The link between the Christian right and Trump has nothing to do with Christian discipleship. Trump provides the evangelical right with the closest thing they have found to a theocratic state and in return Trump gets a strong voting bloc.
There have been a few watershed moments in the history of Christianity from which there is no turning back. One of these was in the 4th century when, through various Ecumenical Councils, it became clear that to claim the name of Christian it was necessary to say that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that in him there is life.
A second moment in the 15th century, facilitated by the printing press, saw authority transferred from a clerical, centralised and often poorly educated elite to the whole family of God, the laity, via scripture. The faithful had been manipulated by this elite to protect their institutional power and authority.
Are current events in America heralding another such moment?
Christianity has been associated with a seditious assault on the Congress, an assault from which Christianity cannot be distanced and appears not to want to be distanced. American Evangelist Franklin Graham compared 10 members of the Republican Party to Judas after they voted to approve President Trump‘s second impeachment. Ted Cruz, a GOP president wanna-be who speaks for conservative Christian values has done all he can to discredit the election of Biden.
Trump is not, and has not pretended to be, a Christian. As far as one can tell he is biblically illiterate. There is no evidence that he is a regular Church attender. His moral failures are legion and the damage he has done by claiming truth to be fake and what is fake to be true is immeasurable. Chaos and confusion are being played out in the lives of those whom he has convinced the election was stolen.
So, why this link between the Christian right and Trump? Quite simply it has absolutely nothing to do with Christian discipleship and everything to do with politics and ideology.
The right and Trump have needed one another. From Trump’s point of view the evangelical right provide him with a strong electoral base, while Trump provides the evangelical right with the closest thing they have found to a theocratic state. He delivers, or purports to deliver, their agenda: supremacy of individual rights over social reform, prohibition on abortion, denial of gay rights and unconditional support for Israel. The situation is truly shocking.
Is this the moment when any possible link between Christianity and a theocracy is completely, and finally, rejected?
It is their obsession with a theocratic ideal, and apparent desire to fight and die for it, that has led to conspiracy theories about its opposite – a satanic cabal. The Christian right’s very identity is immersed in the belief that they are soldiers for right against forces of evil. At a spiritual and moral level, this is a helpful image as long as we understand that the possibility of good and evil are ever present in the lives of each one of us.
The dangerous error occurs when the idea of evil is transferred to those with whom we disagree or, worse, do not understand. According to the conspiracy theorists, the existence and power of the cabal is led by paedophiles and demonstrated through a massive fraud that stole the election from them and their patron Donald Trump.
In this context, the conspiracy theory makes absolute sense. If you believe God and God’s will is delivered through a theocracy; if this has been thwarted, there must be a reason big enough to match the thwarted aspiration.
It is unlikely that this dangerous nonsense with its seditious implications is going to be abandoned any time soon unless or until the ambition that led to it is corrected. The correcting is not the responsibility of secular politics, but of Christian leadership. Where is that leadership? Where is the voice?
It is of course wrong and deceptive to make generalisations, to accuse by association. Evangelicalism is a ‘broad church’. All evangelicals are not Trump supporters or believers in a theocratic ideal. However, it remains the case that evangelicals predominate in the Trump movement, that the name of Jesus was carried by the riotous mob into the congress alongside the name of Trump.
The irony, of which these people seem totally unaware, is that Jesus eschewed power and the exercise of it. When asked to use it he refused, rebuking those who made the request. He made it clear that the only power with legitimacy is the power of salt and light. Without wishing to eulogise Joe Biden, his demeanour, words and influence in the face of relentless provocation has so far been of this kind.
The Christian right have no business condemning attempts to revive a Muslim caliphate while they embrace language of violence in attempting to enforce their own.
In the absence of strong contemporary Christian leadership in condemnation of Franklin Graham and thousands of other self-appointed and theologically illiterate evangelical illuminati, I commend the fifth chapter of one of the earliest extant Christian writings, the letter to Diognetus:
Christians are not distinguished from other men by country, language, nor by the customs which they observe. They do not inhabit cities of their own, use a particular way of speaking, nor lead a life marked out by any curiosity. The course of conduct they follow has not been devised by the speculation and deliberation of inquisitive men. The do not, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of merely human doctrines.
Instead, they inhabit both Greek and barbarian cities, however things have fallen to each of them. And it is while following the customs of the natives in clothing, food, and the rest of ordinary life that they display to us their wonderful and admittedly striking way of life.
They live in their own countries, but they do so as those who are just passing through. As citizens they participate in everything with others, yet they endure everything as if they were foreigners. Every foreign land is like their homeland to them, and every land of their birth is like a land of strangers.
They marry, like everyone else, and they have children, but they do not destroy their offspring.
They share a common table, but not a common bed.
They exist in the flesh, but they do not live by the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, all the while surpassing the laws by their lives.
They love all men and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned. They are put to death and restored to life.
They are poor, yet make many rich. They lack everything, yet they overflow in everything.
They are dishonored, and yet in their very dishonor they are glorified; they are spoken ill of and yet are justified; they are reviled but bless; they are insulted and repay the insult with honor; they do good, yet are punished as evildoers; when punished, they rejoice as if raised from the dead. They are assailed by the Jews as barbarians; they are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to give any reason for their hatred.
Those who think Franklin Graham, Cruz and their admirers in Australia are somehow followers of the man from Galilee, please read the above letter and become acquainted with real witnesses, first and second century Christians.
George Browning was Anglican Bishop of Canberra Goulburn 1993 – 2008. He was President of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network 2013 – 2022. He is now its Patron. He is also Patron of Palestinian Christians in Australia, and of the Palestinian ecumenical liberation theology centre -Sabeel.
Comments
6 responses to “Seditious assault on Congress. Why is Christianity so grafted to corrupt politics?”
Thank you for a deeply thoughtful and inspiring article, Bishop George. The spirit of an embracing universal Christ shines through and I most particularly found myself moved by the sublime paradoxes in “the letter to Diognetus”. Please readers, do not be distracted by the rather bizarre correspondence that appears here. And please George, let’s hear more from you. “They lack everything, yet they overflow in everything.”
One of the reasons for the success of early Christianity amongst the illiterate (no insult intended) was that it invoked loyalty to an intensely human, but morally perfect, suffering leader. Its object of loyalty was less abstract than the immortal, invulnerable God the Father and his stern laws, and more like the brave and good tribal leader, loyalty to whom may be selected in our genes, and whose human vulnerability inspired protection from his followers. Trump was skilled at invoking similar, deep-rooted tribal loyalty in people less capable of loyalty to abstract principles. The relaxed requirement of moral perfection is compatible with the growth of individualism. Is there a real resemblance of the Democrat lawyers in Congress to Pharisees or am I alone in seeing it?
I originally found it hard to believe that MaryJoy333 was a real person, and not a concoction of a bunch of wags in the FBI. However, I now realise that nobody in the various US security services would have that kind of sense of humour, and acknowledge that she must be real. It appears she is part of a movement in the US which is on the point of transferring its loyalty from Trump (if he is censored out of existence and imprisoned) to Putin. That’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. The Jacobites allied themselves with Louis XIV. Now Putin is a popular and effective leader in a Russia on the defensive against The US, Europe, Arabia, and Japan. He is also a professed (Russian Orthodox) Christian. After a good laugh, he will be asking, “How dangerous is this for us in Russia? We could be nuked if there are large numbers of people waging civil war in The US that profess loyalty to us, about whom they know nothing.”
A third missive to deaf & blind George. Here is another Post from Russian Faith website. This time from the former Russian President. What he is effectively saying is that Big Tech & the American MSM have become clones of the Soviet Era media. He should know – he lived in the former Soviet Union.
“Blatant Censorship!” – Russia’s Former President Blasts Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and American Big Tech
Dmitry Medvedev served as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012 and prime minister from 2012 to 2020. He has been deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation since January 2020.
Dmitry Medvedev Jan 16, 2021 | 200 words 342 0
A question arises: who are those supreme judges that decided that they, of their own volition and based on their own rules – but, in fact, guided by their political preferences, can deprive the country’s president of the opportunity to communicate with an audience of many millions?
Whether Trump is good or bad, he is his country’s national, and, furthermore, an official who enjoys the trust of nearly half of Americans. Thus, it turns out that several technological corporations located in California got an appetite for power and thought it possible to juggle with news and facts to suit their own political preferences. This is but a blatant censorship!
Dictating their own terms, they have sought to substitute for state institutions, encroaching on their mandates, aggressively imposing their views on a great number of people, leaving them no other choice; while the 75 million of Trump’s voters and hundreds of millions of his subscribers were left out of their “choice.”
These were simply labeled as insecure. Isn’t it, indeed, a spectre of cyber totalitarianism that is gradually overwhelming society, taking away from it (and potentially the entire world) the opportunity to see the reality for what it is?
This article is an excerpt from America 2.0, by Dmitry Medvedev.
Interesting comment. Could it be that Mr Medvedev has his tongue firmly in his cheek when saying this?
After all he speaks from a country where its president (under whom he served for a long time) is doing his utmost to exterminate any possible opposition to his position as “supreme leader”.
In the mean time it remains to be seen what impact Biden’s presidency will have on American society: true change or merely a continuation of the pre-Trump situation?
A second missive to deaf & blind George. Here is another Post from Russian Faith website. It is ironic that Godly, Bible-believing Christians are seeking refuge in an increasingly Holy Russia. Under the Democrats, should they achieve absolute power, America & Russia will have changed places. Whereas from 1917 to 1989, the Russian people groaned under the absolute evil of the Soviet empire, Americans will commence their suffering under the Communist Democrats. Read this and weep for an America under the Democrats.
Trump Supporters Seeking Russian Citizenship & Freedom of Speech
(Regnum)2 hours ago | 200 words 636 1
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has been receiving messages on social networks from supporters of US President Donald Trump, asking her to describe the process for obtaining Russian citizenship. She announced this on air during the program “Sunday evening with Vladimir Solovyov ” on the TV channel “Russia 1”.
“Right now, the most popular comment that is sent to me in a PM on social networks from the United States is asking how you can get Russian citizenship,” she said, adding that the authors of the messages were in support of Trump.
Zakharova said that Russia would soon respond to violations of freedom of speech in the United States.
Answering the question of whether it is time for Moscow to express its protest in connection with violations of freedom of speech in the United States, the representative of the Foreign Ministry said:
“Everything will be done, we are getting ready.”
Source: regnum.ru (Russian)
Yes, there may some attraction for some admirers of an undemocratic and increasingly authoritarian regime (Trump) to another (Putin).