The Thing I Have Simply Never Understood About American Christianity

I first made my profession of Christian faith as a nine-year-old boy, at the First Baptist Church in Whitesville, WV.  It was an independent, fundamentalist church, whose theology as an adult theologian I no longer share, but I love that church and the people there.  I was privileged, even as a Quaker minister, to preach for a week of revival services there in 2002.  By then I was 42 years old and had two seminary degrees, but the same pastor, Rev. Howard Gwinn, was there, who was my pastor as a boy.  I loved Howard and Ginny.  They served that little church for nearly 40 years.  I miss them and cherish their memory.

Along the way I was American Baptist (and today I have what is called "privilege of call" with the American Baptist Churches, which means they recognize my ordination and I am eligible to pastor an ABC church.)  I was Church of God, and then in a non-denominational group (where I was ordained in 1986), Nazarene, Quaker, and now I am Catholic.  It has been a rich experience of being part of the various threads  in the tapestry of the body of Christ.  I also worked for the Anglicans for a year.  I served as a Quaker minister for almost 30 years, and in 1990 they "recorded" me as a minister--which is what Quakers do instead of ordination.  I might write a piece on this blog about that sometime.

And in most of those churches, the majority of people were politically conservative, mainly Republicans.  In the non-denominational church, the pastor said in 1980 that the Holy Spirit had revealed to the leader of this loosely-knit group of churches, that God had called Ronald Reagan to be president of the United States.  So, in 1980, the first election in which I voted, I voted for Ronald Reagan.

Then I went to seminary! I began my seminary studies at the Earlham School of Religion (ESR) in Richmond, Indiana.  I did not graduate from there.  I ended up transferring to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY.  SBTS was not like it is now.  These days it is a fundamentalist indoctrination mill.  In my time it rivaled places like Harvard and Yale Divinity Schools.  When I transferred, my mentor, the Quaker philosopher D. Elton Trueblood told me he thought I was transferring to the best seminary in the world.  I loved it there.  I have fond memories of all three seminaries I attended, ESR, SBTS, and Bethel Theological Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, where I did my doctoral work.

Here is what happened to me:  I learned to study scripture.  I learned the Bible could not possibly be inerrant and all literally true. For example, the two creation stories in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 actually contradict one another, so both cannot be literally true.  I was astounded that in my doctoral program at Bethel, the other guys in my cohort had never noticed that.

I also learned that the Scriptures have far more to say about social justice than they do about individual salvation. The prophets, culminating with Jesus, spoke tirelessly about how God is against those who oppress the poor and the vulnerable.

One of the most often quoted of these verses is Micah 6:8.

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Amos proclaimed God's judgment on those who oppress the poor.  (Amos 5:11)

Therefore because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.

Proverbs 21:13--Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.

Isaiah 61:1, quoted by Jesus as describing his own ministry in Luke 4.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.

James Cone says of this verse, and the way Jesus used it, anything which is not good news to the poor is not from the Gospel of Jesus.

I could go on.  There are literally hundreds of biblical citations about this.  The Bible has far more to say about justice for the poor than about individual salvation and being born again.

Don't get me wrong--I believe in the new birth.  I believe in personal salvation.  But it is not the most important thing Scripture has to say to us.  Being a people of justice is.

So, here's the thing I do not understand.  Why have American Christians distorted the Christian message so much that we end up with a Christianized form of EGOISM?  Why is it, that my seminary friend, himself an ordained minister, had not noticed the first two chapters of Genesis contradict one another?  Similarly, why do Christians who are in public worship every Sunday vote for policies and candidates which are a complete repudiation of what Jesus taught?

I believe every American Christian faces a literal binary choice.  I think you have to either repudiate Donald Trump (and I think also the Republican party) or you have to repudiate Jesus Christ and what he taught.  Eric Trump is known to have said "turn the other cheek" does not work.  When Russell Moore preached on turning the other cheek in a Southern Baptist Church, he was asked where he got that idea.  When he said it was literally the teaching of Jesus--he was told this church was not interested in seeing that.

My daughter lived for five years in Kansas City.  When we would go see her, we would take I-70 from Indianapolis to Kansas City.  St. Louis was the halfway point.  If I am in St. Louis, I cannot be getting closer to Kansas City and Indianapolis at the same time.  The closer I am to one, the farther I am from the other.  Jesus Christ and Donald Trump are like that--the closer you are to one, the farther you are from the other.

I have encountered people who say they used to be Republican but because of Donald Trump they have figured out they cannot be Republican and follow Jesus any more. I am glad they come to that realization.  But I do not understand why it took so long.  I want to say, "Where have you been?  I figured that out in 1984!" 

Evangelicals drunk the Ronald Reagan kool-aide then just like they are for Trump now.   I just do not understand how people can do that and claim to follow Jesus.  My grandfather was a staunch Republican until the Reagan presidency.  He ended up becoming a Democrat because, living in West Virginia and seeing so much poverty, he was so offended when Reagan wanted to cut school lunches and said school kids could count ketchup as a vegetable.  I have a very close friend who became a Democrat when Trump mocked the disabled reporter.  But my question is, why did people not do this 40 years ago? Why did the gospel of Jesus not give them such cognitive dissonance in comparison to the GOP platform that they could not be part of that?

I believe a party which gives massive tax cuts to the wealthy and then cuts services to the poor cannot possibly be a viable option for a follower of Jesus.  Reagan did these massive tax cuts--taking the top rate down from 70% to 28% and tried to make up for it by taxing people's Social Security.  No one can tell me with a straight face that is morally justifiable.

The way I see it, the Republican party was not changed by Donald Trump.  Not one bit.  He did not change it, he exposed it.  Former Republican operative Stuart Stevens has written a book which I have not read, but I have seen him speak about.  He says the idea that what Republicans were doing would help everybody was not true.  The title of the book is It Was All a Lie.  Someone said the idea that a rising tide raises all ships does not work.  It devastates small ships with holes in them.  Personally I think the idea should be to get us in roughly similar ships.  The other day Nikki Haley said we want equality in this country, not actual equity. I believe it is morally incumbent on all of us to work for actual equity.   I think the goal should not be to have everyone line up at the starting line together.  The goal should be to actually see all of us cross the finish line together!

I have said I do not think Donald Trump changed the Republican party. He merely exposed it, it has been this since the Civil Rights Legislation of the  1960s. I think it is like the KKK.  Nowadays they march under different names without covering themselves with white sheets.  I think Ronald Reagan had a likeable way about him that, figuratively, served as his white sheet.  Donald Trump is Reagan without the sheet.

What I do not understand is why people support this and profess to be Christian.  Why isn't cognitive dissonance eating them alive over this?