Trump and Trouble

 

by Kenneth Bagnell

 

Whenever I think of President Donald Trump, I think of a sentence I read years ago by Chilean author Isabel Allende. “I fear the abuse of power,” she said, “and the power to abuse.” She could have said that yesterday, especially its last phrase, in light of the latest episode in the eccentric life of President Trump. He’s the master of putting his foot where it doesn’t belong, in ways that are irresponsible and often dreadful. He used his tweets to accuse his predecessor, Barrack Obama, with a dreadful lie:  that Obama listened in on Trump’s campaign phones so that he’d know his strategies. (Obama promptly and properly denied it, so we hope the dreadful slur against him fades and dies.)

I still wonder how this crude and rude man got into the office regarded as the highest in the democratic world. I feel pained when research reveals that Christian evangelicals were a major factor in his success. Yet here is a man, married three times, hugely wealthy, who does not hold serious respect in the scholarly corridors of society. So how come so many religious people voted for him, led by evangelical leaders such as Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell. There is a reason and I’ll now try to explore why evangelical Protestants are so influential in today’s American culture.

It must be now thirty years or more since I interviewed a man named Kyle Hazelden, then Managing Editor of the much respected and still published Christian Century, a liberal theological magazine. During our conversation, I asked what he felt to be the major influence in America’s religious culture. He answered with one word: “Syncretism.”   He meant, as our conversation went on, the merger of faith with various ideas, philosophies, and principles, serving to dilute the true theology of Christianity or indeed Judaism . This is, sad to say, apparent in the American evangelical movement which is perceived, by many, to be a value system of Christian principle when it’s not always so.

I first want to stress that all evangelicals I’ve known personally are honorable and sincere. That said, major parts of the US public culture are so naïve and so “Americanized,” the country is made vulnerable to outright exploitation. Here’s one example of that: an American magazine heading reads: “Six outrageously wealthy preachers are under Federal Investigation.” One example of the six preachers, each evangelical, is sufficient as a window on influence of syncretism used to exploit the innocents sitting in the pews or elsewhere.

An evangelist named Benny Hinn holds healing crusades actually claiming he brought a man back from the dead. His evangelical rallies bring in about $200 million a year. He has admitted that his salary is over a half million dollars. He owns a private jet and a house priced at $10 million dollars. This, I suggest, is one of the most vivid examples of syncretism:  (a)commercializing Christian faith, (b) then exploiting naïve people for the purpose of making themselves wealthy.  (Obviously, he’d deny it.)

It’s no surprise that the “prosperity gospel” – a self- created conviction developed in the 1950s in conservative circles of Christianity –  has strong support in high places.  It states its view as being a “contract” written by God and God’s servants. In brief it claims this: “Prosperity theology views the Bible as a contract. If humans have faith in God, he will deliver prosperity.” This is yet one more example to help understanding syncretism. It’s not an aspect of any biblical theology I’ve ever read. But, humans being humans, it is probably inevitable that syncretism will always be with us in both words and deed. Take the recent inauguration ceremony for Donald Trump, as President of the United States. To me, it was no surprise at all, he chose a “minister” named Paula to speak. She has no credible theological degrees, and has bounced through bankruptcies, marriages and businesses. (President Trump must have missed all of that.)

To their credit, senior executives of the Southern Baptist Church were promptly and publicly indignant. Russell Moore, a member of the church’s Ethics Commission made this statement a few days before the inauguration: “Paula White is a charlatan and recognized as a heretic by every orthodox Christian of whatever group…” He went on, but the crucial fact is that many such “ministers” are not educated in credible theology. Think of it: Donald Trump engaging a very questionable clergyperson for the most important ceremony of his life. (Given the stern criticism from the large Southern Baptists, she ended up with a small role near the ceremony’s end.” But the most revealing and shocking aspect is that someone high in the Presidential realm chose a fake profiteering minister who was only discovered when a Southern Baptist executive revealed it.

Yes, we have reasons to be worried but we have more reasons to be grateful. Think of all the families, huddled in lands of ever more oppression. The main fact is this: there are so many reasons to be grateful for Canada that I need not list them. But we can close with a comforting certainty:  Donald Trump is not our Prime Minister.