INTRODUCTION/CONTEXT
The day after the election, I posted to Facebook an article from The Washington Post, by Perry Bacon, Jr., titled “The second resistance to Trump must start right now.” In sharing the article, I highlighted the following passage:
Whether you consider the political movement that Trump leads to be best described as fascist, authoritarian, populist, Christian nationalist or just modern-day Republican, the most important thing to understand is that it will have real, damaging effects for millions of people. . . . There is the less tangible but still emotionally taxing reality of living in a country that is going back and becoming less multicultural, equitable and free than it was before Trump’s rise.”
In response, an old friend wrote the following comment:
Good grief! I’m not a big Trump fan, but glad he was elected. I was very concerned about my grandkids if the alternative happened . . . . and I never really heard what the plans really were . . . which caused great suspicion!
“Guess people just have very different world views. Much more so than back when I was a Democrat.
“It’s why I love living in this great democratic republic . . . two parties . . . and we regularly elect who we trust to lead most effectively in this fallen world. We are blessed to get to do this. We’ll do it again at mid terms and then another in 4 years where we will elect a new president . . . hopefully with two primaries this time.”
If my friend had chosen to express his disdain to me privately, I would have responded privately. He instead chose to go public with his comment. It would be irresponsible of me to let his comment go unanswered, and, because his comment was public, my response must be public.
A little context: my friend’s comment reflects a long history between us, as well as with the church where Joanna and I were members from 1987-2004. My friend and his family were members there during most of those 17 years. From the time Joanna and I left that church in June 2004 until 2022, he and I never saw each other; however, in recent years, we kept up with each other on Facebook.
In 2022, he reached out to me, suggesting we meet for a meal, “catch up” with each other’s lives during the intervening 18 years, and also talk about our political and theological differences. So we met and had a nice, pleasant conversation, though when it came to our differences, I didn’t feel confident that he was understanding just where I was “coming from.” Though we planned to follow that up with other such get-togethers, we haven’t met again since that summer 2022 meal.
Because my friend’s comment reflects the attitudes of many others in churches across America today, it requires a broad, comprehensive response. Though much of my response will zero in on his comment, it could just as well target similar attitudes of many, many others.
MY TURN – I RESPOND
Basis of my political positions
My friend’s comment reflects his determination to categorize our differences as purely political. I’ve explained to him before that this isn’t the case at all. However, he still doesn’t get it – that my political positions and my posts, rather than being driven by a Democrat vs. Republican dichotomy, are based solidly in Christian ethics – the ethics of Jesus Christ.
Everything that I stand for politically is driven by:
- My faith in Christ
- My understanding of who Jesus is and what he expects of his followers
- My determination to be faithful to Christ’s presence in my life
- My desire to do my part in bringing his kingdom on Earth
Different “world views,” my friend says. Actually, the critical difference between us is our understanding of Jesus Christ, and how his life and teachings should impact our lives, including the public policies we support. In short, we believe in different gospels, even apparently different Jesuses.
Flashbacks to blank stares
Since our meeting 2½ years ago, as I’ve followed his postings on Facebook, I’ve had flashbacks to the 17 years (1987-2004) that Joanna and I spent at the church where he and I became friends. For 17 years, mostly in Sunday School class discussions, I shared my concerns about how the fundamentalists in the Southern Baptist Convention were violating historic Baptist principles – principles that I consider essential to being faithful to Christ’s life and teachings.
Also in Sunday School class discussions, I frequently posed different ways of looking at and interpreting scripture, different ways of following Jesus, even posing hard questions about the “conventional” beliefs I heard expressed in that church and those class discussions.
For 17 years, I got nothing but blank stares. No arguments, only blank stares. People feared having their beliefs questioned or challenged. So they didn’t listen to me, just tolerated me, and their attitudes never changed, their thoughts never changed. I never saw any evidence that their beliefs had undergone the scrutiny through which I’ve put my own beliefs ever since the epiphany I had in November 1970 during Western Civilization class at OBU. As one couple wrote to me on Facebook a few years ago, “We didn’t agree with you when you were here, and we don’t agree with you now.” Yet they never had the integrity to tell me that to my face in the many years I spent with them in Sunday School.
An unexamined faith is an insecure and shaky faith.
Sadly, as I’ve read my friend’s numerous posts – including many shares of political memes, I’ve realized that our meeting in 2022 was the same. Blank stares, no attempt to understand or explore what I said that day. I realized that dialogue with him isn’t real dialogue, because he – like the folks in those Sunday School classes – doesn’t listen and seriously consider anything I say that might cause him to question his beliefs and principles, whether theological or political.
That day, I shared with him my concerns about Christian nationalism and was shocked when he asked, “What is Christian nationalism?” That was a clear reminder that he and I read, listen to, and view entirely different sources. I’ve been reading and learning about Christian nationalism for years, even decades.
But at least he asked the question – for that moment, I was hopeful that he really wanted to learn more about it, so I tried to answer his question and even pointed him to sources where he could learn more about it. Since then, however, he’s never come back to me with further questions or discussion of what else he might have learned about it, and he’s continued to support Trump, who has promised political power to Christian nationalists.
Blank stares.
Our argument is over theology, not politics
In posting Perry Bacon, Jr.’s column on Facebook, I was sharing some genuine concerns I have for the lives of people whom I am convinced will be harmed – intentionally – by Trump’s actions and policies. Yet, instead of considering my concerns, respecting me enough to believe I might have legitimate reasons for them, caring enough to ask me to elaborate on those reasons, my friend callously and condescendingly dismissed them with “Good grief” and treated them as if they were mere political posturing.
Back in the early 2000s, on patriotic holidays, the church we both attended put nationalism first, and Jesus was nowhere to be seen – literally, as a floor-to-ceiling American flag covered the floor-to-ceiling stained-glass window featuring Jesus at the center. They hid Jesus behind the flag. So here’s a question for my friend: Did that symbolism never bother you, friend, as a “Christ-follower,” as I’ve heard you describe yourself? It disturbed me greatly, because it revealed what REALLY mattered to that church.
I find it unfortunate that anyone would characterize this as a mere difference between Democrats and Republicans. For one thing, the Republican Party of today is not the Republican Party of Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, George Bush (41 or 43), Bob Dole, or even John McCain. I disagreed with many of those men’s policies politically, but I respected their fidelity to American values.
This is not a simple disagreement over policies or even political philosophies. The Republican Party of today has been fully swallowed up by the president-elect and his cult. To say, “I’m not a big Trump fan, but glad he was elected” is too clever by half, as they used to say. It’s an attempt to claim what he considers the good while denying responsibility for the bad, but it won’t wash. He voted for Trump, so he owns every bit of him. When we elect someone, we don’t just get the “good” (whatever that is, when it comes to Trump); we get all of him/her, which has real consequences for vulnerable human beings.
Methinks the gentleman protests too selectively (with apologies to Shakespeare)
My friend criticizes the article’s thesis that Trump’s opponents should resist any attempts to carry out his promises over the next 4 years, yet I never once saw or heard him criticize the obstructionist tactics of congressional Republicans against Presidents Obama and Biden. The day after President Obama’s election in 2008, Mitch McConnell declared that his one overriding goal – as Senate minority leader – was to “make Barack Obama a one-term president.”
Where was my friend’s “Good grief!” then? Is resistance and obstruction wrong only when it’s aimed at his party’s president? He seems to don blinders when it comes to the sin of his own tribe.
My friend feigns innocence, writing, “Guess people just have very different world views. Much more so than back when I was a Democrat.” So let’s look back at an incident that occurred, in the church that he and I attended, in March 2003 as America prepared to invade Iraq.
Our pastor listed a group of what he called “Hollywood liberals” (including Susan Sarandon and Ed Asner) who had criticized President Bush’s intelligence and his plans to invade Iraq, compared their academic degrees with those of George W. Bush, and then proclaimed, “George W. Bush isn’t stupid. It’s his critics who are stupid!”
In God’s house, from the pulpit during a Sunday morning worship service, our pastor had denounced, as “stupid,” anyone who criticized the Republican president and opposed his plans to invade Iraq.
Did my friend protest that Bush’s critics merely had “different world views” and were entitled to their opinions? Not that I’m aware of.
Hatred raining down in God’s house – all because of partisan politics
In a lifetime of attending church services, that was the absolute worst moment I’ve experienced. If my friend thinks that I felt that way because Joanna and I were Democrats, he would be dead wrong. It was because of the misuse of God’s house, God’s pulpit, for the purpose of partisan politics. I’m very consistent on this. I’ve always spoken out against the presence of Democratic candidates – whether Kamala Harris, Bill Clinton, or Jesse Jackson – on the chancel of a church during a worship service. I’ve been consistent in denouncing any use of God’s house for partisan political purposes. Republican or Democrat, it’s wrong. My loyalty isn’t to the Democratic Party; it’s to Jesus Christ.
But it went deeper than even that on that Sunday morning in March 2003. Why is that the worst moment I’ve experienced in a lifetime of church services? Because the response from the congregation was a cascade of applause and amens louder and more sustained than I have ever heard in any church service. I’ve never heard Jesus, the Prince of Peace, receive applause and amens from a congregation equaling the response that met the pastor’s defense of George W. Bush AND a war against other humans created in God’s image.
But the worst of it all was the hatred raining down in that room – hatred for anyone, meaning Joanna and me, who dared to think differently than the mob (and it was a mob, just as surely as if they had been brandishing pitchforks) gathered in that holy place that morning.
It was absolutely demonic! Rather than the spirit of Jesus, the spirit filling that sanctuary was demonic. It was a denial of Jesus and all that he lived, taught, and died for. To this day, it is my greatest regret that I didn’t rise up out of my seat in the choir loft, go find Joanna in the congregation, and walk out with her, never to return to that church. (Joanna had been ready to leave long before that.) Yet we stayed another year. Demons possessed that room that morning, and we should have fled.
My friend’s exclamation of “Good grief!” implies that I’m being hyperbolic in my criticism of Trump and my warnings about the coming cruelties of his administration. He wants me to respect his vote as simply a difference of political opinion. Where was that respect for Joanna and me on that morning in March 2003?
Forty years ago – before people like Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh poisoned the political discourse in this country with their derisive name-calling of liberals (anyone remember Limbaugh’s “feminazis”?) – we could respectfully differ over policies and political philosophies. But all of that has changed.
It’s neither I nor the Democratic Party that has brought this about. I’m not perfect, and the Democratic Party isn’t perfect. But it is the only major party that still adheres to the Constitution and upholds democracy and the rule of law. When it stops doing that . . . when it nominates someone like Donald Trump . . . I’ll quit supporting the Democratic Party. My principles are steadfast; the vehicle for them is secondary.
Jesus refused Satan’s offer of political power; Trump-following Christians lust after it and embrace it
Most tragically, God’s Church (universal) and the holy name of Jesus have been dragged through the political mud. God’s holy name has been used to achieve political power. Peter’s denial of Christ – and Judas’s betrayal – pale in comparison with those of today’s American churches!
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this I will give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Away from me, Satan! For it is written: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”’” (Matthew 4:8-10, NIV)
Many American Christians, and their churches, have chosen to cast their lot with Esau:
Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country, famished. He said to Jacob, ‘Quick, let me have some of that red stew! I’m famished!’ . . . Jacob replied, ‘First sell me your birthright.’ ‘Look, I am about to die,’ Esau said. ‘What good is the birthright to me?’ But Jacob said, ‘Swear to me first.’ So he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank, and then got up and left. So Esau despised his birthright.” (Genesis 25:29-34, NIV)
Our birthright, as Christ-followers, is to journey with Jesus. But Christian nationalists have chosen to journey instead with the one who tempts them with a mess of stew . . . with power over those they perceive as their enemies. They have made the deal with the devil – their souls in exchange for political power . . . a bargain that Jesus forcefully rejected.
I’ve fought Christian nationalism for decades
I first encountered Christian nationalism in 1994, when our church showed a video, in a Sunday evening worship service, entitled “America’s Godly Heritage.” In it, a self-proclaimed “Christian historian” named David Barton told one lie after another about our nation’s Founding Fathers, claiming that all of them were devout Christians (a lie) and that they intended that the United States be a “Christian nation” (another lie). I knew that he was spewing lies and was using scripture dishonestly to support his thesis of a Christian nation, but most in that church loved it – because it was feeding their own desire for power over those who believe differently than they. After that service, I was so angry that I walked straight to my car without speaking to anyone.
The next day, I called the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs (now the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty) in Washington, DC, to ask whether they were aware of this video. Yes, in fact, they had already written a response to it, which they mailed to me. In it, Brent Walker, a Baptist minister and attorney who served as BJC’s general counsel (later executive director) took apart Barton’s claims, one by one, fully documenting that they were lies. In 2005, Brent updated his critique of Barton’s video.
Barton is still spewing the same lies in 2024, and Christians are still eagerly swallowing them whole.
Ever since seeing that video 30 years ago, I’ve fought Christian nationalism, sometimes from the sidelines, other times from a position of influence. At Texas Baptists Committed from 2006-2017, first as a board member (2006-2010) and then as executive director (2011-2017), I fought the fundamentalists at Southern Baptists of Texas who were infiltrating Texas Baptist churches and persuading them to leave the Baptist General Convention of Texas, invariably installing an authoritarian pastor and ultimately destroying the church’s fellowship.
In her book Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right, author Anne Nelson documents how the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention was connected, from the beginning, to the attempt to change our pluralist U.S. government into one run by and for Christians, violating the First Amendment’s guarantee of full religious liberty for all people, not just a chosen few:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Since 2013, I’ve fought Christian nationalism as a trustee of Pastors for Texas Children, where we’ve lobbied against attempts to divert public taxpayer money from the public schools to private for-profit religious schools.
When we met for breakfast a couple of years ago, I warned my friend about the dangers of Christian nationalism. My hope was that he would be concerned enough to explore the resources to which I pointed him, for the purpose of learning more about it.
But his posts and comments on Facebook in the 2½ intervening years have made it obvious that he had no interest in hearing my heartfelt concern and learning more about it, analogous to the blank stares that I received for 17 years at that church.
Willfully (and blissfully) ignorant
Folks at our church didn’t want to know. They didn’t argue with me, they just stared blankly at me and ignored me. In the early 2000s, after I had been certified to teach for the Texas Baptist Laity Institute, I wanted to teach the course on Baptist Distinctives at our church, so I took the syllabus to the pastor for him to review it. When he got to the session on the Fundamentalist Takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, he said, “I don’t want you teaching this part of the course.” I determined then and there that I would not teach any course at that church. I would not allow that pastor to compromise the integrity of those lessons.
He wanted that church kept ignorant, and they liked it that way. They remained ignorant of certain things – by choice. They had ample opportunities to learn – for example, in the many times I brought up these matters in Sunday School class discussions. But they feared possibly changing, or even abandoning, the unexamined understanding of scripture they had learned from their pastors and Sunday School teachers over the years; they feared asking questions and digging deep into scripture for possibly a different understanding; they feared diving deeper into Baptist history to understand where we came from and what we were really all about. So they chose to remain ignorant, rejecting all opportunities to be challenged. Sad. Then, when David Barton came along to confirm what they wanted to believe about the nation’s founding, they gladly accepted his lies as truth, a pattern that has become all too common with such people.
I’ve followed my friend’s Facebook posts throughout this campaign, posts that have consistently demeaned people who think like I do. Yet now he feigns shock and disgust at my refusal to respect his vote for Donald Trump.
The day after the election, my friend Mark Wingfield, publisher of Baptist News Global, wrote a column entitled, “Save this column and don’t say we didn’t warn you.”
In it, Mark listed some of the damages resulting from the first Trump administration, including:
- “children separated from their parents”
- “millions dead from COVID”
- “personal financial graft Trump and his family pulled off for four years”
Mark also warned of consequences in the second Trump administration, for which Trump voters will be responsible:
- “your wife or daughter or sister experiences an ectopic pregnancy and can’t access life-saving medical care”
- “your son or daughter or grandson or granddaughter comes out as gay and can’t get hired or find a place to live because of their sexual orientation”
- “your son or daughter or grandson or granddaughter kills themselves rather than face the persecution of being transgender”
- “measles and polio and rubella come roaring back in the most developed country in the Western world” because Trump kept his promise to “appoint as his health adviser an unhinged anti-vaxxer”
- “your local public schools suffer from underfunding” because “you voted for the folks who want to divert public school dollars to private Christian schools”
- “the price of groceries goes up and keeps you from feeding your family” because Trump kept his promise of “mass deportations of the immigrants who harvest your food”
A vote for Trump, Mark writes, makes clear that:
. . . you do not care about truth. You are willing to dismiss . . . Trump’s narcissistic and undying lying. . . . Therefore, you no longer get to preach or teach on the importance of truth-telling, whether from the pulpit or from the parental perch. You have demonstrated truth does not matter to you.”
I sadly suspect that my friend will respond that both parties lie and that Harris and Walz were caught being less than faithful to the truth on a few occasions. False equivalencies are the favorite currency of the Trump voter.
But if my friend refuses to admit that Trump’s pathological lying is far beyond any occasional lies or distortions told by Democrats, his dismissal of the importance of truth will be beyond question. Trump lies so incessantly, constantly making things up out of whole cloth, calling an insurrection “a lovefest,” calling corrupt actions “perfect,” and so forth, that absolutely nothing that comes out of his mouth can be trusted.
In his comment, my friend wrote about his concern for his grandchildren, and I know that his concern and love for his grandchildren are genuine. However, I don’t think he’s thought this through very carefully.
I will tell my four grandchildren that I voted for people who do their best to tell the truth, to rely on facts instead of baseless theories, to honor and obey the Constitution, and to respect the democratic process – including free and fair elections, and the peaceful transfer of power, which Democrats have unfailingly supported.
My friend cannot truthfully claim the same.
What will he tell his grandchildren? How will he explain that truth is no longer important when choosing our leaders? How will they then be able to trust anything he tells them – even about Jesus, for example?
The Thomas Jefferson/American Christian/Robert Jeffress/Donald Trump Bible
One of my friend’s recent Facebook posts was a video of a man who warns against “false teachers” and “preachers who pervert scripture.” I couldn’t agree more, though I strongly suspect that he and I would disagree on just which preachers fit that description.
In 1820, Thomas Jefferson compiled a manuscript, which he titled “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,” commonly referred to today as “the Thomas Jefferson Bible.” He constructed it by cutting and pasting, with a razor and glue, selected sections of the New Testament. Notably missing were all of Jesus’s miracles and any mention of the supernatural.
Many Christians today have done something similar, cutting out – or at least ignoring – sections of the Bible that are inconvenient to the narrative they want to tell about Jesus. Interviewed by Scott Detrow of National Public Radio, Russell Moore, former executive director of the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and now editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, said:
Multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — ‘turn the other cheek’ — [and] to have someone come up after to say, ‘Where did you get those liberal talking points?’ And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, ‘I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ,’ the response would not be, ‘I apologize.’ The response would be, ‘Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.’ And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we’re in a crisis.”
I would add that we’re not just in a crisis, as Russell Moore puts it. When professing Christians are rejecting the teachings of Jesus Christ because they’re “seen as subversive to us,” then they’ve abandoned the faith in Christ that they’ve professed.
This abandonment – or ignoring – of Christ’s teachings as inconvenient is not new, though, and goes beyond the Sermon on the Mount. Our transactional salvation story – just “profess faith” in Christ, and you’re “in” – bears some scrutiny. My friend Johnny Pierce, director of the Jesus Worldview Initiative, wrote recently that this story is Christians’ “one-act play” that loses the main plot.
In his foretelling of the final judgment, recorded in Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus makes it clear that we are expected to care for those in need, and that when we do, we are ministering to Jesus himself. In other words, we should see the face of Jesus in the face of anyone who is hurting.
And what about those who fail to minister to the “least of these,” as Jesus calls them?
’They also will answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?” He will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.’” (Matthew 25:44-46)
These are the words of Jesus. I suspect that some Christians consider them subversive. These words of Jesus condition salvation not on “professing faith in Christ” but on treating others as the embodiment of Christ.
So let’s examine Trump’s actions and promises, in light of Jesus’s words in Matthew 25:
- Separated immigrant families (the face of Jesus) from each other and detained them in internment camps
- Detained immigrant children (the face of Jesus) in cages
- Promises to end DACA and deport immigrants (the face of Jesus) who came here as children with their parents
- Promises “the largest mass deportation” in history, of immigrants (the face of Jesus) – both undocumented and documented
- Calls a free press – guaranteed by the First Amendment – the “enemy of the people” and delights in the prospect of would-be assassins having to shoot through journalists (the face of Jesus) covering his rallies
That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Where’s the proportionality?
Christians voting for Trump denounce undocumented immigrants, calling them criminals.
But what is their crime?
Their “crime” is fleeing to the U.S., seeking a better life, one of opportunity, for their families. If we are to call this a crime, then let us call running a red light or a stop sign a crime. Let’s admit it, we all skirt the law here and there, but we’ve decided we are entitled, and “they” are not.
Where is the proportionality? Christian Trump voters want to lock up desperately poor immigrants who are seeking a better life for their families, yet they – and I’m looking at my friend – want to help a rich man, among whose very real crimes is inciting an insurrection against the U.S. government, evade criminal prosecution by installing him in the White House to lead the very government he sought to overturn!
Christian integrity calls for denouncing the things that Jesus hates and protecting the human beings whom Jesus loves – the “least of these,” in other words.
It’s so lame for my friend to say “I’m not a fan of Trump” and then vote for him to head the U.S. government. Being “not a fan” is so weak. It’s time, instead, to boldly tell the truth about just how evil and un-Christlike Trump’s words and actions are, and to denounce them with every fiber of one’s being.
That’s what I did, and what Perry Bacon, Jr. did, and all my friend can say is “Good Grief!”?
I’m sad for my friend. He has to live with his choices. I’d rather live with mine, which I gladly do.
There is so much else I could say, but it won’t do any good.
There is so much else I could say, but it’s become obvious that my friend and I live in two different universes. We always have. Two different media universes. Two different ethical universes. Two different theological universes, he in a universe with a Jesus who condones, even celebrates, Trump’s savage treatment of people made in God’s image; and me in a universe with a Jesus who condemns such treatment.
I’ve listened to some of the sources on which he relies, and I have rejected them as completely antithetical to my understanding of Jesus Christ and my relationship with him.
Dialogue between us is impossible, because we’re talking past each other.
As for his comment on my post, that wasn’t dialogue, it was a callous dismissal of my heartfelt and legitimate concerns about the consequences of last week’s election, the very real pain that will be inflicted on many people by the vote cast by my friend and others.
So this has been my response. This is where it ends. He’s had his say, and I’ve had mine. I’m not interested in any further response from him, because I’ve learned – from experience – that it will lead nowhere.
Sad.