CHRIST-APP by philtierneyblog

2.    Many American Christians have come to be as closely identified with Trump as with Jesus, and that creates a spiritual block for many people in the United States and elsewhere.

Like it or not, the term Evangelical has become synonymous with supporter of Trump instead of disciple of Jesus. And that ruins the witness of Christians, especially white Evangelical Christians, to those who are not Trump supporters. It not only discredits such Christians among most American young adults and those in other parts of the world, but has caused a significant number to stop identifying themselves as Christians of that description. The effect is that onlookers regard many American Christians as wolves in sheep’s clothing, political activists in the guise of Followers of Jesus. These are facts. As it is written, “To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.  Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.‘” (John 8: 31-32) You should face the truth about what you are doing, repent of it, and be set free.

As I mentioned in the last installment, Jesus always pointed to God. He didn’t look for credit, but redirected it to God and to the people’s faith. He knew that the nature and focus of His ministry was to call people’s attention to God’s ever-present love and show them how to live in harmony with God’s love. He did not seek to call attention to Himself, but to God and to faith in God. Even when Jesus healed people, He said, “Your faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:19)

This man, Trump, does the opposite. An example of this comes from his speech at the Republican convention in 2016. He made such claims as these: “I am your voice.” “I will restore law and order.” “I alone can fix it.” Indeed, more recently, he said this to crowds in Maryland: “I am your voice.” “Today, I add: I am your warrior.”  “I am your justice.”  “And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” Trump invites his followers to put their trust in him and no one else, but him. He demands personal loyalty.

Jesus also said, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Matthew 6:24) While Jesus was addressing love of money in that verse, given the level of devotion Trump demands of his followers, it readily applies to him, as well. No one can serve Jesus and Trump.

Similarly, Jesus did not allow Himself to get distracted by the intensely debated moral, political or religious issues swirling around Him at the time. He never allowed Himself to be drawn into the traps laid for Him by the political or religious parties, back then — Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians and Zealots. Jesus clearly regarded engagement with those matters not only as a distraction to His mission, but as a trap. It would have led him away from His mission. Likewise, Christians who follow Trump, for whatever political reasons, have been led away from the mission to make known the Good News that Jesus came to spread. They follow a different mission, one not sanctioned by Jesus.

After Jesus left, His disciples and the leaders of Jesus’ growing movement worked hard to avoid being drawn into other issues that might not only distract them from pointing to Jesus, but also might actually block the receptivity of others to their message – the good news about Jesus. That’s what St. Paul meant when he wrote this in his second letter to the Christians in Corinth: “We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited.”  (2 Corinthians 6:3)

There were numerous political divisions that might have preoccupied and divided them. For example, from the outset there were contentions over the fairness of food distributions to Hellenistic Jews versus Judean Jews in the earliest church in Jerusalem. There were political divisions over whose gifts were greater in churches like Corinth. There were deep differences over whether Gentiles had to become Jewish (including circumcision) before they could be considered Christian. There were many more over issues of ethnicity, gender and social status.  But the apostles stuck to their mission as Jesus stuck to His mission. 

Many contemporary American Christians, specifically white Christians, have become distracted from that mission and are seriously discrediting the Gospel and their integrity, in the process. To use St. Paul’s terms, they have been putting stumbling blocks in the way of people’s pathway to God’s grace through Jesus and have been discrediting whatever ministries they might otherwise have. Indeed, many have been seduced in the same way the adversary tried to seduce Jesus in the wilderness. “The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this I will give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.’” (Matthew 4 and Luke 4)

Make no mistake; that was the temptation to use political power to impose God’s ways on others. Jesus rejected it. He replied, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” (Matthew 4: 10) That was not God’s will or God’s way, and it still isn’t!  The parallel is exact. Satan offered a transactional quid pro quo – political power for devotion. It was the same transactional quid pro quo that the Christian bishops around the Roman Empire made with the Emperor Constantine in 325 A.D. They adopted the “divine right of kings” in exchange for what they saw as freedom to worship and minister unmolested. And it is the same misguided quid pro quo that many American Christians have entered into with Donald Trump.

Again, make no mistake. God has not changed in this regard. Jesus has not changed. The Christian mission has not changed. That mission is not to make other people in a nation act in the ways Christians want them to act. If God wants people to act in certain ways, it’s God’s job to do it, by the influence of the Spirit — from the inside out, not from the outside in by legislation. Christians must stick to their mission. The Christian mission is not to make people more righteous. That was never the mission. The Christian mission is not to make America a “Christian nation.” That was never the mission. Jesus never mentioned America nor did He ever talk about making countries Christian. The Christian mission is not to try to make any geo-political state into God’s kingdom on earth. That was never the mission. The Christian mission is not to preserve Western Civilization. That was never the mission. Jesus and the Apostles never thought that their job was to preserve the Roman Empire or Israel or even Judaism and Jewish culture, but to proclaim the Good News and invite others to follow Jesus’ way, demonstrating love in the process.  Jesus articulated the mission.  It was simple. He said, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to all creation.” (Mark 16:15)   

Certain Christian celebrities in America, during the past several decades, have become seriously distracted, seriously compromised. They have misled others, in turn.

It all started just about 45 years ago, when a Southern Baptist Evangelical pastor, Jerry Falwell, was profoundly upset that Southern Baptist Evangelical president, Jimmy Carter’s administration instituted a regulation that would strip religious schools of their tax-exempt status if they practiced segregation. Falwell’s church had a segregated school. Inspired by the fear of losing money, Falwell started the “Moral Majority” to fight back. He was joined by Southern Baptist Charismatic and Christian Broadcasting Network owner, Pat Robertson, and a conservative Catholic former campaign strategist for Barry Goldwater, Paul Weyrich. Weyrich convinced Falwell that protecting segregated schools would not be sufficiently popular and that abortion would galvanize more widespread support. That was the birth of the Southern Evangelical and conservative Catholic movement to create the religious and political alliance, which used the Republican Party to pursue its political agenda and has become the basis of Trump’s support.  

During the intervening 45-year period, political ideology has become intertwined with Christian theology and become imbedded within Christian teaching to create the conservative Christian movement in America. Such Christian celebrities as Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jr., James Dobson, Robert Jeffress, Ralph Reed and many other leaders of political organizations wrapped in Christian garb have been urging support for Trump based on that fusion of religion and politics. 

The preponderance of American Christians supporting Trump are southern and mid-western white Evangelicals and very conservative white Roman Catholics. Little more than 1/3 of all Roman Catholics and extremely few Black, Hispanic or Native American Evangelicals support that movement for Donald Trump. Do you suppose that means that they’re less receptive to the guidance of the Spirit of God than white Christians or less consumed by political/ideological conservatism?  Do you suppose God withheld some revelation to support Trump from everyone but conservative, white American Christians?

Every Christian leader has gifts granted by God, but, like every other human, also has blind spots and vulnerabilities. Those compelling vulnerabilities include such temptations as fame, money, power, pride, sex or any of a number of others. One of the more common ones for Christian celebrities, these days, is the prideful accumulation and use of power and the accumulation of personal wealth.

Permit an example. As pastor of a relatively large church in California, I was part of a clergy association. Most communities have one. This one was made up of pastors from Catholic, Episcopal, Baptist, Lutheran and Methodist churches. There was also an Evangelical mega-church in town, the largest Presbyterian church in California at the time. None of the dozen or so pastors of that church attended any of the clergy meetings.

And so, I contacted the senior pastor of that church, to ask him to come to the group. He told me that he didn’t have time for the monthly meetings, but that he’d send one of his associates to join me for lunch. During lunch, he told me all the ways in which their ministries were the best around, except for a couple of programs that my church happened to offer the community. He said, “We always knew that our success would benefit other churches, too.” Then he asked me if he could borrow one of my staff members to replicate our programs. Success and the prestige or power it conferred were very important to the pastors of that church. That’s not uncommon.

This is how it works. Evangelical schools for ministry train their students on how to make churches grow. Growth is meant to indicate God’s blessing and to confirm a pastor’s faithfulness. Growth is measured by more – more people at church, more money, more programs, more staff, and more influence. To make their churches grow in those ways Evangelical pastors are taught how to use contemporary music to draw more people to worship. They’re taught how to develop small groups to provide fellowship and indoctrination in the beliefs of the church. They’re taught how to raise more money to pay for more staff to support more programs. They’re taught how to gain more influence and how to use their influence politically. 

The more compelling the products they offer, the more they will help people to embrace the faith and adhere to that church’s model of discipleship. The role of church members is to internalize it all in and to obey God, as God is presented by the pastor. The pastor has little accountability in many denominations and especially non-denominational churches, except perhaps for peer pressure by like-minded clergy. A conservative political agenda has often come to be added to the mix of discipleship. It has the capacity to engage and energize the faithful on a different level than they might otherwise be engaged, and that can make a pastor feel more influential or successful.

In the process, many leaders have also been tempted to do what Jesus never did – demonize those who are different. Throughout history, people who make oral presentations, including Greek philosophers, Jewish rabbis, teachers, politicians and Christian preachers, to identify what they consider to be opposing points of view. In doing so, they have created what’s been called straw men. That’s when the speaker makes up an opposing perspective, usually in the form of the caricature of an opponent. Exaggerated terms have been used to characterize the imaginary adversary in order to persuade listeners by knocking down those ideas by arguing against the exaggerated imaginary opponent.

In the process, they energize their listeners not only to accept their beliefs, but also to think of others as wrong, foolish or evil. That has been done by preachers, teachers and politicians in America, as well, especially recently. And so, altogether too many preachers have portrayed others, including liberals, humanists and non-Christians, as adversaries, even as evil enemies. That helps them to persuade their listeners and energize them, negatively. Jesus never did that and, whenever His disciples were tempted to turn others into enemies, He chastised them for it. It turns potential recipients of Jesus’s message into enemies instead of potential converts.  It’s an aberration, which only serves to alienate onlookers. 

For American Christians to collectively and publicly support Trump unnecessarily alienates vast numbers of Americans and others around the world. Imagine the affect Trump has on many Latino Americans, Black Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, women and young people concerned for the environment, let alone people in other nations, who understand that Trump’s way of making America great as done at their expense! When Christians publicly support Trump, it puts a block between the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the very people Jesus came to serve and save. It alienates them. It engenders suspicion and mistrust of the message because of the affiliation of the messengers with someone they perceive to be seriously damaged and untrustworthy. 

Remember what is written in Zechariah 4:6, “‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty.” God’s work in this world, Jesus’ mission, is not accomplished by political scheming or power politics to make a nation the way one would prefer it to be. That does not demonstrate trust in God, following Jesus or Christ-like love. It is vanity, which the sacred Scriptures denounce because it is not rooted in trust or love of God. Seeking power through Trump to coerce others to conform to particular Christian mores is a way of playing God by substituting their role for God’s. It robs God’s grace.

More on this in the next installment.