A friend texted me late Tuesday night, after the results of the elections had reflected the so-called blue tsunami: “America is restoring my faith in her tonight. What a great, great night!”
Part of my response went this way: “I’ll take the wins and with thanks. But until the likes of Franklin Graham, certain SBC leaders, the likes of Paula White et al, and the many people we’ve encountered on social media speaking the most inane vitriol repent of their moral, ethical, social and theological fallacy and repudiate their apostasy, I will be very cautious about widespread restoration of faith. Until all the liars, starting with the chief sinner — the orange demagogue — who’ve knowingly undermined elections and faith in elections, lied about January 6, and lied and hated on their neighbors — until all of those people who’ve behaved the foulest, repent with bitter tears, I will withhold my faith for a moment. There remain millions of them lurking about; and many remain in churches.”
Michael Friday
The funny thing about marrying religion with partisan politics is that when the people bulldoze a raft of incumbents and Trump-and-Franklin-Graham-endorsed candidates to electoral oblivion, people who call themselves Christian and evangelical should go quickly into introspection mode. They should read the vote as a repudiation of their kind of religion and tremble as they also consider that it may also be divine repudiation of them.
First, they must ask, Exactly what did the people repudiate, and why? Once they begin to objectively answer that question (or have it answered by somebody else), they will quickly find it is not only Trump wickedness, MAGA wickedness, ICE wickedness, Republican congressional uselessness, poor stewardship and abuse of power that have been judged; they should see the religion that buttressed all that wickedness has been placed in both national and divine scales and found wanting.
“The religion that buttressed all that wickedness has been placed in both national and divine scales and found wanting.”
They should find that the people repudiated greed and corruption. Neither is a Christlike value. They should repudiate it too. Their credibility already is shot.
They should find that the people rejected poverty and poverty-creation (via greed, corruption and unnecessary war). The first thing the Spirit-anointed Jesus declared as his focus was “good news for the poor” and the last was Jubilee.
Poverty — especially where created by greed and excesses of the powerful — made Jesus angry, just as it made Isaiah, Amos, Micah and other prophets, major and minor, angry. It made God angry. As the rest of us watch them supporting these greedy liars, impoverishing the rest of us (including them), it makes us angry too!
They should find that the people renounced the injustice of letting insurrectionists, rapists and an assortment of other horrid criminals off the hook with polluted pardons, while the same administration warehoused, manhandled, imprisoned, deported and even killed innocent people, with not a single legal infraction on their record.
Jesus did include in his manifesto the release of captives. Punishing the innocent and rewarding the guilty is declared as patently anti-biblical and therefore evil. Franklin Graham, Al Mohler, Robert Jeffress, Paula White, Darrell Scott and a wide band of people who would easily be called false prophets, were they found in the Old or New Testament periods, have taken the side of Simon Magus, to whom Peter declared, “You and your money go to hell.”
“The people looked at James Talarico and Adam Hamilton and thought they sounded like Jesus.”
They should find that the people read the letter to the Ephesians and believe Paul where he says, “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.” And they applied that verse to the Epstein Files scandal. Powerful people until now covered in darkness the names of other powerful hard-backed men who’ve destroyed little girls’ lives. The people could not reconcile that with Christlikeness.
They should find that the people looked at James Talarico and Adam Hamilton and thought they sounded like Jesus. They should wonder why the people are more comfortable with Abdul El Sayed and Jon Ossoff than a Ramaswamy or Boebert; for therein are clues about the credibility of their supposed faith versus Hamilton, Talarico and Ossoff.
Moreover, as these MAGA Americans who call themselves Christian and evangelical ask deeply, “What did these votes mean?” perhaps they might find that the people no longer believe them when they say, “I am a Christian.”
Perhaps they might find the people note that “Christian” has been coopted by heartless, unethical people and married to nationalism, thence to be paraded deceitfully and deceptively as the imitation of Jesus the Christ. The people are now woke. They see the duplicity. They see the light.
Perhaps the people, upon seeing this American brand of “Christian” and “evangelical,” now have spiritual heartburn as they hear the familiar nickname, the appropriateness and accuracy of which have severely waned in America and worldwide for decades or even centuries. Perhaps the people think, given the behavior of too many Americans who declare that name as their identity, that the nickname, now made into a lie, should be retired.
Perhaps the people, now woke, now know that “Christian” should not cause them to automatically associate the claimant with Jesus.
Here’s the truth:
- Imitating Jesus is not nationalism.
- Imitating Jesus is not brutality.
- Imitating Jesus is not inciting an insurrection to steal an election.
- Imitating Jesus is not ICE, a veritable terrorist guerilla group.
- Imitating Jesus is not Stephen Miller, a hateful, cold and wicked supremacist.
- Imitating Jesus is not Pete Hegseth, an out-of-depth incompetent accused war criminal.
- Imitating Jesus is not JD Vance, lying about Haitians eating dogs and cats.
- Imitating Jesus is not Franklin Graham, anointing iniquity and vilifying Muslims.
- Imitating Jesus is not Al Mohler, who has lost his way and all his Baptist credentials.
- Imitating Jesus is not Paula White, a fake shaman and a ministerial joke.
- Imitating Jesus is certainly not Donald Trump, or MAGA, or lying, or indecency, or multiple sexual exploits and yet-to-answer multiple accusers of sexual assault.
- Imitating Jesus is certainly not extoling or emulating the combination of the character traits of Cain, Nabal, Balaam, Ahab, Barabbas, Simon Magus and Judas, all in the same convoluted, depraved and ultimately puny and weak person.
American “Christians” who’ve supported Trump and MAGA have some thinking to do. And some repenting.
Michael Friday serves as executive minister of the American Baptist Churches of Greater Indianapolis and is author of the book, And Lead Us Not Into Dysfunction: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, of Church institutions and Their Leaders. He is a member of BWA Commission on the Healthy Churches, and the Commission on Gender, Racial and Economic Justice. He has served Baptists in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and the USA.
Related:
Black Church and white evangelical church see midterms differently
Payday for MAGA | Opinion by Mark Wingfield
When hope and history rhyme but justice hasn’t reached every shore | Opinion by Brian Henderson
This is for you, America | Opinion by Erich Bridges
Understanding the blue tsunami of the midterms | Analysis by Edmond Davis