and then they’ll sit down again in a big circle, so huge you can’t see where it goes, or how far, if you’re standing on the mesa and looking into the horizon, and everyone is happy. No more fights. Fights are a sign that we have gotten lost, and forgotten our ancestors, and are in the worst trouble. When the day comes that we’re all holding hands in the big circle – no, not just us Hopis, everyone – then that’s what the word ‘good’ means…and the whole world will be good when we’re all in our big, big circle. We’re going around and around until we all get to be there![ii]

 

 

Related post: Donald Trump and the Rise of Authoritarianism

 

[i] Bruce Catton, Never Call Retreat (New York: Doubleday, 1965)

[ii] Robert Coles, The Spiritual Life of Children (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1990)