Just as Muslims worldwide have been expected to stand up against the appropriation of their religion by extremist ideologies that have expressed themselves in various forms of terror, so the Christian community must make it clear that Christ and the Gospel will not be sullied.
I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies…but let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everlasting stream. Amos 5: 21-24
Nothing could be more dreadful than the murder of George Floyd, under the watchful eye of supposed custodians of law and order. But as a commentary on this evil, Trump holding a bible outside St John’s Episcopal Church, having tear gassed a pathway to its door, speaks as clearly as anything might about the spiral into decay of a proud nation. Thank goodness the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, Bishop Mariann Budde, immediately chastised the president for this outrage. “Let me be clear”, she stated, “the President just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese, without permission, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the things of Jesus”.
If it were not so serious, the news clip of Trump tear gassing a pathway to the Church together with the officially released White House video would, in other circumstance, be an episode from the Chaser, the rather disrespectful, but humorous take on current affairs.
But this was not funny, it was an outrageous attempt to appropriate Christianity for divisive political ends. But who was the intended audience? Who was presumed to be impressed? The dreadful truth is that the intended audience was Trump’s political base, American Evangelical Christianity.
The collapse of the county’s moral base is staggering. As a letter to the SMH editor cynically said, “I suppose it was inevitable that having invaded so many other countries, America would eventually invade itself”. What supposedly is the US’ moral base – well Trump clearly thinks it is Evangelical Christianity. The calamity now being experienced by the US is not simply that it is imploding, with deep chasms in its civil society, but that Christianity is being appropriated for strategies, power plays, ideologies, accomplishments that are the very antithesis of Christian faith. American Evangelical Christianity appears to have fallen into a mix of prosperity gospel, conspiracy theories, dualism, fundamentalism, individualism, and general attitudes and behaviours antithetical to the life and teaching of Jesus.
Trump, how dare you. But perhaps it is not your fault. The US philosopher Sam Harris, darling of American humanists and CEO of Project Reason says freewill is an illusion. Is Trump a tragic caricature, a puppet? So Trump, are you the single most significant contributor to this decay, or are you a creation of it? Has American evangelicalism created you? The cartoon of a person coming up behind Trump and offering him a Bible to which he responds, “What’s in it, does it mention me” just about sums it up. Those who most want to thump others with the bible; about the evils of environmental responsibility, or the rights of the LGBTQI community, or who want to make war against Muslims, or call a terrorist anyone who gets in the way of America’s grand design, are the ones who seem to have the least knowledge of it.
If the US and China are the powers between which Australia must choose its future, which is more dangerous, which might be more reliable? Is it better to trust a communist country with an ideology that is an affront to the values we espouse: freedom of speech, democracy, liberality, respecting difference, protecting minorities: or is it better to put our trust in a country which claims values and a moral base which are clearly an illusion?
Is Trump’s recourse to ‘fake’ (his strategy to fend off truth), a pathway he stumbled into because it suits his pugnacious style, or is it something more frightening? Is it an unintended reflection of an inner realisation, conscious or otherwise, that the moral foundation upon which he relies, US evangelical Christianity is itself fake?
The time has come to stop pussyfooting around. Just as Muslims worldwide have been expected to stand up against the appropriation of their religion by extremist ideologies that have expressed themselves in various forms of terror, so the Christian community must make it clear that Christ and the Gospel will not be sullied.
Christianity is not about individual rights. It is about responsibilities that reside in being part of a body: be that body the family, the local community, the nation, or as importantly, the global community . Individual rights must always defer to reciprocity within communal life. Asserting rights that privilege some and diminish others can never be condoned in Christian life. Those who promote gun rights need to hear Jesus’ word to Peter, “put your sword back in its sheath”. Jn 18:11
Christianity is not about prosperity; it is absolutely not about prosperity being a sign of God’s blessing. Christianity is about being a blessing, it is about investing in the good.
Christianity abhors ‘justice’ achieved through the prevailing, or dominating, of the strong and the vanquishing of the weak. Justice demands upholding equality. It demands respect. In Jesus, difference has been levelled. There is to be no bond or free, no male or female, no Jew or Gentile. US evangelicals are wrong and immoral to promote the rise of Israel through the vanquishing of Palestinians, anymore than whites should prevail at the expense of blacks. God’s ways can never be claimed through such injustice. By doing so, US evangelicals have positioned themselves against the God known to us in Jesus who knows no benefit to some at the expense of others.
Christianity is rooted in the incarnation of Jesus, in the reality that humanity is divinely rooted in the whole created order. So called creation science, a short view of history and commitment to the dominance of humanity over the rest of the created order is not biblical. Trump can claim no Christian base for raping the planet under the banner of “America First”. Creation science is a lie and should not be given airtime, any more than conspiracy theories should be given airtime, accept of course on Fox.
There is a great deal at stake here. Christianity is the story of redemption, of peace, of hope. Its truth deserves to be heard. If folk are to reject Christianity, please at least hear it first. Its truth will blow you away, its art will inspire you, its acts of kindness will transform you and its God of grace will embrace you with life in all its fullness.
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
10 responses to “GEORGE BROWNING. Trump vs Christianity”
Great to see you again in print, Bishop George! I well remember your generous hospitality in hosting Cardinal Wilfred Napier of Cape Town at the Brisbane Anglican Synod in 1990 during the South African Churches joint pastoral visit to Australia on the eve of Mandela’s release. I wish we RCs had bishops with the fire in their belly that I’ve always admired in you!
Sadly Trump’s appropriation of Christianity has been assisted by the split within US Catholicism, mirrored within Australia in both Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism. The origins of this can partly be traced back to John Paul II and his determined efforts to distance Catholic Christianity from Vatican II. Trump has taken advantage of this on several occasions.
Your readers will have noticed that on the same day as Trump masqueraded in front of St John’s Episcopal Church, Washington, he also visited the statue of John Paul in Washington and laid a wreath in front of it. The trip drew a sharp response from Washington’s RC Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory, who said, “I find it baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles.”
Bishop George,
Thank you for your wonderful words. Every Bishop and every clergyman of what ever Faith or Creed should roundly and very loudly condemn Trump for his outrageous P.R stunt which offended against all we Christians and those of other faiths profess . It is good when the local clergy in Washington D.C. , strongly condemned his actions.Trump is an affront to all ethical and moral values we believe in.
So does this also explain the obsequious fawning by Scott Morrison at a recent phone call from Trump?
Thank you Bishop George. President Trump is as far removed from a legitimate Public Theology as can be, yet his supporters would say that he brings religion (Christianity of their brand) into the market place. ‘Market’ place indeed.
Keep up the real Public Theology George. Otherwise we cede the territory (not a good metaphor to use in these annexing times).
George, thank you for this exposition of the issues. And thank you for your clear statement of the truth and value of Christianity.
Thank you, George, for your exposition of the issues. And for your clarity on the truth and value of Christianity.
It has not been too difficult to foresee where nationalistic “exceptionalism” (not all that different from the ideology of “Deutschland Uber Ales”), once combined with aspects of the “Wild West” entertainment culture, is leading much of the world. Trump has not been an instigator of this trend, merely its product.
Please find a very radical description of the world wide cultural situation, particularly in the case of the USA where the process of cultural disintegration is most obvious – with Trump being the leading edge vector of this process.
The old moral, social, and political order of humankind is now dead.
Humankind must accept that the old civilization is dead, the old civilization is gone, useless, non-productive. The old civilization can no longer provide security, longevity, freedom from need, and life enjoyment for people. Less and less can the old civilization do anything useful at all. The old civilization is now profoundly degraded, and will only get worse with time.
Once up on a time there were many gods. Didn’t like this or that god? Choose another. It was very democratic. Then came the idea of a central god bank. Undemocratic and centralised. Didn’t matter if you didn’t believe or already had a god of your choosing… you automatically became one of the new god’s creatures. Not only that, you now had a middle manager to contend with and lots of others employed by the god bank. The god bank needed a charter, a document expanding their aims and aspirations. And boy, did they cobble one together! Rambling, incoherent, full of nonsense – but in the end saying about as much as an insurance policy on terms and conditions.
It’s all about money and power, Trump is all about money and power. Trump’s stage prop was quite apt and acceptable.
It’s not about money and power. They lead too easily to conflict and destruction of culture. It’s about benevolence. That is what both Jesus and Confucius taught, and what is behind the sustainability over millenia of the two great human cultures. It’s not about justice and equality which are illusory. The world will not grind to a halt if most people take more than they give. That is how the world has always worked. The great discoveries which have made our lives longer, healthier, and more enjoyable were made by the few. We can never hope to pay them back; certainly if, as is usually the case, they are dead. Striving for justice only leads to more conflict. Having taken the justice path, the US is being killed by a plague of lawyers, by people screaming for justice and tearing the place apart, and by those bashing them to protect property rights. Great cultures encourage people to let go their grievances and self-justification, and give.
The core of Jesus’ teaching was this: “Be benevolent on earth, and you will not die, but come to live with me in paradise”. Untestable by any experiment, and regarded by the sceptical majority these days as unlikely to be true.
The core of Confucius’ teaching was this. The superior man is a benevolent man. That teaching is also untestable. It is merely a preferred definition of “superior”. But it takes quite good care of man’s natural (genetically inherited) striving to be unequal (to be amongst the survivors when the death rate is high). Gone is the majority-flattering illusion of equality. With Confucius’ dictum in mind, the less fortunate look up to those that relieve their unhappy situation, and the more fortunate strive to lift up the people in order to maintain their status in the Confucian system. Benevolence is not easy. You can give less fortunate people the means of subsistence, but sustainably only if you are rich and they are few. But you can teach people how to survive in, and sustain the natural and social world: to look after themselves and others, and take moderately and sustainably. You can teach Chinese-style scientific socialism.