Congress, Trump, Democracy, and Faith
I wrote to my Congressman last week.
It was… strongly-worded.
I’ve been struggling lately with identifying the line between matters of faith that impact politics, and what is solely political, not connected to faith at all.
I excoriate those who wrap the cross in the flag and fail to recognize when the values they’re fighting so fiercely for are not Godly ones at all, but worldly ones. For instance, the preoccupation with low taxes and prioritizing personal wealth has nothing whatsoever to do with the Gospel. There’s earthly logic, but you can’t claim it’s part of Jesus’ teaching, because it just isn’t.
But if I am going to be hard on others, I feel obligated to be vigilant with myself, too.
And here’s where I’m struggling. The things going on in Washington… well, and everywhere… right now are deeply troubling. A few years ago I thought the left was overreacting by raising alarms about Trump as an aspiring authoritarian.
I no longer think that. I think Trump and the MAGA wing of the Republican party are a HUGE threat to democracy. If that farce in Congress over immigration and aid to Ukraine demonstrated anything, it was that the threat is real. Those whose party has been co-opted by this insanity really need to grapple with the reality that their party no longer exists.
And so, what if he does take power?
This is the question that troubles me. When measured against eternity, does it really matter? It feels like it does, but God works in all places and times, independent of who is in power. So is it justified for me to invoke my faith in raising alarms at all? If I do, am I mixing up earthly and Godly priorities?
Except… what happens to Christianity in autocracies? The Russian Orthodox church is now a mouthpiece for Putin. On the other side, in Central America, a bishop was expelled from Nicaragua, presumably because he wasn’t willing to kowtow to an immoral temporal authority. Either way—corrupted or repressed—the Church is weakener under authoritarianism.
What happens to Christianity when it becomes a tool of those who crave power? What happens when Jesus’ rich, life-permeating, difficult, and counter-worldy message is reduced to two or three policies surrounding sex, while Christian values in all the the areas that caused prophets to excoriate Israel—economic justice, care for the poor, hospitality to “the alien among you”—are sidelined, dismissed as “socialism”? Not that those two or three issues aren’t important. But they’re not the only ones that are important. Christianity was never meant to be a “pick an issue, ignore the rest” religion.
The last couple of years, I’ve been listening to The Bulletin, a podcast created by Christianity Today. They look at the news of the week through the lens of the church (small-c because here it refers to Christianity writ large). I always appreciate their conversations, but there was one recently that was so devastatingly on-target, I wanted to share a piece of it here, in the hopes that you will all go listen yourselves.
Russell Moore has been criticized recently for speaking out against the Trump right. Why, people ask, is he giving the left a pass?
His reply was the same one that has guided me throughout this ministry: because the church is representing God.
Then he said, “Once Christianity is a means to an end… then it’s no longer Christianity… You end up with a very relativist view of morality as a tool, of authority as a tool, and so it turns out a lot of the people who were telling us you really need a world view to combat moral relativism, were really moral relativists who were in fact giving us a political program. That’s disappointing to see, but it’s really dangerous if that’s what the entire world sees Christianity as.” (emphasis mine)
I’ve quoted quite enough now. I would urge everyone to go listen to that entire episode, because it is something we all need to ponder in this time of discernment. (And it also addresses Pope Francis’ recent condemnation of surrogacy, in conversation with a Catholic who works at Creighton U.)