Today, we celebrate Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Sunday, the day before the federal holiday observance- and the day before a storm approaches.
That storm is the MAGA movement personified by Donald Trump himself. This is a movement steeped in white Christian nationalism, a white supremacist theology. It is anti-democratic. It aspires to mimic the autocratic movements of Russia, Hungary, and other places where democracy is diminished.
The MAGA movement seeks to obliterate the wall between Church and State. They want to tell you who to worship and how to worship. The white conservative evangelical leaders who preach Trump‘s gospel want you to believe that the MAGA movement is synonymous with being Christian.
They want you to look at Jimmy Carter and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and see Greene as the better example of Christianity.
Now listen, friends, no party represents God.
While Donald Trump claims that God is on his side and the side of the GOP, we are better served with how Abraham Lincoln viewed his relationship with the Divine: “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.”
The incoming president claims the Christian faith, but no one - not even God - can match Trump’s wisdom. At least in Trump’s mind.
Trump’s failed stewardship of the presidency in his first term cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and his economic policies wreaked the strong Obama-Biden economy that the Trump Administration inherited. Any president would be challenged by a worldwide pandemic but Donald Trump‘s incompetence made a difficult situation 1000 times more difficult.
What perhaps should concern us most of all, dispite his record, is that in this most recent election the majority of Christians voted for Donald Trump. The majority of Christians voted for a charlatan, a man found libel for rape, who sees faith as a tool to divide people for partisan political gain. Donald Trump embraces xenophobia, Homophobia, racism, misogyny, antisemitism, and Islamophobia. Hate fuels his movement.
Dr. King offered a different vision, one rooted in God’s love. For Dr. King, it was the Biblical ideal of the Beloved Community, a place where justice reigns, oppression ends, and where the last will come first.
What will truly make America great? Addressing the climate crisis, ending homelessness and poverty, creating an economy that benefits all and not just the rich and powerful, enacting common sense gun laws that reduce violence, confronting racism and other forms of bigotry, welcoming strangers, and loving our neighbors. While this is not Donald Trump’s agenda, it should be the agenda for people of faith concerned with the common good.
In this moment of history, Christianity is in crisis.
Our faith has been hijacked by oligarchs and the powerful when Christianity should always be a religion that lifts up the least of these.
If you have ever wondered how you might have responded when the Civil War occurred or what you might have done in 1930s Germany as the Nazi Party took power, our times will provide your answer. How we respond matters.
Donald Trump’s Cabinet is filled with men accused of rape, human trafficking, and sexual assault. They are rich and powerful men, advised by billionaires like Elon Musk, who advocate for other rich and powerful men.
The life and ministry of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. should be a summons to Christians today. In his ministry, Dr. King offered an alternative vision for the United States, even the world.
Dr. King died marching with sanitation workers and union organizers demanding just wages. He called on faith leaders to abandon nationalism and to oppose war. Still, we have turned the man once called the "most dangerous Negro in America" into a safe figure we can all rally behind. Dr. King was not safe. He was generous of spirit and spoke out against injustice wherever he saw it. Like all of us, Dr. King was an imperfect person, but he strived to create a more just world.
In his last years, Dr. King preached about what he called the "Unfinished Agenda." He argued that we would be judged not by a final victory of good over evil, but in our willingness to engage in the struggle. Dr. King said:
"In the final analysis, God does not judge us by the separate incidents or the separate mistakes that we make, but by the total bent of our lives. In the final analysis, God knows that his children are weak and they are frail. In the final analysis, what God requires is that your heart is right. Salvation isn't reaching the destination of absolute morality, but it's being in the process and on the right road."
The inauguration of Donald Trump is evidence that we are on the wrong road.
Following God and celebrating the birth of Jesus is an act of Holy Resistance against those who would oppress or cast aside those children of God that Jesus called “the least of these.”
The views that I express here, if you were to poll on the topics, are deeply unpopular among large segments of the population. That puts me, and I hope you, in good company.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans viewed Dr. King negatively the last time Gallup polled on Dr. King. (His popularity rating dropped every year of his life in the public square.) In essence, to make Dr. King popular today, we have stripped him of much of what made him an authentic Christian voice for justice and peace.
To authentically follow Jesus, we must, as previous generations of believers like Dr. King and others in the Civil Rights Movement have done, is to see Christianity as a movement for liberation.
We have very stark examples in the life of Dr. King and the life of Donald Trump that are worthy of examination. My fervent prayer is that Dr. King‘s theology of the Beloved Community will one day defeat the MAGA movement once and for all. Our task in this moment then is to seek justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8).
May God bless you and may God bless the United States of America.
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