[The American church sold itself to perpetuate the myth of this
country’s divine destiny for the paltry price of access to power and
respectability.] [[link removed]]

TRUMP'S STUNT AT ST. JOHN'S IS THE RESULT OF AMERICAN CHURCHES BOWING
TO POWER   [[link removed]]

 

William H. Lamar IV
June 3, 2020
NBC News
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_ The American church sold itself to perpetuate the myth of this
country’s divine destiny for the paltry price of access to power and
respectability. _

President Donald Trump holds a Bible while visiting St. John's Church
across from the White House after the area was cleared of protesters
on June 1, 2020, Brendan Smialowski / AFP - Getty Images

 

No one should have been surprised by President Donald Trump’s
co-opting of the symbols of American Christianity — a church, the
Bible — to speak Monday to the white evangelical base that made his
election possible. Every American president since George Washington
has sworn his oath upon the Bible. Every American presidential
candidate who wants to be taken seriously must proclaim loyalty to
some church or another. Every presidential speech — whether to press
for civil rights legislation or gain public support for a mendacious
war — must end with “God bless America.” Candidates and winners
alike are expected to participate in inaugural prayer gatherings and
worship services, including those at the church where I pastor and
with the denomination to which I belong.

From the founding of this nation, the church and the Holy Scriptures
have been used by the state with the church's permission to dislocate
people, rain violence upon them and declare the sovereignty of
American empire and white male flesh.

Trump’s contrived excursion from the Rose Garden to St. John’s
Episcopal Church, was then, far more than a photo op: It was the
latest in a long line of acts that wed the church to the state in ways
that evidence the conundrum of faith that has always been present, but
is now more pronounced. When Trump dislocated the protesters from
Lafayette Square, he actually cleared them from a space designed to
commemorate the violence and victory of the Revolutionary War; he
stood in front of a church whose history is rife with complicity in
such settler colonial violence. Episcopal Bishops Michael Curry
[[link removed]] and Mariann
Budde
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decried his actions, but there are no clean hands in our faith.

The American church sold itself long ago to perpetuate the myth of
America’s divine destiny for the paltry price of access to power and
respectability. From the days of the Roman emperor Constantine (who
ended the persecution of Christians in order to shore up his power)
until this moment, politicians have known that the surest way to quiet
a revolution is to subsume it under the guise of allyship. In its
insatiable desire for proximity to power, the church has fallen prey
to this seduction, repeatedly bowing down to the twin golden statues
of capitalism and empire.

Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform, famously
quipped
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“I’m not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to
shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
This propensity to atomize institutions and ideas intended for the
commonweal is clear in American politics, yet artfully obscured in
American Christianity. Shored up by white evangelicalism and its
propaganda machine, the American Christianity that informs the popular
imagination takes the grand gospel — which envisions a new heaven
and a new earth committed foremost to human flourishing and care for
the earth — and drowns it in the bathtub of individual piety and
soul salvation.

Jesus’ politics as a revolutionary, then, have been subsumed by the
glory of his personal resurrection. That kind of mendacity, this
theological malpractice, has relegated freedom from oppression to the
great “by and by,” and unashamedly acted in the service of empire
and personal fulfillment.

The challenge before American Christianity now is to find the courage
to disentangle itself from America’s imperialist impulses — and
among the first steps toward this courage is in truth telling. I am
disinterested in the outrage of my colleagues, whether feigned or
heartfelt, around Trump’s use of the Bible and the church to further
both his political ambitions and American imperial violence,
domestically and internationally. It is intrinsically disingenuous to
be outraged by a visual act while remaining silent about the ways
American Christianity makes violence and oppression more palatable,
especially when you’ve silently watched other rhetorical acrobatics,
informed by the truth that you can sell most Americans almost anything
that is wrapped in God-language and stamped with the imprimatur of the
church.

The murderous conquest of Native peoples upon this continent was so
languaged and so wrapped. The stealing of Africans and the violent
extraction of labor from them was so languaged and so wrapped. The
subjugation of women was (and is) so languaged and so wrapped. The
vitriolic exclusion of non-heteronormative persons is so languaged and
so wrapped. The dehumanization of immigrants is so languaged and so
wrapped.

It is time for all churches to unequivocally declare that they will no
longer be theological marionettes whose strings are pulled by
kleptocratic capitalists and imperialists. We must build power to
topple regimes that work against the flourishing of humans and the
earth. God's wind and fire seek to create something new in us and in
the world.

But will we abandon the mendacity of the American myth and embrace the
reign of God?

If American Christianity is to embrace God's earthly reign and not
empire, the church must be committed foremost to structural change.
The power we must build is to exert unrelenting pressure such that all
human beings — especially those whom Jesus referred to as "the least
of these" — have full access to quality health care and education,
and can earn a living wage and afford safe housing. The reign of God
is incomplete unless the prison industrial complex is abolished, fair
tax structures are enacted, universal job training and employment
opportunities are available equitably to all humans, our economy is
one based on the value of what we produce with our labor rather than
what we simply extract from others', retirement benefits are available
to all seniors that allow a good quality of life and the earth is
revered as God's creation.

Are we bold enough to do that? That remains the question.

_Rev. William H. Lamar IV is the pastor of Metropolitan African
Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. Lamar and
Metropolitan's congregation work to enact God's justice and peace in
surrounding communities and to exhibit a real embrace of the beloved
community._

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