Bill Leonard
In Living Faith (1996) former President Jimmy Carter recalls this White House encounter: “A high official of the Southern Baptist Convention [SBC] came into the Oval Office to visit me when I was president. As he and his wife were leaving, he said, ‘We are praying, Mr. President, that you will abandon secular humanism as your religion.’ This was a shock to me. I didn’t know what he meant. I am still not sure.” Carter, who taught Sunday school at Washington’s First Baptist Church while president, also remembers that in his 1976 run for the White House, “the evangelist Jerry Falwell condemned me because I ‘claimed’ to be a Christian.”
Some four decades later certain conservative Christian leaders, including Jerry Falwell Jr. and J.D. Greear, president of the SBC, paid another visit to the White House for a “state dinner” hosted by Donald Trump, a president whose politics they strongly support, but whose life of secular hedonism they seem willing to overlook. Indeed, some 100 of the ministers in attendance signed a Bible that they presented to the president, with an inscription that reads: “History will record the greatness that you have brought for generations.” (Greear later released a statement defending his decision to attend the dinner, reaffirming his desire to depoliticize the SBC, and noting that he did not sign the Bible.)
“The White House dinner and Bible-signing are outward signs of an inward and spiritual quandary we’d all best consider.”
While acknowledging that they are troubled by the president’s personal moral turpitude, his ministerial defenders often write him into holy scripture, pointing to King Cyrus who, although “a heathen,” defended Israel, and King David, who’s adultery did not lead to his removal as monarch. For these biblical cosigners, the present “king’s” appointment of conservative judges, moving the embassy to Jerusalem, and positive responses to other “evangelical” agendas carried the day.
Did the book of Amos suddenly get deleted from the biblical canon? Remember? “I hate, I despise your festivals, I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. . . But let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5: 21, 24). Before autographing a copy of the Gospels, did anyone recollect Jesus’ words? “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. . .” (Luke 14: 13-14). If we’re going to use scripture to defend our politics or our politicians, we’d do well to grapple with the whole Bible. “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to put confidence in princes” (Psa. 118:9).
American presidents have often led religious leaders down the political primrose path, perhaps none more public than the late Billy Graham’s relationship with Richard Nixon. The White House dinner guests might contemplate Graham’s own assessment of his political encounters, reflected in a 2011 Christianity Today interview: “I … would have steered clear of politics. I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to. But looking back, I know I sometimes crossed the line, and I wouldn’t do that now.”
I keep thinking that I’ve written enough in this column about controversial issues in American religious and political life, hoping to focus more on the spiritual, contemplative elements for living in a difficult time. Yet events like those of the “state dinner” call to mind Howard Thurman’s words for such a time as this. In The Luminous Darkness (1989), Thurman – civil rights activist, Boston University chaplain and Baptist forebear – wrote: “The measure of a man’s estimate of your strength is the kind of weapons he feels that he must use to hold you fast in a prescribed place.”
A dissenter’s resistance to “prescribed places” of our current national and ecclesiastical dilemmas prompts my continuing response to attempts to co-opt a certain rightward kind of “evangelical” Christianity as normative historical-theological-political orthodoxy for American churches. American Christians have every right to support the politicians and policies that their consciences may dictate. But none of us can claim to have it both ways – dictating moral constraints to the masses while excusing them in governmental officials for political purposes.
The White House dinner and Bible-signing are outward signs of an inward and spiritual quandary we’d all best consider. All our righteous declarations require a modicum of humility. Yes, as certain dinner guests asserted, historically some “evangelicals” labored in behalf of the American Revolution, Abolitionism and the Civil Rights movement. Full disclosure requires confessing that other “evangelicals” signed onto biblical support for persecution of religious minorities, pro-slavery and Jim Crow segregation. We’re all vulnerable to such religio-political compromises. Doing so imperils our gospel birthrights.
I offer four observations at this critical moment for American democracy and American Christianity:
First, let’s avoid applying the term “evangelical” to one subgroup of a larger movement. At best, the ministers who attended the recent dinner represent but one segment of American evangelicalism in its wider doctrinal, regional, racial and historic diversity. A more accurate description might be Fundamentalist-Evangelicals, or the Religious Right, a movement whose Christian beliefs and political sentiments have been well-documented since the early 20th century.
“All American Christians must work together these days to distinguish religious liberty from religious privilege.”
Second, those sentiments are certainly evident in fundamentalism’s long, appreciative commitment to authoritarian leadership, particularly surrounding pastoral, or in this case political, office. It is no surprise that the biblical admonition to “touch not mine anointed and do my prophets no harm” (I Chron. 16:22KJV), a text often cited by fundamentalist pastors when their authority was questioned, is now applied to the president of the United States.
Third, no doubt the permanent transition in American religious and cultural life compels many Republican-leaning Christian leaders to advocate policies of the administration, not only out of conscience, but also out of fear regarding their changing position in the society. As Protestants, particularly white Protestants, lose their majority status and as racial, political and religious pluralism becomes increasingly normative, such fear is reinforced by aging congregations, declining budgets and evangelism that isn’t working as it once did. (Greear’s North Carolina congregation seems a clear exception.) As the loss of Protestant privilege expands throughout the culture, some faith-based apologists go looking to the government for undue ecclesiastical assistance. All American Christians must work together these days to distinguish religious liberty from religious privilege.
Fourth, perhaps the recent White House feast is both symbol and warning to all Christians engaged for conscience sake with issues and individuals in the political realm. We carry our deepest beliefs into the public square, but we are ever wary lest our gospel witness itself be torn asunder by inappropriate advocacy of political ideas and persons that stretch our claims of moral integrity to the limits. As “earthen vessels” everyone, we dare not sell our Beatitude-centered birthright and its accompanying moral imperatives for a mess of political pottage, whoever occupies the White House.