2 weeks Ago By Michael Caldwell
Lent in Christian tradition and the Holy Days of Ramadan in Islam coincide with the hope and resurrection of spring. The Jewish feast of Passover, also this time of year, predates them both, forecasting a spirituality of liberation and freedom from oppression. All three “religions of the book” trace their common ancestry to Abraham in the book of Genesis in the Bible.
Abrahamic adherents follow their common monotheistic God who promises peace to those who “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly.” (Micah 6.8) During most of its history, America celebrated the vision of its society as a “melting pot” of cultures and religions, implied in its Constitution and Bill of Rights.
That vision is now under attack by an arrogant Christian nationalism, which seeks to impose its narrow vision of a white fundamentalist Christianity on all of American culture. It is this misogynist, racist, homophobic movement which is responsible for the election of President Trump and his cruel crucifixion of the American dream. Evangelical writer and critic Tim Alberta has documented the movement in his monumental book “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.
” Read it and weep for the loss of our melting pot and the forfeiture of conservative Christianity to a coarse cabal of cavalier calumny who have sold their souls to Trump. Recent news about the new administration’s insolent takeover of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
, withholding billions in research grants to universities, crude and illegal arrests of people exercising free speech, and threats to the independence of the Smithsonian Institution, show our nation’s dangerous slide into thought-policed fascism. We are learning in fits and starts that the grievance about the Smithsonian is in its repainting of American history as inclusive of more than a century of racist policy even after the technical abolition of slavery when the North won the Civil War. Galleries, displays and presentations in this vein are allegedly “unpatriotic” because they don’t sufficiently celebrate America as the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Somehow, this critical narrative implies telling a transparent new honest history of ongoing racism and related unjust ethnocentric political structure is un-American. The creative “1619 Project,” which challenges colonialist oppression of nonwhites, is likewise deemed to be unpatriotic. Excuse me? I’m rather deeply confused.
Evangelical theology emphasizes a salvation dependent upon confession of sin, repentance in practical terms, and sanctification through a purified new life. So how on Earth do conservative evangelicals who prop up Trump justify denial of the heinous, hideous, odious sin of slavery and its lingering racism? The sin of white supremacy? The sin of housing, real estate and banking structures that actively promote a segregated and unequal America based on race? How is it not denial to not tell the full truth with all its gory detail? What would motivate us not to see our corporate sin and humbly confess it? Why would we delay or dismiss the need for cultural repentance? Where is there integrity to Gospel values embodied in the parable of the good Samaritan? Our Native American neighbors are also demonized even by the president himself, who, with the controlling fit of an early adolescent bully, denigrates Sen. Elizabeth Warren as Pocahontas because she is proud of her Shawnee blood.
Whither this juvenile joke? How on Earth do humble Americans continue to support this pretentious plutocrat? Where do we go from here? Many people have an issue with unlimited boundaries for questioning teens, questions about immigration policy, concern for climate change remediation, and head-scratching wonder about the $36 trillion national debt, not to speak of terror about the sustainability of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. That’s most of us. And count us mostly purple who insist on the rule of law through the Constitution and Bill of Rights in the face of wild public threats to decency, dignity and democracy.
These concerns transcend the red/blue dichotomization of American people. America’s potential resurrection beyond Trump’s crucifixion of the American dream lies in peoples’ willingness to assert “love your neighbor” as our social ethic, instead of a Musky, ugly, unholy contempt for empathy. White Americans need to let go of fears of the inevitable nonwhite America.
Fundamentalist Christians can believe what they want because of the First Amendment. But why is it somehow acceptable to impose their religion on the whole country? The resurrection of America blends diverse neighbors who disagree with a toast to liberty at the pub, a sip of communion, or a taste of the Passover meal. Alternatively, we can go sooner than later into the banal dung heap of empires in decline.
What a waste that would be for the world. Michael Caldwell, of North Wolcott, is a member of the international, ecumenical Iona community..
