Pop 89: UnChristianity
By Madonna Hamel
“You want to know why so many people can’t stand Christians? It’s not for how very Christian we are - but how unChristian we are.” Those are the words of Russell Moore, author of “Losing Our Religion”. After watching the Republican National Convention I had to rewatch his conversation with Tim Alberta, author of “The Kingdom, The Power and the Glory”, to assure myself that Christianity has not gone completely to religious right entrepreneurs posing as followers of Christ.
Moore and Alberta are two Christian evangelicals who have stepped away from their churches but not their faith. In their conversation Moore quotes one of my favourite authors, Wendell Berry: “The most dangerous words in the English language are: Desperate times call for desperate measures.” Well, actually, no, says Moore. The illness at the heart of Christian Nationalism is the absurd sentiment that - “the stakes are too high to follow Jesus. We have to cease being Christian in order to save Christianity.”
But Christ didn’t exactly live in easy times. His high stakes reversal of the “might is right” ethos of the Romans, his care for the poor and his welcoming of the ostracized, were all considered repulsive and abhorrent acts and got him nailed to the cross. And even then he asked that they be forgiven because they didn’t know what they were doing.
Desperate times don’t require desperate behaviour; they require sane measures and calm people thinking clearly. Some of you might recall “Desiderata,” a 1927 poem made popular by Les Crane in 1971. My favourite line remains: “Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in times of sudden misfortune”. Anyone who nurtures and exercises daily the precepts and beatitudes of their faith will be able to lean on them in desperate times, the same way we can lean on our own bodies if we exercise regularly.
If we were doing our best to practice our faith, we wouldn’t feel the urge to looking frantically around for others to blame for our collective problems, including drug addiction, job loss and violent crime. If your principles and values, your rules of human engagement, are not assuaging your despair, then perhaps they are not Christian values, but market values.
Unhealed despair can lead to choosing leaders who act like Roman caesars who mistake themselves for gods and are billed as Messiahs. But desperation can also be the crack in the vessel that lets the light in. It can to lead to transformation. As one American friend, who is a member of AA , said to me when struggling with his own concept of God: the Gift of Desperation has become my acronym for God.
Was God anointing Trump when the bullet whizzed past his ear, as many Christian Nationalists are claiming? Or was Jesus whispering a reminder to “be merciful” to the immigrants he was vilifying at the time. “Be merciful, for judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.” (James 2:13) Or: “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”(Matthew 25:40) Or, maybe: “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.” ( 2 Timothy 4:3)
I know that many Democrats don’t heed the aforementioned words of Jesus any more than their opponents. And many Republicans do not act or speak like Trump. I’m sure there are many Christians who agree with theologian Marcus Borg when he said: “Jesus did not come to make us rich.” And with author James Finley when he says: “Jesus did not die on the cross to save our personality.”
A t-shirt can say a lot about a culture’s personality. Like billboards and bumper stickers, their tone, through jokes, insults and/or ultimatums, reflects the tone of a certain population. During this latest campaign there’s one t-shirt that reflects the topsy-turvy state of hero worship in America. The shirt bears an image of Trump in a floor-length fur coat with the words “The Real Don” above it. Beneath Trump is a list: “Capone 5, Gotti 14, Trump 34”. Wearers of the shirt are basically bragging about their candidate having far more convictions than two past mafia bosses combined.
Late-stage despair turns morality upside-down. Where else do the desperate turn? To violent threats. An overwhelming number of t-shirts depict assault weapons, including one that says: “Come and Take it Joe.” Another re-pictures the classic painting, American Gothic, with Trump as the farmer. Ironically, instead of holding a pitchfork, he’s holding a rifle similar to the one used on him. Talk about reversing scripture. The t-shirt basically turns Isaiah 4:4 upside down by suggesting Americans turn ploughshares into swords.
The full actual biblical quote, by the way, reads: “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” But I’d bet money there’s not a single self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist who understands that quote, any more than they’d understand that the “shining city on the hill” was never a reference to America. America didn’t exist - Christianity didn’t exist - when those words were spoken as an exhortation to light a lamp and “give light to all in the house.”
The “house” of Matthew 5:14 does not refer to a single country or political party. If it did, the whole point of the teaching would be lost. It’s not about cherry-picking who should be loved, or given refuge, or valued, or listened to, or deemed exceptional. Christ insisted we are all precious in God’s eyes. You don’t have to be a Christian to appreciate Christ. But, you can’t be a Christian AND be a Christian Nationalist.