For many Jesus-followers in all corners of the political landscape, the ascendency of Donald Trump has been deeply troubling. I believe I speak not only for myself and fellow progressives but also for the many Christian conservatives who voted for Trump but did so with tremendous reservations. Though I may never fully understand their decision, I DO understand that they wanted a change agent who would take strong conservative action on the role of government, national security, and most importantly the Supreme Court. And while I can appreciate and learn from the concerns of my conservative friends, my main concern with the Trump phenomena has always been a spiritual concern more than a political one.
I’m not primarily concerned about Trump’s personal moral failings. Our country has seen its share of immoral leaders and while I think moral bankruptcy will impede good governance, that’s not my first concern with Trump. My main concerns as a Christian are the ways in which Trump’s public alignment with the Christian Right and their eager, if painfully awkward embrace of him and his supposedly pro-Christian agenda have left American Christianity in a spiritually perilous position. Not only has evangelical loyalty to Trump endangered the credibility and voice of evangelicals in the culture, but more urgently it has corrupted the moral and spiritual fiber of evangelicalism itself.
I would guess this loss-of-soul started long before Trump and is only now being seen in full color. Even now, many Christians are playing “devil’s advocate” for the administration instead of speaking with clarity on policies which are genuinely incompatible with their faith or insisting on full accountability and transparency. I can appreciate their conundrum. It takes a lot of courage to be an activist against your own party and if I were honest, I would admit I haven’t done that well either.
But now, even Christians who reluctantly supported Trump during the election are under sustained pressure to stand by their man, even if it involves some moral and spiritual acrobatics. Indeed, there seems to be an eerie role reversal in which the right is rhetorically embracing a kind of subjectivism (i.e. the importance of how people feel about things like inner city crime or immigration or voter fraud or terrorism over and against actual facts)... a subjectivism it had previously found abhorrent. Conversely, the left has been galvanized into a rigid, almost fundamentalist dogmatism in which CEO’s of large companies are now under tremendous pressure to take political stances on a variety of issues or face the wrath of their customers.
Within my own conservative community, I’ve felt the erosive pull toward normalization and shoulder-shrugging with an endless trickle of chin-stroking questions and devil’s advocate counterpoints. Why doesn’t Starbucks hire veterans instead of refugees? Aren’t they taking the bible out of context when they share scriptures about immigrants? Aren’t we only obligated to care for legal immigrants? What do those whiny protesters think they’ll accomplish? Barak Obama did the same things and nobody said anything! Nixon and LBJ were just as bad and Bill Clinton was worse!
I’ve felt the warm wash of uncertainty as points and counterpoints fly around blurring the edges of what once seemed obvious and muddling the issues with frightening ambiguity and finally, apathy.
Yet just as I’m lulled into a dull sick feeling of ambiguous discontent, resolving to keep my divisive thoughts to myself, I’m jarred back to clarity by some previously apolitical, mild-mannered pastor, author, or seminary professor (usually someone living anywhere but suburban Georgia) who seems to think that such things as a travel ban on refugees or the realignment of ICE protocols to target a larger pool of illegal immigrants for deportation or blatant lying by public officials are not at all morally ambiguous issues to be sidestepped by Christians but are indeed issues of primary concern to those who follow Jesus. To these reluctant activists, speaking up in pulpits, and social media forums, and petitions, and open letters is not a controversial decision (even though they often lead politically-diverse communities). It is simply a matter of Christian clarity and conviction. Speaking out against evil and championing the cause of the poor and marginalized is just what Christians do. It is part of our job within any society to act as that society’s conscience.
To these Christians, these are not just political issues. These are discipleship issues. Because when a president puts his hand on a bible and then announces a nationalistic “America first” agenda, we must say, “Jesus is Lord and he calls us to serve, not to be served” not as a matter of political dissent but as a matter of plain old Christianity. After all, the New Testament, far from being politically ambiguous, is a manifesto of the lordship of Jesus over and against all other lordship claims (including the most famous formulation, “Caesar is Lord”). By the way, for an excellent treatment on politics and the New Testament, see NT Wright’s Creation Power and Truth.
But while I continue to fear for the spiritual fiber of Christians who are becoming increasingly shaped into the image of their favorite politicians and pundits rather than the image of Christ himself, I’ve been encouraged these last couple weeks to see a growing consensus of well-known conservative evangelicals who have been willing to distance themselves from the president’s immigration order and (hopefully) from an administration which is ostensibly pro-evangelical but in substantial ways, anti-Jesus. A letter from World Relief published in The Washington Post garnered signatures from high-profile evangelicals like Tim Keller, Bill Hybels, and Max Lucado. The letter began:
As Christian pastors and leaders, we are deeply concerned by the recently announced moratorium on refugee resettlement. Our care for the oppressed and suffering is rooted in the call of Jesus to “love our neighbor as we love ourselves.” In the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), Jesus makes it clear that our “neighbor” includes the stranger and anyone fleeing persecution and violence, regardless of their faith or country.
Even before the letter, some conservative voices like Dr. John Piper and Southern Baptist leader Russel Moore offered a strong critique of Trump’s campaign and its spiritual ramifications for Christians. Moore hinted at what I think will be the way forward for Christians in America after one of the Presidential debates. He said many Evangelicals felt "a sense of homelessness" because "neither of these visions of America really speaks for" them.
So while some Evangelicals find it expedient to kowtow to an administration which has explicitly promised them power and influence, a growing number of Evangelicals are courageously differentiating themselves by speaking plainly and publicly against policies which fly cross-current to their Christian worldview. They have embraced that sense of homelessness, unwilling to be discipled by either nationalists or secularists. They have marched into political obscurity as a matter of conviction and I believe that in so doing they’ve recovered their voice and their soul. They’ve rejoined the time-honored tradition of Christians who have lived for thousands of years in marginalized communities of spiritual nomads in societies that could neither fully embrace nor fully dismiss these strange but attractive Jesus people.
I think what I’m seeing now that I didn’t see so clearly a month ago is that Donald Trump has presented the church with a tremendous (it’s “huge” really) opportunity. Because while I’m not so naive to think Christians will unite en masse around a vision of conscientious obscurity against an offer so enticing as political power and influence for those who feel battered and marginalized by the culture wars, I DO feel hopeful for the first time that out of the ashes of the moral majority, a group of Christ followers (both progressive and conservative) will choose the Jesus way, which is always a way of suffering, death, and obscurity in service of others) and in laying down their life, will find it in incredible new ways.
Can we envision the possibility for a moment that all the bickering and battling of Christians engaged in the guerilla street fighting of the culture wars, all while longing for an America they once knew has brought us progressively and deliberately to a this very literal “come to Jesus” moment? Could it be that this is an altar call for the Church to finally and fully divorce itself from a party that can never adequately represent its interests? Could this be an opportunity to say “no thanks” to the promise of influence in Trump’s America and instead to reinvent ourselves as a band of spiritual refugees who have “no place to rest their head” in Washington and yet can speak with conscience and clarity on the realities of today?
I believe that if we can do that, we will find ourselves in a revival of sorts. We will move past syncretistic nationalism and this neo-gnostic vision of apolitical spirituality to a real world faith in a real Jesus; a faith that can grapple with politics without marrying it. If the church can do that, I believe it will find its voice with millennials who may not know what to do with truth claims but who long for a deeper spiritual reality that engages the world and who don’t know quite what to do with their own sudden moral absolutism. (Surely such a church could shepherd them better than Madonna!)
If we act out of conscience instead of false pragmatism, if we can embrace our own obscurity for the love of Christ, we may find ourselves becoming a beacon of sanity for evangelicals who have been manipulated by fear and protectionist anger to empower leaders who speak the loudest and crudely promise to be “on their side”.
If we can finally and fully divorce ourselves from partisan politics while vigorously and courageously speaking the heart of God into the public dialogue, I think the church will find greater authority and influence than anything Trump’s SCOTUS picks can offer. They will find the power and authority to be what only the church can be: the body of Christ among the poor, the invisible, the hurting, the illegal immigrants, the politicians, the bigots, and the wishy-washy.
I want to believe we can get there together. Honestly I’m not certain the culture war veterans can ever get there, especially now that they have been tantalized by a vision of the end of Roe V. Wade and the “total destruction” of the Johnson Amendment among other things.
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What do you think? Will the church be able to reshape itself in this crazy new world we live in? Can we get there together? Or will new movements have to spring up? What would distinguish such movements from the old evangelicalism? What do you think Christians will need to do to be the hands and feet of Jesus in a hyperpolarized world? How, if at all, should they engage political issues online and in person at the grassroots level? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
