Written By: Dr. Jelani Kerr
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
-Mahatma Ghandi
“Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.”
-Frederick Douglass
There is a looming #threat to modern day #Christianity. This is not inclusive of the body of Christ in general, but rather a specific but large political faction of Christian America with an ideology housing contradictions to important precepts of the #Way. Although the US still embraces Christianity on a large-scale, these incongruities may not only impact whether people embrace Christianity, it can also lead to policies that are arguably anti-Christian.
Unfortunately this #ideology empowers #government officials who create policies resulting in the rich getting richer (union-busting, dismantling consumer protections, and tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy) at the expense of the poor. Perhaps more concerning, these officials emphatically argue for gutting initiatives that benefit the #vulnerable like social security, #Medicare, and food stamps. #Jesus spoke a lot about #money, but the emphasis was never working to help the rich. As it is well known, He implored #compassion for the less fortunate.
Similarly, this is a faction with #politicians who, on the one hand, quote the #Bible, while on the other, try to strip #healthcare from people in service of #economic interests. It is ironic that
many people do not recognize that the founder of the #faith dispensed healing #free of charge to everyone who asked. Instead, in Kentucky, this ideology is leading elected officials to modify #Medicaid in a way that, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, caused almost 12,000 people to lose healthcare when it was done in Arkansas. These are the #policy realizations of a right-wing yet Christian viewpoint and it is getting more complicated.
Then there is Donald #Trump.
The undergirding of Trump’s base is the Christian right. Pew Research polling indicates a nearly 70% approval rating for Trump among #evangelicals – a figure far below the 42% approval for the total country produced by a fivethirtyeight poll. An estimated 80% of White evangelical voters casted their #ballots for Trump in the 2016 general #election. This is curious indeed given the obvious #contradictions of Trump’s behavior (adultery with adult film actresses, a record-setting number of lies while in office, inciting violence against protestors with promises to pay the legal fees for assaulting parties), his clear unfamiliarity with scripture (as evidenced by mispronunciations of new testament books (second , not two Corinthians), and the call for high moral standards among national leaders that was previously an evangelical hallmark. Dedication to moral high standing among politicians for this group has waned in the Trump era as Pew Research indicates that 63% of Republicans report moral leadership as important. That is down from 86% in the Clinton era.
From a policy standpoint, the impacts are more egregious and stunning.
The contours of the Trump #immigration policy has not only resulted in the deaths of two children, it has led to, according to the New York Times, the #separation of nearly 13,000 children from their parents. This again, is a stark contradiction to the emphasis on family values and widespread denunciations of family breakdown that came to greater prominence in the eighties and nineties. To be fair, some prominent evangelical leaders were vocal against the handling of family separations, but by-and-large Trump still enjoys overwhelming evangelical support.
Some may argue that the religious right’s support of Trump is mainly a function of his value to
the pro-life movement and the power to select judges more favorable to this position. It is true that Trump has selected a cache of judges to fill federal seats and two Supreme Court justices. However, his dedication to the sanctity of life is rife with #paradox. For example, Trump campaigned on not only targeting #terrorists in the Middle East for execution, but he also stated his intention to attack relatives and friends of suspected terrorists. In line with this, he recently repealed an Obama-era policy requiring #intelligence agencies to provide a public accounting of civilian and combatant causalities from drone strikes occurring outside of war zones. It is nearly impossible to accurately calculate the death toll for Middle East engagements and estimates of civilian deaths are both wildly variable and likely undercounted. It is known however that much of the US drone program falls within #CIA jurisdiction and this move by the Trump administration makes it easier to kill innocent people. Assuredly Jesus would condemn the idea of drone-striking a family because one of its members is suspected to have been #radicalized and assuredly “thou shall not kill” applies to outside-the-womb non-combatants in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen.
All of these concerns lead to meaningful questions at the intersection of faith and politics. To be clear, this is not a question of #salvation because all who call on the name of the #Lord shall be saved and whosoever believeth upon Him shall have #everlasting life. People are saved by #grace, not by political ideology. Still, these actions do call into question key aspects of the quality of Christian practice within the US. How can one political party who seemingly wears their faith on their sleeves seem to have embraced presidential #indecency? Why does it appear that many of the practices, policies, and policy impacts of the #Republican Party and the behavior of its’ leadership are #antithetical to Biblical prescription? Most importantly, what are the results for the Christian community?
A concerning possibility is that this ideology is helping to fuel widespread contraction of the Christian community. Many young Christians, #disillusioned by the 2016 elections, no longer identify with the evangelical label. #Gallup polling suggests that 35% of 18-29 year olds report do not report a religion. A 2014 Pew Research study indicates that 23% of adults do not identify with an #organized faith. That is up from 16% in 2007. Only half of Americans are a member of a #church or #synagogue. That is 13% less than a mere 10 years ago. At this rate there are not enough #millennial believers to maintain current levels of religious observation as the more religiously-affiliated older generations age.
At brass tax, Americans are becoming less interested in the Christian faith. Although Republican alignment with evangelicals may not fully account for these defections, many millennials, even in church, are struggling with the evangelical community’s support of an administration they perceive as hostile to socially #marginalized groups like the poor, LGBTQ communities, and #immigrants. From a #theological perspective, evangelicals may want to wrestle with this because, as Reverend King said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” From a practical perspective, embracing a hermeneutic that supports the disenfranchised is likely to reconcile the troubling political questions youth are dealing with and thus help replenish #practitioners of the faith as older generations pass. The ultimate deciding question however is whether this voting base is willing to embrace short-term political game at the expense of youth #disengagement from the church.
Written By: Dr. Jelani Kerr
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