The Theological Danger Ahead
If Donald Trump is Again Elected Prepare for the Re-emergence of a Colonial Theocracy
The late great Christopher Hitchens often brought it to the attention of those who attended or watched debates on religion that the religious come to debates on the subject these days with some semblance of humility but that we should never forget how it was when they had the power of life and death over others in their God’s name. Though Hitch has been gone for ten years now, his warnings have a very real ring of authority today as the White Christian Evangelical Movement consolidates its support around Donald Trump.
One doesn’t need to be a theological practician to recognize that, with a few notable exceptions, the White Evangelical community has completely surrendered its Christian beliefs and its savior to the dark powers of Donald Trump’s cruelty and narcissism.
Every American, of any religion - or no religion - should tremble with the thought that if they succeed in re-electing the Donald Trump they have nurtured, it will not just be immigrants, or the marginalized in our society who will suffer from the hatred and wrath of the White Nationalist Christian Evangelicals and their emerging new savior. It will be anyone who does not conform to their view of the world because they will have confirmed - in their parochial heads - their view that the US is a Christian nation created in their image and intolerant of even modest differences.
Though the desperate lack of a civics education and an honest assessment of American history in our educational system has left many of our youngest citizens at a cognitive disadvantage, it is imperative to state very clearly that it was the intent of the founders, expressed strictly in the 1st Amendment to the Constitution that the newly formed constitutional republic was an explicit rejection of the notion that any religion should define us. It was an open door to the religious and the irreligious but a closed door to those who would use their faith to accrue power and use that power to inflict their celestial dictator on everyone else.
In fact, Jefferson and Madison corresponded with one another between France and the US about this very subject. Vowing to oppose the ratification of the newly proposed U.S. Constitution without a Bill of Rights that would protect us from the dangers of Theocracy. It was to become the new and improved “Good Book” defining a dream that would permit us to grow together with one another to build a government and, more important, an American community that one day would truly reflect the best of who we are, moving (often achingly slowly) toward that “more perfect union.” where people of good-will embrace and protect the shared values of country and community and vigorously and mostly-civilly contest our disagreements in the marketplace of ideas, or as the author Jonathan Rauch calls it, “the constitution of knowledge”.
Twenty years from now, you will have to send out a search party to find anyone who will admit to having voted for Donald Trump; their shame will be so great that they will manufacture a hundred reasons why they were unable to vote in 2024, or they voted for a different candidate. Richard Nixon will look like a piker by comparison.
The question remains: will the Republican party survive this, and will the White Evangelical movement likewise survive? We would all be better off if the answer were yes on both counts, but I’m skeptical, and here’s why: I believe that the willingness of Evangelicals to completely abandon their spiritual beliefs is largely because they, like so many other Americans, feel that they have been abandoned by political leaders from both parties. In other words, the strength of our American community and our American song is suffering from the waning commitment of political leaders to our constitutional values. This is true of both parties.
They are not wrong. Both the Republican and Democratic parties have abandoned working-class and poor Americans as well as a large swath of the middle class.
Each party has chosen its own donor class over ordinary people of every color, class, and religious persuasion.
Each party has created its own set of scapegoats, intended to avoid responsibility and cast blame upon the others for ills that we can rectify if we stop hating on each other and focus on our common challenges. All of this is causing a spiraling loss of institutional trust and a similar diminution of faith in American ideals.
Over the next few months, I hope to offer some suggestions for restoring that sense of community again.
About Wayne D. King: Author, podcaster, artist, activist, social entrepreneur and recovering politician. A three-term State Senator, 1994 Democratic nominee for Governor. His art (WayneDKing.com) is exhibited nationally in galleries, and he has published five books of his images, most recently, "New Hampshire - a Love Story.” His novel "Sacred Trust", a vicarious, high-voltage adventure to stop a private powerline as well as the photographic books are available at most local bookstores or on Amazon. He lives on the “Narrows” in Bath, NH at the confluence of the Connecticut and Ammonoosuc Rivers and proudly flies the American, Iroquois and Abenaki Flags. His publishing website is Anamaki.com.
Produced at Anamaki Studios in Bath, NH.
This land lies in N’dakinna, the traditional ancestral homeland of the Abenaki, Sokoki, Koasek, Pemigewasset, Pennacook, and Wabanaki Peoples, past and present. We acknowledge and honor those who have stewarded N’dakinna throughout the generations.
Chapel in the Lupine Field
Signed Originals Unsigned Open Edition Prints
Tamarack Monochrome Under a Platinum Sky
Signed Originals Unsigned Open Edition Prints
Home Before the Storm
Signed Originals Unsigned Open Edition Prints
Trusses and Light
Signed Originals. Unsigned Open Edition Prints
Sun Dried Nostalgia
Signed Originals. Unsigned Open Edition Prints
Sunset Paints Stinson Mountain
Signed Originals. Unsigned Open Edition Prints
Abandoned Cornfield
Lone Moose on a Snowy Oxbow
Outstanding photos, Wayne.
If we Democrats don't "get it in gear" pretty soon and make as many calls and knock on as many doors as our respective lives will allow before November 5th, we will be eternally sorry and much less of a democratic Republic!