Golden Rule for Trump Christians
My breakfast is appallingly predictable and repetitive: oatmeal with hemp, and a few nuts and berries. It’s supposed to be good for my cholesterol. But not, alas, especially good for my soul, and for that sort of morning spiritual sustenance I’d need something like the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, the most recent of which was held last Thursday. I can only assume that my invitation was lost in the mail.
Begun in 1953, it was always the preserve of evangelicals and conservatives, but at a time when both words signified something far more moderate. Back then it was Billy Graham, who ostensibly dominated American Christianity, rather than people like his extremist son Franklin, or the hysterical Jerry Falwell Jr.
The most recent gathering did feature one or two progressive voices, but the theme and tone of the event is overwhelmingly traditionalist, especially when the president is a Republican, and never more so than when that Republican is Donald Trump.
He is, after all, ordained by God. We know this because Sarah Huckabee Sanders — daughter, remember, of minister-turned-politician Mike Huckabee — told us so. “God,” she proclaimed, “wanted Trump to become president.” Thing is, I speak to the Almighty on a regular basis and she told me that she’d voted for Hillary Clinton. When I asked her why, she said it was because Bernie Sanders wasn’t on the ballot.
The White House press secretary’s consistent daftness, obfuscation and downright dishonesty aside, she did speak for millions of people when she revealed what she was convinced were the Almighty’s voting choices. The 81per cent of white evangelicals who supported Trump agree with her. And while they might not be sophisticated, neither are they all fools. Many of them know that their man is an adulterer, a liar, often cruel, and likely personally indifferent to religious faith. But he delivers.
Two new judges appointed to the Supreme Court who are solidly anti-abortion, a ban on transgender people who want to put their lives on the line by serving in the armed forces, the overturning of a tax-code provision that prevented religious organizations from backing political candidates, and support to so-called religious freedom campaigns, meaning the rights of institutions and businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ people and claim holy justification for their bigotry.
In foreign policy, there was something that many people wrongly attributed to diplomatic pressure, namely the official recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. This was designed to please evangelical Christians far more than the Jewish community. American Jews generally vote Democrat, and often take a liberal view of Israel; indeed, Jewish pro-Israel groups in the U.S. seldom made the moving of the embassy a major issue.
Christian Zionists, however, most certainly did. Their eschatological fantasies involve the return of all Jews to Israel, the rebuilding of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, an end-times total war, and thus the second coming of Christ. Silly me — I thought Jesus just wanted us to love one another, be gentle and kind, turn the other cheek, and help the powerless and rejected. Thus, whatever Trump may or may not be on a personal and spiritual level, he is just what the Christian right had hoped for politically. So whenever CNN and the rest hold yet another inflated panel of angry experts incredulous at what the man has done, Trump sits back in the comfortable knowledge that evangelicals will guarantee that any Republicanprimary challenger will be eviscerated, and that in election swing states, such as Michigan, Florida and Georgia, their votes will likely carry the day.
It’s all colossally embarrassing and shameful for those of us who try to convince an understandably skeptical world that Christianity is by its nature forward-looking and committed to social justice, and even more painful for those who are victims of Trump’s policies. The Golden Rule for Trump Christians appears to be that if you’ve got the gold, you make the rules.
In reality, none of this should come as any genuine surprise to political commentators, but it often appears that they just don’t see the bigger, Bible-sized picture. Proving that they should have listened to their mums … and eaten their breakfast!