From the moment his campaign began, Donald Trump promised to “Make America Great Again”.
White, American Evangelicals passionately embraced both him and that message—and they are largely responsible for the place we find ourselves today.
It’s now quite clear that the “greatness” Tump aspired to, would be a country marked by vitriol, enmity, separation, bullying, wall building, and abject cruelty.
It was the building of a gated community of frightened white folks, who believe themselves assailed on every side by a dangerous and diverse horde of quickly encroaching predators.
This swift, grand march toward national greatness, has been noticeably accompanied by hostility to outsiders and by a startling lack of decency and compassion for hurting and vulnerable people—which all underscores the painful truth:
Goodness wasn’t part of the platform or the plan—and goodness doesn’t really matter now.
Sadder still, many of Trump’s Evangelical supporters want to amen all this bitter, divisive malevolence while still claiming Christ.
They want to steamroll the world into greatness by force and coercion—and they want Jesus to endorse it all.
The only problem is—Jesus.
He apparently had very little interest in such “greatness.”
He talked of the last being first,
of becoming servant of all,
of laying down one’s life for one’s friends,
of denying oneself,
of healing the hurting,
of caring for the poor,
of elevating the marginalized,
of freeing the oppressed,
of seeing the overlooked,
of being peacemakers,
foot washers,
cheek turners,
mercy givers,
least-lovers.
Jesus’ life was a beautifully subversive manifesto of smallness and kindness and goodness; continually reiterating the sacredness of sacrifice, the dignity in humility, the redemptive nature of forgiveness.
But sacrifice, humility, and forgiveness don’t make for effective campaign slogans or bright red hats, do they?
They don’t leverage the hidden fear in people’s hearts.
They don’t manufacture easy urgency from the declining pewsitters.
They can’t induce lazy religious people into action.
They don’t exploit the image of a furious God dispensing damnation.
They don’t poke the tender places of anxiety and hatred.
They don’t stoke the fires of latent racism and homophobia.
They don’t resonate when screamed from behind a podium.
They don’t fire up the anxious everyman.
They don’t appeal to the lowest common denominator.
And sadly, the character of Jesus doesn’t rally the Bible Belt, garner the support of popular Evangelists, or reach into the souls of many professed Christians anymore either—which for a person of faith is the bigger story here; the growing irrelevance of Jesus in the faith tradition that bears his name.
This is the greatest sin of the American Evangelical Church in these days: normalizing embracing, and celebrating the very kind of bloated, callous, self-centered existence Jesus came to call people away from.
It is now a tragically ironic religion: proclaiming an upside-down gospel of privilege, that bears no resemblance to the good news for the poor and marginalized it first was.
The Christians loudly preaching the greatness of Donald Trump are abandoning the goodness of Jesus Christ—and they’re killing the Church in the process.
They’re giving the watching world who already believed Christianity to be a malignant gathering populated by selfish hypocrites, every reason to believe their suspicions were true.
They are rightly driving good people out of organized religion—and then blaming them for leaving.
American Christians who still believe in a life of mercy and gentleness, need to raise their voices now.
We need to cut through the fear-peddling noise and the flag-waving fervor and the pulpit-pounding rage—and stop letting angry people wield Jesus like a weapon.
We need to recover the soft, compassionate heart of Christ from the contempt and hardness that now surrounds it in this country.
To hell with this American Evangelical greatness, and the perverted toxic religion it produces, the damage it does, the wounds it generates, the fear it cultivates.
Give me goodness in the likeness of Jesus; a people who aspire to be healers and helpers and life-givers, and a religion that seeks to do no harm, to welcome the world, and to love without restraint.
God, make American Christians good again.
