Donald Trump - Prophet or Mercenary?
In Exchange for the Power and the Glory the Religious Right Gives Trump the Kingdom
“The Book of Isaiah says that God views all the nations of the world as nothing but a drop in the bucket. All means all,” Thomas told me. “Now, has America been uniquely blessed? Sure. But it could also be uniquely cursed. You better be careful because patriotism quickly turns into idolatry. There’s more than one way to be an idol worshipper. In the Old Testament, you had Moloch and child sacrifices and all this stuff. But Satan is subtle. We don’t have statues now; we have political parties and presidential candidates.”
Repenting of his political harvest, Evangelical leader, Cal Thomas, in an interview with Tim Alberta, author of The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory
One of the great questions is how white Evangelical Christians in the United States can support a man who does not share their religious values, beliefs, and practices. The answer is that they have given Trump power to advance their conservative goals in order to save their preeminent place in American society that they are rapidly losing. The end justifies the means.
People in the heartland – or should we be impolitic and say – flyover country – who would normally look askance at a New York “non-Christian” businessman with multiple marriages, an ostentatious lifestyle and egotistical personality who condescends to them, have somehow adopted a man with all of those qualities. Why did they listen to the siren song of lies by a man so contrary to their Christian faith and morality? How could such a man be a prophet sent by God in this moment of the decline and fall of America that was founded – in their view and contrary to history – as a Christian nation?
Among my disorderly pile of reading material which includes books on theology and history, “junque” novels, and Scientific American there is a copy of Vanity Fair. It is not the usual item one would expect in the reading material of an aging anthropologist and Catholic cleric. I sometimes chuckle to think of what others of my calling would think of such a godless publication. I read a broad range of material and yes, I am guilty of doom scrolling, with the justification that I cannot preach or find God in contemporary society if I do not know what it is. Let’s call it armchair field work. (When I am serious, I put on my pith helmet and hide behind the house plants.) Being an anthropologist – a student of godless moral relativism – is also part of my vocation. Okay. My Protestant colleagues would tease me about being the kind of worldly Catholic that would justify another Reformation. However, many of my Catholic brethren and sistren on the right would say the same things without joking.
Then again, I would be in company with Pope Francis, but that is not always seen as such good company in today’s American Catholic Church. The Pope and I would call it contextual theology. The idea that history, culture, and social change are sacramental because of God’s presence in human affairs. This is the ancient notion from St. Paul, that God’s revelation of God’s self can be found today in contemporary society and culture and cannot be separated from it. As the pope has said so famously, we are supposed to be the field hospital in today’s world. Opposing Pope Francis is a propositional theology that is not so much a reflection on contemporary religious experience as much as it is a brandishing of statements of belief from previous times and cultures as cudgels to topple altars to the false gods of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Getting back to Vanity Fair, this bible of bling and Babylon of overpriced brands, had a fascinating article in its December 4, 2023, issue about the moral implosion and political success of white Evangelicalism. Catholics cover the political spectrum leaning more to the right than to the left. The 55% of Catholics who voted for Donald Trump have a lot in common with their theological opposites with whom they have fought ideologically and physically throughout modern European and American history. In a startling turn of events, finding common comfort in Billy Graham, these antagonists have become political bedfellows ever since the sun rose on Reagan’s Morning in America.
In fact, the Catholic Charismatic (Pentecostal) Movement, of which Chief Justice Amy Coney Barrett is an exemplar, has a born-again theology more in common with Baptists. Both share the Born-Again brand and an individualistic acceptance of Jesus as their Lord and Savior, even though such a formulation is contrary to traditional Catholic teaching. In its traditional teaching, the Church as a community calls us to faith in Jesus and we respond by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Sundering what God has not put together in this union of politically and religiously conservative Catholics hanging on to their Latin Masses and Evangelicals holding their Bibles is not an easy task. It is a marriage of white cultural and religious survival in a world of that great and consequential oxymoron – Spiritual Warfare. More broadly, these not-so-heavenly campaigns against evil are the Culture Wars. Instead of looking for God’s Kingdom – the ongoing divine activity in culture, society, and the powerless – propositional Evangelicals and Catholics launch understandings of scripture and traditional teaching formulated in the Middle Ages or the Reformation as missiles in an iron dome of defense against the onslaught of demographics in which white people are becoming a minority.
Tim Alberta, a minister’s son, says that Evangelicals have embraced Trump even though he does not share their faith or stated morality because he is an effective mercenary. They give Trump the power and the glory and he keeps the kingdom in exchange for protecting them and promoting their place in society. It is often said that strongmen don’t take power. It is given to them. As Cal Thomas, the noted columnist and erstwhile architect of the mid-20th century evangelical movement said, “Satan is subtle.” In the Spanish baptismal liturgy, the faithful reject “las seducciones del mal,” the seduction of evil. In Spanish the subtlety of evil rolls off the tongue with its own ominous drama.
Many of the political positions of Evangelicals and conservative Catholics will be found wanting on that last Day of Judgement in the 25th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel:
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
Instead, many “evangelists” make a lot of money preaching a Gospel of prosperity. God wants you to be prosperous and have all of life’s advantages. You can manipulate God to your advantage. Misfortune, sorrow, and illness are curses to be removed. It is blaming the victim on a celestial scale and contrary to the core teaching of the Gospel, which proclaims the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Christ as the core of God’s saving action. All Christians are called to suffer for justice, to die to self, and rise in Christ. In the mainstream of Christianity, life in Christ is to be a complete unreserved giving of self to bring about the Kingdom of God.
In line with the prosperity gospel, white Americans are believed to have a divine right to prosperity, position, and power. It is the divine order of things. In the fullness of time and at the maximum point of danger, God has sent his champion Donald Trump, just as he sent Ronald Regan in a time of great crisis.
It would be nice to be even-handed, but secular liberals don’t have this divine framework. Which means that they are relegated to the first circle of Dante’s Inferno, in which those who have “commitment issues” are buffeted by the unceasing winds of tut-tuts of liberal talk show talking heads. Not really, but you get the idea.
Conservative Catholics who have chosen St. Trump have a different rationalization. They focus on sexual and reproductive issues. Liberal Catholics focus on social justice, an end to nuclear weapons, and the abolition of the death penalty. Traditionalists, or “faithful Catholics” as they call themselves in contradistinction to the rest of us, see themselves as besieged by the modern world and more recently by Pope Francis.
We have been looking in the wrong end of the telescope to understand the Trump phenomenon and the danger it poses to the republic. We are tempted to see it as a bill of goods that he sold to evangelicals and conservative Catholics. We have assumed the power of Donald Trump as something he won, by winning over conservatives with a populist appeal contrary to conservatism itself. However, through the lens of the anthropology of religion we can see that Trump’s strength is deeper and stronger than some mere weed in a crack in the sidewalk. Trumpism’s roots are woven deep in the religious fabric of a country that is still, at its core, religious. The kingdom, the power, and the glory usually proclaimed of God have been conferred on a new savior – a new guarantor of God’s prosperity, the one who alone can fix this – Donald Trump.
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