Donald Trump Is a Spiritual Opportunity

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!

Race, Not Faith Decided the Evangelical Vote

On November 4, Christianity today reported this statistic:

65% of white Americans with evangelical beliefs plan to vote for Trump
10% plan to vote for Clinton

62% of African/Hispanic/Asian Americans with evangelical beliefs plan to vote for Clinton
15% plan to vote for Trump

Exit polls show the final number was closer to 81% for white evangelicals voting for Trump when all was said and done (it was 88% in Georgia). I think we can reasonably expect that the outcome for Black Asian and Hispanic evangelicals likewise came closer to 75-80% for Clinton. If someone has an actual exit poll on black evangelicals, I’d love to see it.

What this should say to bible-believing Evangelicals everywhere is one simple thing: there is at least an 80% chance that your vote was informed more by the color of your skin than a carefully formulated evangelical worldview. Actually I think the number is much higher since generational culture is also a significant factor.

If you voted for Trump and you just can’t figure out how a Christ-following Evangelical could sleep at night voting for Clinton, don’t. Go ask any 4 out of 5 black evangelicals and they’ll tell you. And don’t even think about saying that minority evangelicals possess a less orthodox or biblical or Spirit-filled faith than you. Their worldview is just as “biblical” as yours. But their vote couldn’t be more different. And don’t say that you’re the rare bird that carefully thought through the issues and found God’s favorite candidate. Because you probably didn’t. That may be hard for you to hear, but it is the most statistically likely reality. Actually, it is the reality to one degree or another for ALL of us. Culture and background and the beliefs of those around us play an invisible but immutable role in which candidates and media outlets and basic narratives we essentially trust, and which ones we don’t.

Really this race-based division of political values in the church should be a sobering realization of just how little our Christian beliefs inform our politics. We talk as though they do, but only because it makes us feel morally superior. In fact it is our tribe and clan, not the heart of God, which tells us who to vote for more often than not. For us in the ministry world, it is what we call a failure of discipleship. Or if evangelicalism were a factory, I’d say our quality control department really sucks.

All this should also cause reflection for millennials like myself who could never fathom a Trump vote. Because if it had been up to 18-25 year olds, Mr. Trump would have gotten exactly 23 electoral votes. And that has far more to do with our cultural beliefs than our religious convictions.

So where do we go from here?

First, we can stop saying “I just can’t believe a good Christian could vote for _____.” Because clearly lots and lots of “good Christians” voted for both candidates. I also think we can TALK. We can talk to people who voted differently and try to listen. I’m not saying I think voting for Trump or Clinton was an equally valid. I’m not saying this choice we’ve just made won’t lead to the emboldening of hate crimes, deepening division, and harmful policies which hurt vulnerable people. On the contrary, I think that scenario is likely. And I pray I’m wrong. I may never be able to excuse the choice (painful as it was) that so many of my family and friends made on Tuesday.  But I am saying that listening humanizes and invites people to move beyond disembodied rhetoric to real people their real stories. And in that space, people can disagree with every fiber of their being without doing violence to each other.

One of the best embodiments of this I’ve seen personally came yesterday from one of our ministry’s board members—a Trump voter—who called me yesterday. He told me that although he voted for Trump it was the hardest vote he has ever cast. He also told me that he was sorry that things didn’t go the way I had hoped and he understood I must be feeling very disappointed. He told me he grew up in a place where everyone thought the same way and now he was being challenged by his African American friends and his 20-something kids to broaden his perspective. He invited me to share my perspective with him so that he could continue to learn and grow. He expressed love and acceptance for me without requiring me to change my views. I told him how much I appreciated him saying those things. I told him I also wanted to keep talking and understand more about his perspective on faith and politics.

Not once did we excuse or validate the other’s vote. Not once did we say, “oh yeah, I totally get how you could vote for that person.” But we did agree to get lunch, to talk, to press in on each other’s beliefs and assumptions, and to just be friends. That’s the only way forward I can see here: to recognize that our culture and upbringing typically play a more pivotal role in our opinions and platforms than our religious beliefs... to name our biases... and to keep inviting each other to think deeper and to seek God’s actual heart not just for our society but for the real people who live here: for your LGBTQ family members, and racist friends, and that hard-working farm community off the highway, and the entitled millennials your friends gripe about, and the scared Latino kids your daughter goes to school with.

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I don’t ever want to gloss over the seriousness of the decision we have just made as a nation. I’m not going to tell you “it’s going to be okay.” It very well may not be okay. But I can tell you that I’m going to keep asking questions and trying to understand. I’m not going to retreat to my group of likeminded friends. I’m going to keep loving people, not as symbolic representations of a political worldview but as people; messy, crazy, lovely people just like me.

Leaders Are Developed (Zambia 2016, Part 2)

(Warning: this one contains a good bit of shop talk about pedagogy and program implementation. I won’t be offended if you get bored!)

Zambia is hot in October. Not ridiculously hot, and the beads of perspiration evaporate instantly into the dry season dust. Still, throughout the afternoon all twelve men squirmed and blinked at each other in the churched as we waited for the sun to sink lower in the sky. But 95 and dry was a walk in the park compared to Ghana’s 106 and humid. We all soldiered on.

Mindolo Baptist church is settled inside a walled compound with a parish, a dirt patch in the corner to burn garbage, and about 20 cars from the community parked in the security of the compound for a small daily fee. Some of the trucks had been abandoned by the owners and were now pillaged skeletons.

The twelve men sat circled inside for something unique within Zambia: a Restoring Your Heart training. I say it’s unique because in an emotionally siloed and intensely gendered country with few good counselors and fewer support groups (especially for men), the news of a bunch of pastors and church elders starting a string of emotional healing groups for men is sure to raise some eyebrows. At one time I wondered if it would be relevant. Perhaps the ultra-polite Zambian culture had mechanisms to encourage emotional health and deal with problems. If there is, neither I, nor my Zambian friends seem to know about it. Because when I introduced the idea to a group of Zambian pastors a couple years ago that emotional healing is tied to spiritual growth, the response was cacophonous: Come back prepared to teach more on this subject or else.

So last week I returned with a stack of workbooks and teaching notes ready to train some leaders. I knew what I wanted them to do: start Restoring Your Heart groups under supervision. But to accomplish this I needed to get through some significant logistical obstacles.

Obstacle #1: Materials. I brought some nice workbooks for the leaders but it won’t be enough for 50 new group members come January. So we visited an industrial printer, got a quote, made a plan for a first run of English books and a second run of Bembe books once they get translated. Check.

Obstacle #2: Cost. The more I work in Africa, the more I realize that free equals non-valuable most of the time. But in Zambia, the shadow of Western paternalism casts an ugly shadow on anything you give away. So we opened it up to the leaders and came up with a cost for groups that everyone felt was reasonable and that would ensure the ministry becomes self-sustaining as the groups grow. Check.

Obstacle #3: Training. No inspiring sermon or fascinating lecture could cause this group to internalize everything they need to learn and apply in leading this group, understanding emotional needs, spotting depression, understanding the grieving process, understanding forgiveness, building an emotional vocabulary, completing developmental tasks, etc.

So I slowed the group down and systematically opened each topic up for conversation. I made sure all the major points were covered but I wanted them to find the answers on their own. And they did. Then I gave tests every day. The first one was a train wreck but the rest got progressively better and reinforced the major points. I let one of them lead a session and we did a group critique. I took them through the experience they would soon lead and made them do the homework they would ask their participants to do. We even did role-plays. The letters of forgiveness they read out loud in the group on Thursday morning were wonderfully cathartic and some of them reported a “weight being lifted.” Others shared things they have never spoken to another living soul. It was beautiful.

In the end, I was happy with their comprehension. I was also happy with their buy-in. 8 of the guys indicated their intention to start a group of their own. I’d lie if I said I was fully confident in them as group leaders but I think with good coaching and ongoing training they can get there. Which brings me to...

Obstacle #4: Follow up. This has perhaps been the biggest missing piece in other training seminars. We have no natural mechanism to monitor progress and develop people over a period of time. This is my first stab at a follow-up plan but I think it’s a step forward. So those who want to start a group will do so in together in January and be part of an email coaching group for the next 8 months. Every 2 weeks, I’ll send them a training resource and require a few reflective questions including questions or problems in their group. The email group is only for group leaders. Then I’ll do a follow-up training with those leaders next July as well as a round 1 training for women (I’ll need to find a gal to come along for that). This plan gives us accountability, a natural funnel to identify serious leaders, and shows them that we’re committed to developing them. The next couple months will be telling. It’s a start though right?

Personally, it has felt good to release myself from the pressure to entertain people or put on a great seminar with a potent delivery. I told the guys this week that I have very little interest in teaching people. But I have loads of interest in helping people learn and grow. I’m interested in building good connections with a smaller group of leaders and working with them over a course of years. I think it lines up better with who I am anyway.

Leaders Aren't Trained (Zambia 2016, Part 1)

It was a dusty day in Kitwe when I walked out of the blinding sun into the stick and tin structure serving as a small church. Inside, I there was a seemingly random assortment of middle aged men in suits, breastfeeding mothers, and a handful of nuns sitting on log benches oiled shiny by the skin of countless worshippers. I clenched a bundle of notes, some typed some handwritten and photocopied with my own chicken scratch on the margins. My 70-something colleague Dave had handed them to me and mildly wished me luck. I squinted my eyes at them all across the Atlantic trying to make sense of all this talk of progress disciple-making, foundational assumptions, and strange sounding acronyms. Then it was show time.

I’m not much of a teacher now. But in 2010, fresh out of seminary and woefully insecure, I’m certain I put those nuns to sleep as I droned on reciting every sentence in those notes, inserting my own dry anecdotes and instantly getting lost and having to search the page to find my next bullet point. Every Zambian there assured me after four days that the seminar was a true inspiration and had changed their lives forever. In my memory Dave said something like, “yeah okay not bad for your first time.” Thanks Dave.

I suppose I began to believe that if I could just become a more eloquent and confident teacher, mastering those notes and perfecting my delivery, maybe then I actually could change some lives. So for the next few years I tried. Oh I tried. And I improved. I left the notes on the podium. My anecdotes got better. I inserted my own fiery convictions. And people in the Congo, Ethiopia, and Ghana assured me that with increasing fervor that I was changing their lives forever with my revolutionary teachings. But I couldn’t shake this sneaking suspicion that most of those people were going home and setting their eagerly scratched notes reverently on a pile of notes from other life-changing seminars about farming practices, micro-enterprises, social entrepreneurship, or community health and then going about their real lives as usual. I can’t blame them. I’ve done the same thing countless times after any number of life changing conferences, retreats, and special events. That is, I’ve done nothing. I might discuss those new ideas with a couple friends or dream of some new possibilities, but in the end, my “real life” calls me back to earth.

I came across and interesting article in Forbes recently that told me what I long suspected but preferred not to hear: leaders aren’t trained. Leaders are developed. In fact the article went on to tell me that most leadership “trainings” do more harm than good. How could this be? Because, one friend told me as we discussed it, trainings can give people the impression that they have changed when in fact they haven’t. They’ve been inspired, educated, and convinced but not changed. Change happens in the nitty gritty behavioral choices we make tomorrow morning, next month, and next year. Because a seminar is a radically different environment from our daily lives, it is harder than we think to make that application leap. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. It does. But it requires a level of inspiration, personal conviction, and reinforcing experiences that most people will never attain in a seminar and no lecturer can guarantee no matter how eloquent.

So what’s a trainer to do?

First we need to pay attention to how people learn. I promise you, a content-heavy lecture is NOT how people learn. They learn by discussing. They learn by reinforcing experiences. Most of all, they learn by teaching others. They learn through a frequent teacher-student feedback loop.

Second, we need to be willing to get into the nitty gritty. Visionary types like me hate the nitty gritty. I don’t know, it’s just so... nitty gritty. But as they say, the devil is in the details. So let’s say I just blew your mind with the seminar to end all seminars. What are you really going to do with it tomorrow? Have I made it abundantly clear what I want you to do? Do you think you can do it? Did I give you the resources and materials to do it? Do you feel it would be worth it? Who is going to remind you to do it when the gravity well of the status quo starts calling you? Who do you ask when you have a question or run into a problem? I’m afraid I haven’t had good answers for those questions in the past. I’ve just hoped they would figure it out.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying these last 6 years of training national leaders has been a waste. I genuinely believe that many people’s lives have been impacted. And along the way, I’ve been intentional about building friendships with a few key people and nurturing those friendships over the course of years. Plus I’ve learned a ton and honed a boatload of my own leadership skills along the way. I’ve gotten comfortable in Africa and developed a genuine love for my friends and colleagues there. I would do it all again.

But after this last week in Zambia, I’ve begun to have some hope beyond my seminar cynicism. I think there are better pedagogies out there and I think I’m starting to understand what is required to build a successful leadership community in Africa built around shared values and practices. It may take more time and energy than I ever imagined but I think it’s possible and it’s starting to happen. Most importantly, I think I’m willing to give it a shot. Stay tuned. In part two, I’ll let you know a bit of what I’ve been implementing this last week and the new possibilities and challenges we’ll be facing.