MAGA & Political Idolatry

MAGA has pushed blatantly unchristian policies under the banner of Christianity, claiming to operate with divine blessing and with the support of 82% of American evangelicals. What is the role of the church in calling out the political idolatry at play here?

(From Holy Post Podcast 663: Snow White, Scarcity, & Why Immigration is Pro-Life and Bri Stensrud)

 Mike: What is the role of the church, of a pastor, of a podcast, or of a Christian in calling out partisan idolatry without being partisan yourself? How do you not just play into the noise, but through faithfulness to Christ, call into question some of the ideology?

The thing that's so infuriating for many of us is that this administration claims to operate with divine blessing. Whether it's Franklin Graham announcing at the inauguration that the president was saved by God for this moment, or the president himself saying this (in front of the family where the father and the husband were killed, so evidently God redirected a bullet that direction), or it's images of staff or cabinet meetings opening with prayer, or Trump's faith advisor raising money for herself, the thing that I think is provoked for all of us is the the very deep sense of antagonism towards the baptism of what clearly look like abuses of power: outright deceit, manipulation, the systematic erasing of the contributions of non-white, non-male members of the United States. When that whole package is being baptized under God's blessing, at that point we've transcended partisanship and now we're into straight out idolatry and blasphemy. So, I think the church needs to take on a different mode.

And there's the pushback: How come you weren't complaining when Biden was abusing his power?

Phil: I was gonna ask you that.

Mike: A significant portion of my tribe, the evangelical tribe, has anointed this person and written books and made arguments that this is God's candidate, and there is also this overreach of the president's language about peace, prosperity, a new golden age, such as “he's the world's best deal maker” or “he’s the world's best hostage negotiator.” Scripture clearly says there's a role for the government to restrict evil, but it cannot deliver salvation or peace or shalom. The church has to take on a different mode of living, because we now have an administration directly using the language of divine blessing for itself, which is systematically opposed throughout the Bible.

I sit in a church where we want to invite the folks that voted one way and the folks that voted a different way all to sit at a common table together and listen to each other and learn from each other. So the question that we've all been wrestling with is, at what point does hospitality cease and prophetic witness kick in? And it feels like we're getting closer and closer to that moment the more this Christian language and ideology is employed to justify what are so clearly anti-Christian policies, attitudes, language, and behaviors.

Phil: But because you didn't say anything about Biden's use of policies that we might not have found Christian, do you lose the right to say anything about Trump?

Mike: I hear that all the time, and the difference for me is the energizing of an evangelical base, the approval of a large number of evangelicals, the employment of explicitly Christian language, and “Christ is king” in the bio of people who are so awful to humanity. That is where I think the church steps in and says, “If it doesn't look and sound like Jesus, it's not Christian.”

I don't remember the Biden administration making that claim for itself.

Skye: So you're saying that if the Biden administration had pushed a policy that was decidedly un-Christian and they said they were doing it with God's authority and the blessing of Jesus Christ…

Mike: We’d have the same reaction.

Phil: For me, if the evangelical church was celebrating that policy and saying, “This is what we voted for. This is what we need,” we’d have the same reaction. It’s the number of policies that are driven by either fear or hate or prejudice towards others. For example, sending out an AI meme of an overweight, female, non-white immigrant weeping as she's being arrested - it was based on a real photo of the woman -  and the White House sent it to Chat GPT to come back as Studio Ghibli Art and then sent it out on the White House Twitter account. And when people pushed back and said, “isn't this cruel?”, the response from the White House was simply: “the deportations and the memes will continue.”

Mike: If Biden were doing that, I think we'd all object.

Phil: Yes.

Mike: It's the superintending of all of this under the banner of “Christian” that's the issue. 

Skye: I wrote a devotional with this recently, and it struck me with its contrast: During the Civil War, a journalist asked President Lincoln if he believed that God was on the side of the North, the Union, and Lincoln's response was so good. He said, “My great concern is not whether God is on our side, but whether we are on his. Because God's side is always correct.” There’s so much humility in that response, because at a time when he could have very easily said, “of course God is on the side of the North because of this, this, and this,” he didn’t. And I wish we had that caliber and character of leadership in this country.

Mike: Totally. Let's disagree over immigration policy. Let's disagree over the best way to structure taxes or the best way to care for the poor. I'm fine with partisan policy discussions. I have no problem there. If you voted for somebody else other than who I voted for, that’s great. That is not a litmus test for fidelity to Christ. But, the issue has transcended that now, and that's where I think the church has to sharpen not only its embodied witness but its prophetic witness.

It's not just that it's neutral, it's just blatantly anti-Christian. The thing about the Franklin Graham announcement is that it's the cheapest way to understand what it means to take the Lord's name in vain. I always heard that taking the Lord's name means, “don't use the name of Jesus as a swear word,” or “don't cuss,” but the Hebrew actually means, “do not attach God's name to something that's empty.” And I cannot think of anything emptier than the agenda that is being promoted, with cruelty at its center, to push out and to dehumanize and to exert power for its own sake.