The day after the election, a good friend who is a conservative Republican called to check on me, realizing I would be in puddle of disbelief.
My friend, who is a seminary-educated Southern Baptist and very smart, told me he had “gleefully” voted for Donald Trump. I was not surprised yet still incredulous.
“But what about all the lies?” I asked. “What about the constant barrage of lies? What about January 6? What about the sexual abuse?”
Mark Wingfield
To which my friend replied: “Kamala Harris was a flawed candidate.”
This is where we find ourselves today. Even among those of us who can speak civilly to each other across party lines, we cannot agree on the real problem that separates us. From my perspective, whether Kamala Harris was flawed or not, she carried one essential qualification: She was not Donald Trump.
A truly flawed candidate
As I have written before, Trump is the most dangerous, pathological, bullying and evil narcissistic wreck of a human being I’ve ever known. He is emotionally broken and spiritually bankrupt. He is enough to make me believe in the power of Satan and the reality of an anti-Christ.
Yet American evangelicals — including Southern Baptists — have continued to support him and praise him and glorify him by turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to his crimes, his cruelty and his crusades.
“Donald Trump is the most voracious liar ever to occupy the Oval Office. And papering over such a torrent of lies has consequences.”
The very people who say they believe in ultimate truth have abandoned concern for daily truth. Because if they admitted the lies their guy tells are lies, they would have to walk away. And they are not willing to walk away.
It is an indisputable fact that Donald Trump is the most voracious liar ever to occupy the Oval Office. And papering over such a torrent of lies has consequences.
We are seeing those consequences writ large with every announcement of a Trump cabinet nominee. In virtually every case, he proposes to put a fox in charge of the hen house. Because he wants the hens to all get destroyed since they’ve become “woke.” Better to have “broke” eggs than “woke” eggs.
Outrageous nominations
This insanity reached its pinnacle — I hope — with the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be secretary of health and human services and Matt Gaetz to be attorney general. RFK Jr. promotes insane conspiracy theories about public health and is danger to people everywhere. Gaetz is an accused pedophile and the most reviled member of Congress — even within his own party.
But what else did you expect Trump to do? His entire modus operandi is to elicit as much outrage as possible from the liberals and the establishment. He’s just being the same kind of dangerous bully he’s always been. If you voted for him, you cannot say you didn’t understand stuff like this was bound to happen.
These types of outrageous nominations were made possible because Trump himself has been emboldened to keep lying and then lie some more. He has faced zero accountability from his own party. None.
“Once you’ve said truth doesn’t really matter, you’ve greased the slide into full-on chaos.”
And now that slippery slope always were told led to liberalism actually leads to fascism. If you’re willing to believe Trump’s hourly lies, why shouldn’t you believe RFK Jr.’s lies? And if you’re willing to overlook Trump’s documented history of sexual assault, why shouldn’t you overlook Gaetz’s alleged assaults?
Once you’ve said truth doesn’t really matter, you’ve greased the slide into full-on chaos.
But there is still something you can do. And especially those of you who voted for Trump. You can urge a Republican-controlled Congress to enforce guardrails against Trump’s lawlessness. You can draw a line in the sand.
In August 2017, I wrote an opinion piece for BNG titled “Where Will You Draw the Line?” That was seven months into the first Trump administration. Those words are so relevant four years later that I am sharing them here to emphasize the point of this piece.
‘Where will you draw the line?’
Where will you draw the line on America’s current political and cultural challenges? Lately, every day seems to bring new surprises, new revelations, new moral tests. How far will be too far for you?
America’s business leaders have drawn a line on talking about racism and standing against resurgent Nazi ideology. America’s leading charities have taken a similar stand, cancelling events at Trump-owned properties to avoid being stained with the label of supporting racism. Meanwhile, the president’s evangelical advisers have remained silent, except for one New York pastor who a full week after Charlottesville declared, “There was a line for me.”
In the past, Americans — particularly American evangelicals and Catholics — have expressed clear lines on moral issues such as abortion. One issue became a litmus test for all political candidates, a kind of bright line that could not be compromised.
We’re accustomed to socially conservative pastors and persons of faith declaring that presidents or other politicians have crossed lines of demarcation on economic and social issues. This has been the bread and butter of the Religious Right for 30 years. Until recently, we’ve not seen the same clear-cut lines drawn by mainstream Christian leaders. And seldom, if ever, have we seen left and right unite to declare, “We will not cross this line.”
“We now have in the White House a president who challenges us daily to consider how far is too far.”
We now have in the White House a president who challenges us daily to consider how far is too far. I was startled last week to see a normally cautious and centrist pastor friend declare publicly, “I do not like this president.” This pastor serves a large church full of both Republicans and Democrats, and he normally walks a careful line to keep peace in the fellowship. But something has happened in his mind that crosses the line. For him, the line falls along issues of truth-telling, of respecting the dignity and service of others, of being true to the witness of Jesus Christ, of actually believing “all men are created equal.”
Charlottesville and its aftermath may have changed the dialogue in America. But it may not have for long. Because even the blatant racism on display may not have crossed the line enough to turn the tables on those who are determined to justify their past voting history. And because debating about statues and monuments doesn’t resolve the root problem of racism as a lived experience for persons of color.
Growing up in a conservative Baptist environment, one of the clear lessons we were taught as teenagers was that you had to decide in advance how far would be too far for you. This lesson most often was applied to sexual relations, of course. The idea is that when in the heat of passion, no one makes good decisions unless they’ve laid down a reasoned line in advance: I will go this far (if hopefully given the opportunity) but no further. And we were taught to have a clearly determined exit strategy when we faced the line we had vowed not to cross.
This would be good advice for all elected officials. Regardless of who is president or which party is in power, they need to figure out and be able to articulate where is the line that even partisan politics cannot justify crossing. How far can they go in pursuing their political agenda without compromising the moral no-fly zone? We have seen recent examples of this in persons like Sen. John McCain on health care and Sen. Ted Cruz on racism.
“How far can they go in pursuing their political agenda without compromising the moral no-fly zone?”
This also would be good advice for American Christians. We — individually and collectively — need to figure out where is the line that cannot be crossed. Rather than fawning over access to politicians of either party, we need to ask of all elected officials: What could possibly happen that would go so far as to demand that people of faith stand up and declare, “No more.”
For many of us, that line was crossed months ago, and we keep wondering why others don’t see that we are dangling by a thread in the moral danger zone. If lying, cheating, narcissism, womanizing, demeaning the disabled, showing no evidence of a spiritual life, war-mongering and failing to protect vulnerable people haven’t crossed the line, surely defending Nazism, slavery and white supremacy should have crossed the line, right? But maybe not, it seems.
Sadly, for too many people, the line begins and ends with their own family or tribe. Once an insult reaches them personally, suddenly they awaken and want everyone else to help. Even though they have dismissed the cries for help from others because they didn’t know them or weren’t like them. But until then, it’s someone else’s problem. Or not a problem at all.
We must remember that the overarching message of the Bible calls us to community, not to isolation or self-protection. We must be our brother’s keeper. Both because it’s the right thing to do and because infection that begins in one part of the human race inevitably will reach the entire human race.
A friend recently developed a wound on his foot that required medical attention. As the first signs of infection set in, the doctor took an ink pen and draw a circle on the man’s foot and gave this warning: “If the red streaks of the infection cross this circle, come back and see me immediately. Do not let the infection cross this line.”
It’s time to ask yourself where you will draw the line. And beyond that, what will you do when that line is crossed? Will you speak up, call your elected officials, change your vote, become proactive in your community? The best way to respond appropriately is to know in advance what are your limits and what will be your plan of action.
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global. He is the author of Honestly: Telling the Truth About the Bible and Ourselves and Why Churches Need to Talk About Sexuality. His brand-new book is Troubling the Truth and Other Tales from the News.
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