Imagine this great cloud of Baptist witnesses around the Resolute Desk

Two images crowd into my mind.

One is of President Donald Trump sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, surrounded by a group of evangelical leaders. The other image is the cover artwork of Margaret M. Mitchell’s The Heavenly Trumpet. The painting, by Leonidas Ananiades, depicts St. John of Chrysostom at his desk writing a sermon. Standing behind him, peering over his shoulder is St. Paul, his muse.

In Greek mythology, the “Muses” were the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, who presided over the arts and sciences. As Trump attacks the arts and science, the unmistakable influence and inspiration of MAGA evangelicals takes solid shape.

The gathering of all the president’s muses represents a virulent idolatry opposed to the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He could not have picked worse muses: Christian nationalism, a fake American history inspired by David Barton and Robert Jeffress, Seven Mountain Dominionists grasping for political control of all aspects of American life, the “real science” of Ken Ham’s creationist movement. These combine with raw political power.

Not since President Dwight Eisenhower combined faith and politics in the 1950s have we witnessed such superficiality in the White House.

Eisenhower had no particular passion for Christianity. Influenced by Billy Graham, Ike finally agreed to join the Presbyterian Church. Historian Kevin Kruse relates the incident in One Nation Under God. Eisenhower had agreed to be baptized at National Presbyterian only after the pastor, Edward L.R. Elson, promised to be discreet.

But as Eisenhower wrote angrily in his diary, “We were scarcely home before the fact was being publicized, by the pastor, to the hilt.”

The president screamed to his press secretary, Jim Hagerty, “You go and tell that goddam minister that if he gives out one more story about my religious faith I won’t join his goddam church!”

Yet Eisenhower, guided by evangelicals and corporate executives, molded the façade of a Christian America.

Trump’s court preachers

The Christianity represented by Trump’s muses is, at best, as fake and superficial as the gold gilding Trump has splattered all over the place. At worst, it is as pagan as Greek mythology. At least Eisenhower confined his religious outbursts to adding “In God We Trust” to our money — an inadvertent nod to America’s real god — and “One nation under God” to our pledge. Eisenhower’s Christian movement, like Trump’s, was fueled by evangelicals and corporate executives.

For instance, televangelist Paula White noticed two gold cherub figurines Trump had added to the Oval Office. He asked White, “Don’t angels protect you and watch over you?”

The always obsequious White Cain chirped, “Good choice, sir!’”

White told Fox & Friends during Holy Week her White House Faith Office has hosted more than 1,000 faith leaders in less than 100 days. One of those was related to Easter, just days before Trump sent out his own Easter blessing: “Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane, and well known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters, back into our Country.” And so forth.

Yet Pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas — called “Trump’s apostle” by Texas Monthly — has defended every Trump mistake, transgression, act of cruelty and lie. He recently claimed Trump is “doing more to celebrate the true meaning of Easter than any president in history.”

Imagine Easter as God’s revenge instead of the resurrection defeating death and hell.

MAGA evangelicals stand in line to stand next to this president in the Oval Office. There’s Jackson Lahmeyer, an Oklahoma pastor who has said the Constitution is built on the Bible.

There’s Jentezen Franklin, an evangelist and senior pastor of the multisite megachurch Free Chapel in Georgia, who told Trump, “You’re a chosen vessel.”

Other prominent Trump pastors include Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, and former Southern Baptist Convention president; Samuel Rodriguez and Tony Suarez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference; and televangelist Mark Burns. Also in Trump’s circle of Christians are conservative activists, like singer Sean Feucht; Gary Bauer, president of the conservative advocacy organization American Values; and David Barton, evangelical author and WallBuilders founder.

A gathering of Baptists

In my alternative historical imagination, I see a group of Baptists gathered from the “communion of saints” around President Trump at the Resolute Desk.

I asked historian Bill Leonard what Baptists he would place around the Resolute Desk. Here’s his list:

Roger Williams deserves top billing. As Leonard observes, “I know he didn’t stay a Baptist, but his voice for religious liberty as a Baptist makes him a major contributor to what once was Baptist identity for religious freedom.”

Williams suggested Native Americans were the sole owners of the American land and should be compensated for it. Imagine Trump’s response to Williams as opposed to the voices of his anti-immigrant, nativist-supporting MAGA evangelicals.

After his expulsion from the colony, Williams survived a bitter winter with the aid of the Narragansetts. True to his convictions, Williams purchased land from them. He founded Providence, R.I., of which he said, “I desired it might be a shelter for persons distressed of conscience. …. I communicated my said purchase unto my loving friends, …. who then desired to take shelter here with me.”

Williams also insisted that non-Christians could be good citizens. He argued that “Jews, Turks or anti-Christians” can be “loving and helpful neighbors, fair and just dealers, true and loyal to the civil governments.”

John Clarke helped Williams establish the Baptist church in Rhode Island. In his Ill News from New-England, Clarke wrote, “No such believer …. hath any liberty, much less Authority, from his Lord, to smite his fellow servant, nor yet with outward force, or arms of flesh, to constrain, or restrain his Conscience.”

Next, let’s bring John Leland to the Oval Office. His influence on the writers of the Constitution, especially the First Amendment, puts him next to Williams with his hand on Trump’s right shoulder. Students of government and democracy say we are experiencing a Constitutional crisis. Leland proclaimed, “Bible Christians and Deists have an equal plea against self-named Christians, who …. Tyrannize over the consciences of others, under the specious garb of religion and good order.”

Next, let’s bring in William Carey, whose Baptist globalism represents the Baptist passion for global missionary work. He would have a lot to say to Trump, who once referred to certain African nations as “shit-hole countries.”

Then Adoniram Judson and Ann Hasseltine Judson with their world vision. I’m confident the Judsons would thrill at the influx of Burmese immigrants who have come to the United States. Most of the Burmese immigrants are Baptists. Since 2000, more than 188,095 have been admitted to the U.S. The mission field has come home to do mission work in America. They represent the positive potential of immigrants in opposition to the violent immigration policies of Trumpism.

Next, we should summon Fannie Lou Hamer and Martin Luther King, Jr.to speak for civil rights. Hamer famously told white Americans, “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” MLK had the dream for a diverse and integrated America. Trump is trying to turn King’s dream into a nightmare.

And who better to speak to Trump’s macho male idiocy and his relentless attacks on education than Nannie Helen Burroughs — African American Baptist educator. Burroughs founded the National Title and Profession School for Women and Girls in Washington, D.C., in 1909. She was a trailblazer in promoting the leadership of women in churches.

Then let’s add Harry Emerson Fosdick, who understood the illiberal spirit of fundamentalists, a spirit now resplendent among MAGA evangelicals. In his famous sermon, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” he said of the fundamentalists, “Their apparent intention is to drive out of the evangelical churches men and women of liberal opinions.”

And finally, let’s invite Will Campbell because every Baptist group requires one curmudgeon. Campbell thunders, “Shame on those fat-cat false prophets spewing their toxic rhetoric, trying to control every facet of American life with a selective reading of the Bible. That’s blasphemy. It’s idolatry.”

Just imagine if this great cloud of witnesses were guiding the president rather than the MAGA minions Trump surrounds himself with.

This imagined gathering of Baptists may not persuade a change in a president famous for believing he never has done anything requiring him to repent, but I think even Donald Trump would be awed in the presence of such saints of Almighty God.

 

Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer in New York state. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.

 

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