Donald Trump
has since he first launched himself into serious politics in 2016 received
widespread support from a large section of the American Church. The news media
has often positioned Evangelicals as the most obvious of his supporters,
although in general, he has enjoyed strong backing from religious Americans,
including white mainline Protestants and white Catholics. In the runup to the
2020 US elections, it was reported that his support within the religious in
America was shrinking but there was certainly enough to spawn the barrage of
prophecies and visions shared across social media indicating divine support for
his campaign. A prayer session by his spiritual adviser Pastor Paula White-Cain
for instance calling for angelic support from Africa for his foundering
campaign at the time went viral globally. Such has been the man’s enigmatic
charisma that a procession was even organized by locals in Nigeria for him
during the campaign period, despite the widely disseminated report that he
referred to African countries as “shitholes”.
Right up to
his 2020 election loss he continued to receive support from Christians the
world over. And yet the character and exploits of the man himself, both prior
to his political career and during it have been anything but what Christians
should call exemplary. The support has been vociferous: he’s been branded a
Cyrus of our day, and once, bizarrely, I have seen the cover of a book on
social media referring to him a the Second Coming of Christ.
At the same
time, many Christians are opposed to Trump. They find his nature and character
distasteful and the fact that he has successfully occupied the office of the
President of arguably the most powerful nation in the world is regarded by them
an unfortunate event. So which side of the debate ought we to wade in on? The
answer lies, not only in a consideration of the nature and character of Trump
as an entity with whom our calling in Christ is to be or not to be associated.
It also lies in a consideration of how to pursue the mission of God and fulfil
our roles as witnesses of our Lord.
Why
Christians have supported Trump
Trump’s
Christian support base has consisted of those who have adopted a position of
incredulity with respect to the negative coverage he has continuously received
in the media. Theirs is an adamant perception of him as nothing more than a
much-maligned hero unfairly targeted by the media behind which the shadowy
enemies of Trump and his political agenda are hiding. Only a miracle can help
this type of Trump supporter whether Christian or otherwise.
The other
type of supporter thinks that because Trump intends to turn the Supreme Court
conservative and use it to overturn Roe v Wade thereby limiting or removing
abortion rights altogether, and also his position on homosexuality, backing him
is worth it regardless of the fact that he is himself recognized by a lot of
people as a deeply immoral character and definitely unchristian. But what this
type of supporter fails to call into recognition is that Christian ethics is no
Machiavellian affair. The end never justifies the means in Scripture. Inasmuch
as the endgame of the God of the Bible is to bring humanity to a point of true
joy and peace, the ethics of Scripture is not really the same as the
utilitarians. As Norman Geisler writes, in Christian Ethics, “the end does not
justify the means; the means must justify themselves.” (Christian Ethics:
Options and Issues, 1989). It cannot be the case that the Church is called upon
to stand behind a what or a who that even the world, without the active
influence of the Spirit, rightly deems to be immoral because it would lead to
an improvement in morality as the end result. It is a spiritual fallacy to
reason in that fashion.
But even if
we assume arguendo that the Church can rightly adopt the standard of
utilitarianism, we have to then consider whether the ends for which we are
abandoning morality in the meantime are themselves right. That would mean that
those who claim Biblical support for Trump are only justified if the end to
which he is leading them is itself Biblically justified. And so the question
becomes “are the anti-abortion and anti-homosexual legislative agenda the
appropriate response to abortion and sexual deviance by the Church?”
What is the
appropriate Christian approach to the issues of abortion and homosexuality?
The answer
should leap out at most of us who have committed to seriously examining what
our faith teaches us but unfortunately, it does not seem to. A basic function
of law is to coerce adherence to a standard of value or to reinforce said
coercion. Without wanting to wade into legal philosophy, we can at least
observe from the arguments of the Pro-life camp in the US that there is a real
belief that re-setting the law with respect to at least abortion will deter
those who provide abortion services and those who seek to have it performed on
them. But when has it ever been the mode of Christ to compel obedience by law?
For sure,
Christians are enjoined to respect earthly government (Romans 13) but only
insofar as they do not try to compel our allegiance to Christ away from Him and
towards them. (Acts 4:19) We have divine approval to refuse to comply in such
instances. The persecutions suffered by the early Church throughout the Roman
world all arose precisely from such developments. But there is nothing in
Scripture that grants us the mandate to compel belief or enforce obedience from
the world. The Church only compels those who are within it when it comes to
matters of church discipline. Otherwise, our posture towards the world is one
of convincing, persuading with our words and more importantly with our actions.
The actual turnover of a person's convictions lies entirely within the province
of the Spirit during and after we have performed faithful witness. It is
therefore completely at odds with Biblical Christianity to borrow the power of
the State to compel adherence to our values. The sad fact about such attempts
to use State power to compel is that we have both Scriptural (2 Corinthians
10:4) and historical precedent showing that they do not work. Salvation, in the
sense of the person committing to follow Jesus, cannot be forcefully imposed.
The Holy Spirit has through history demonstrated that it does not reside within
notions of Christendom where we use force (whether physical or otherwise) to
safeguard the pursuit of God’s mission. It is a contradiction in terms.
The early
Church never conceived the idea of compelling belief. But we learned it when
Constantine made Christianity the religion of the State. Ironically, the moment
the Church which had been the subject of repeated state-backed persecution
found that its fortunes had changed and it now had the power of the State
firmly behind it, it proceeded to persecute. Christians were fed to lions by
the Church because they dared to deviate from orthodoxy in their doctrine, the
Church mobilized itself for war and launched the Crusades ostensibly to redeem
Palestine from Muslim control killing Muslims and also massacring Jews. To an
extent the Nazi attempt to wipe out Jews was the culmination of Jewish
maltreatment throughout Europe, often backed and/or instigated by the Church.
Of course, witches also deserve a mention here. But basically, the Church
walked a path of muscling its way out of every impasse for the simple reason
that it could. The Church continued in this vein until, by action of the
Spirit, its power to compel was gradually but eventually whittled away. We should learn from our history but we do
not seem to particularly want to.
Comblin
offers on the Church’s high-handed ways in centuries past the following:
Over the centuries the clergy have exercised tyranny over human consciences, and they have even gone so far as to use the secular arm to impose a salvation that people would not freely accept. Thus the will to save human beings ends up losing them, for they are placed in a state of bondage where they eventually lose even the desire for salvation.
(José Comblin, Meaning of Mission, page 72)
Mother
Theresa beseeching society not to abort babies and instead to carry them to
term and give them up for adoption is quite different from pushing a
legislative agendum in the name of Christ because what it does is to base the
Christian Mission on the power of the state:
In the hands of the Church power offers no more security or guarantees. Instead it corrupts the Church itself. For centuries the Church tried to enlist the power of the state in the cause of evangelization and evoked great resistance as a result. So great was the resultant mistrust and scorn and hatred that today the Gospel mission must try to break down a host of resentful feelings in order to reach the hearts of those who live outside the confines of the Church.
Meaning of Mission, page 72
Our purpose
as representatives of Christ cannot be fundamentally different in execution
from Christ himself and we remain true to Him when we inherited that purpose
from Him. Our cause is His cause continued:
Weakness is no accident in the work of the Gospel mission, nor need it be lamented. On the contrary, it is a necessary precondition for any authentic mission. It finds its justification in the fact that the Son of God appeared without any of the attributes of human power or strength. Jesus did not try to shine by virtue of his education or cultural training. He did not try to present an argument along the lines followed by the doctors of the Jewish law or by pagan philosophers. He did not win people over with impressive charitable works or development schemes. He did not try to impress them with power. The typical messianism of his day was quite alien to him, and the supreme sign he gave to people was his own death. It was a visible manifestation of his complete inability to convince and dominate people by arguments based on the trappings of human cultures and human civilizations. The fact is that Jesus went about completely unarmed and defenseless among human beings. That is how he wanted to be, for he wished to touch people at the very core of their humanity. He wanted to reach them on the most universal level, to touch the innermost humanity and be accepted by the lowliest. That is why they responded so willingly to him, and why people of wealth and power felt touched at some point beyond the trappings conferred on them by socio-cultural structures. Jesus was unarmed so that he could get at the truth and touch human beings there. Human beings had to drop their masks and reveal what was innermost in themselves. This pint is a dominant idea in the Gospel of John . . . Jesus makes clear the complete weakness of unarmed truth in the midst of humanity . . .If Jesus had not been so utterly defenseless, he would not have spoken to the human heart. Instead he would have appealed to the surface level of human life that is a compound of established social and cultural practices. His words would have been prompted by fear, by respect for the strong, by a desire for personal security and safe refuge, and by similar reasons.
Meaning of Mission, pages 80-84
I have often
seen comments on social media in response to posts deemed disparaging and
disrespectful to the reputation of Jesus and by extension the Christian faith,
and they seem to say something like “If this was so-and-so religion, they
wouldn’t dare because adherents of that religion would have reacted in a
such-and-such manner”. And I ask myself whether the commenters know if there
should be a difference between following Christ and walking other paths. The
truth is that the teachings of Christ have always been countercultural and aim,
not to integrate with a given culture at any time but rather to shake it up and
transform it. To borrow the power of the world, the Church necessarily has to
be so embedded in human culture that it is very much a cultural institution
rather than the body of Christ. Jesus doesn’t shun the trappings of power in
His work because He needed the powers that be to slowly come to know Him and
back him from then on; it is because He can’t do the work from within the power
centres of the world. Again, I rely on Comblin heavily because he has, to my
view, considered the issue so eloquently:
Missionaries
face the same temptation that was faced by Jesus: the temptation of messianism.
They are tempted to make full use of power, money, authority, and cultural
backing. Their intention is always that these be placed in the service of the
Gospel, but these forces end up rebelling and winning domination over the
evangelization process. The cultural forces always prove to be stronger than
the missionaries who plan to use them for their mission, and the Gospel mission
itself ends up as a diminished and tainted reality.
The course of history reveals an alternating cycle of stages. At one point the Gospel mission is integrated with a given culture too much, and then it manages to free itself from the attachment. Right now we seem to be in a stage of emancipation and liberation. The Church is slowly and painfully returning to its proper poverty and weakness as it divests itself of cultural, economic, and political superiority. Some people are lamenting the loss of these resources, even as some Hebrews lamented their departure from Egypt when they were in the Sinai desert. But today as then, one must strip down and pass through the desert before one can carry out a truly Christian mission.
Meaning of Mission, pages 86-87
This is not
an argument into the ethics of abortion and homosexuality per se but rather an examination
of the manner in which Christians continue to approach these issues. How can it
be that the Master who acquired notoriety for being chums in private and public
life with sinners now has followers who want the State to give them the power
to refrain from dealing with sinners in commerce?
But what
about Sodom? And Gomorrah? What will happen to us if we do not campaign against
the gays and the abortionists?
Much is made
of the fate of the two cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in the time of Abraham when
some are seeking to incite passionate support for the legislative agenda to
make abortionists and homosexuals conform. They cry that if we do not do
something about them, God will visit heavy punishment on all of us.
As to
whether such references intentionally or forgetfully gloss over the details of
the narrative is something to ponder. For in Genesis 18:16-19 the Lord was
prepared to spare a city of presumably hundreds if not thousands if only ten
upright persons could be found in it.
In short, we
will not go the way of Sodom if we do not indulge in such politicking. It is
not as if, there have not been cities and cultures in which what we Christians
considered sexual deviance throughout the ages that were not dealt with in the
manner of Sodom.
For my part,
I have never found fearmongering to be a good motivator in bringing about
lasting change that springs from the human heart. It does not seem to be good
practice in the doing of our Lord’s work. If all we do is whip up fear,
eventually we acclimatize to it as humans and then, there suddenly seems to be
no real reason to do things the way we did when that fear towered over us. On
the other hand, the church should foster such transformation that emerges
through the heart streaming in love.
What about
the bit in the Bible about not being friendly with sinners?
Much is made
of passages like Psalm 1:1 (Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel
of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of the
mockers), and 2 Corinthians 6:14 (Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.)
Some of us interpret passages like these to mean shunning those who are not
Christian or are unwilling to live as Christians. Closely allied to that
interpretation is the tendency to treat such people as less than ourselves.
But a closer
look at the entirety of the Bible’s context shows us that we are here to talk
to sinners. If we shun them or apportion to ourselves a high class while
treating others as our inferiors, we have already departed from the Way of
Christ and are in that moment no different ourselves from those we look down
on. There is the need to conduct a philological study of the words “walk” and
“stand” in Psalm 1 which will show that they mean that we should not be found
to be the same sinners or the wicked. On the other hand, Paul uses
“unbelievers” in the context of 2 Corinthians to refer to the Pharisees and
Judaizers – those who falsely claim to possess knowledge of God.
The trouble
with supporting Trump
When
Christians ignore all these considerations about who we are supposed to be and
what we are supposed to do, we start to think that people who operate like
Trump can be appropriate allies – but they simply cannot.
The trouble
with supporting Trump does not only have to do with his political morality, for
want of a better word. It also has to do with his personal morality. The entire
package that he presents is precisely what we are here to help to change, not
hold up as a standard worth following.
As a person,
there are records predating his rise into politics depicting clearly that he is
a man who often does not care about others. From refusing to pay those he hires
what they are due while looking to increase his own profits, to the
exploitation of tax laws to his own advantage, to his inability to treat
marriage with the sanctity it deserves, while paying off his extramarital sex
partners there is simply more than enough to make a Christian pause when
considering whether to support his ticket. He claims to be a Protestant
Christian but he does not even understand basic Christian doctrine about human
sinfulness and our need for divine forgiveness.
As a
president, he thinks that there were very fine people in the white supremacist
camp, kneeling in support for calls to stop discrimination against African
Americans while the national anthem is being played is a betrayal of the
country. He managed the coronavirus pandemic so badly that the most scientifically
advanced country in the world has one of the worst infection and death numbers
as result. He even pulled America out of the Paris Agreement which sought to
bring nations together to combat climate change. Trump has been so mysteriously
effective at what he does, that he even got some black Christians in support of
him questioning the merits of the Black Lives Matter Movement or adopting
indifference to it because they reflected badly on his presidency.
For a people
who claim that their Way is guaranteed to lead humanity to its rightful place,
fighting for what Trump represents is not hypocritical but also very damaging.
The man is in many ways, the type of person Christians should be pointing away
from while raising our children.
Is Trump
“Cyrus”?
Some
Christian support for Trump has also sought to compare him to Cyrus Achaemenid,
the founder of the Persian Empire for the reason that God called him His
servant (Isaiah 44-45). As explained in a previous article, Cyrus is “a servant
of God” in precisely the same way that Nabuchodonosor (Nebuchadnezzar II) was
when he brought the Lord’s judgment on Jerusalem while expanding his empire. He
was God’s servant in exactly the same way that Pharaoh was when God wanted to
demonstrate the power to the world in the time of Moses.
Cyrus
himself is not necessarily a believer. There are no historical data to prove
that he had converted to worshipping the God of Israel. And according to one
account by Herodotus, he, in fact, does die in the last of his expansionist
battles against the Queen Tomyris of the Massagetae who accused him of
bloodlust. In that sense, he is no different than the expansionist rulers of
Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia who preceded him, and for whom there are also
Biblical prophecies of God opening the way ahead of them and giving them
victories on the battlefield for a time. There are also prophecies in the same
Bible for their own punishment for waging war and killing other peoples. If we
clamour for Cyrus then why not clamour for Nabuchonossor? And why not for the angels
who bring plagues on the world in the execution of God’s mission in the book of
Revelation?
In function,
what Cyrus does is to make it legally possible for a defeated and uprooted
people to return to the land apportioned to them by God and to the mission God
wanted them to do. But a person in the mould of Cyrus is an affront to accepted
international law in our era (perhaps Trump is after all given that he has made
of himself and of America laughing stocks on the international stage), and
certainly cannot have pride of place in God’s new era as we understand it to be
as Christians. The Cyruses and Sennacherib's of ancient history were not
particularly good examples for the people of God, who at any rate opposed them
tooth and nail even when God instructed them to submit, and they are not good
examples now. The work entrusted to us by our Lord is effective in an example,
not in some equivocating worldly philosophy.
In nature
then, Trump may well be a Cyrus – for he is not of our number in his words and
deeds. In function, he is even less so because his doings are actually a
manipulation of the brethren to advance his own self-centred political
ambitions. More importantly, we have no need of a Cyrus to accomplish our part
in God’s mission and in claiming a Cyrus for ourselves, we have sought to
reverse the Spirit-led movement over the course of history where we are moved
from shallower levels of revelations to the deeper.
What about
the many prophecies and visions that God wants Trump to lead?
Many have
been the videos on social media showing prophecies in the form of visions. Some
reported being carried into heaven and receiving warnings for the United States
from Jesus Christ as to make the proper choice in the 2020 elections –
obviously, Jesus Christ was rooting strongly for Trump.
But a
prophecy isn’t simply true because it emanated from someone we have become
accustomed to treating as a prophet. (I Kings 13:18) We have to ensure that it
is indeed from the Lord to us. So the Bible gives us a Mosaic test for
prophecy. (Deuteronomy 18:22) It is simply a test of occurrence. If what the
“prophet” alleges comes to pass then the prophecy was from the Lord. But this
test offers no help when it comes to deciding that a prophecy about Jesus
wanting Christians to vote Trump is true. It is essential in the form a
teaching and for this, the New Testament test will help us a great deal. Let’s
call it the Berean test. (Acts 17:11). Like the Bereans, we ought to compare
whatever is said in the name of our Master to Scripture to see if it is true.
Note that
“prophecy” is not only about foretelling but also about forthtelling. In
essence a prophet is not merely a seer, he is a bearer of God’s word whether
that word is for the future, the past or the present.
So we ask,
per their arguments, why would Jesus want us to vote for Trump?
Their answer
obviously will be to check the advance of abortion and gay rights through
political power.
Then we may
ask again, is that the method we see Jesus displaying in Scripture? Is such a
political/legalistic agenda ultimate or the covenant agenda of Jesus?
The clear
answer to these is “No”.
Therefore,
that prophecy cannot be true.
Conclusion
The
phenomenon of Trump has been a test which a large part of the Church has failed
woefully. It appears that on our performance over the past four years we will
side with anyone at all if they can give us what we want. If the Work was so
easy, only rulers, legislators, and judges would have been called by Christ. We
have become like the clergy who prayed with the Germany army while they went
off to defeat the world so they could wipe out entire people groups and subdue
those they deemed inferior. We have become like the Parliament in Apartheid
South Africa of whom someone had this to say:
The obscene
laws which constitute apartheid are not crazed edicts issued by dictators or
the whims of a megalomaniac monster or the one man decisions of a fanatical
ideologue. It is the result of polite
caucus discussions by hundreds of delegates in sober suits after full debate in
party congresses. They are passed after
three solemn readings in Parliament which opens each day’s proceedings with a
prayer to Jesus Christ. There is a
special horror in that fact.
Donald Woods
That some
people of God or people who claim for themselves that description happen to
back a certain course of action is no sure guarantee that the Spirit of God
backs that course of action, and it happens to be the fact of the Spirit’s
backing which ought to be decisive for us as Christians.
We have come
from a history where the Church was handed worldly power and failed to use it
any differently from how the people of the world have always done. It was time
to change when the Spirit moved Luther, Calvin et al, to break away from Rome,
and it was time to change when the pilgrims in America learned to not compel
faith. Times have changed for us as the Church to rediscover the New Testament
method of doing the Lord’s work:
Today it is
generally conceded that the Gospel mission cannot be carried out by force of
arms or by social pressure exerted in the name of patriotism or other political
considerations. Such means were used for many centuries, and the Church did not
really abandon them; rather, they were taken away from it. The Church did not
renounce the use of state power on its own.
Today, a new Gospel mission is arising, and it prescinds from the use of governmental power and violence. It is the Spirit who really creates new stages in church history, and today most people will admit that a mission endeavor not grounded on state power is more Christian and more effective. A hundred years ago such an admission would probably have been hard to come by.
Meaning of Mission, page 124
We are not
called to oppress – for that is what compelling others to do what one wants is,
irrespective of one’s intentions. We are rather called to point the way to
freedom from sin and the rediscovery of full humanity in the personhood of
those we encounter.
We do not
need to make political enemies of the very same people we wish to reach. When
we operate in that manner, nothing we can say to them will ever get through to
them because we will have turned God’s mission into a contest of wills and
power – the stronger wins. History tells us that we will lose in any such
contest because our weapons are not fit for that kind of contest. In fact, when
do these things, it seems that God himself departs from our side and goes to
the side of those we wish to oppress into faith. Our Lord is always on the side
of the oppressed, after all.
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