Peacemakers ... or Warmongers?
As Christians we are called to be peacemakers. Not war mongers.
I’m shocked. And I’m deeply saddened at what I am witnessing in the USA.
It is now over a week after the Supreme Court refused to even hear the case filed by Texas and supported by many elected Republican politicians, the last of over 40 cases that were basically rejected for lack of evidence. Yet still many Evangelical Christians continue to support President Trump’s claim that the election was stolen from him.
As the legal challenges to the US Presidential Election came to a conclusion, and before the Electoral College meeting this past Monday, Evangelicals hosted a large “prayer gathering” on the Mall in Washington DC. Titled “Let the Church Roar” and carrying the #JerichoMarch and #StoptheSteal branding of the major movements against the election result, it brought together a significant number of conservative Christian leaders and many of Trump’s “base.” It was possibly the biggest of the gatherings in DC. The speakers at the Mall event made clear an undiminished commitment to their President and his claim that the victory of President Elect Joe Biden had been fraudulent, and sent out a clear message they would fight to overturn the result.
I have been trying to understand what is happening in the USA right now. There are of course many dimensions to it, and I don’t pretend, especially as a non-American, to understand it all in depth. I focus here on my particular concern, the evangelical church’s part in it. I believe this is a very critical time for the church, and I am very troubled. The Jericho March gathering was just one expression of it but offers some help.
Reading about the Jericho March event on social media my pressing question was, “Did this all happen at one Christian led event? Did these people speak on the same stage?” Could it really be that Infowars hatemonger Alex Jones was speaking on the same stage as a Catholic Archbishop and disgraced and newly pardoned former National Security Advisor General Mike Flynn, and at an event compered by evangelical author and broadcaster Eric Metaxas? And, ultimately what is driving this all?
Alex Jones? Infowars? Really? My work over the past 12 years has involved understanding, engaging with and challenging hatred emerging from the far right, and together with fellow Christians and leaders in Luton’s Muslim community to work for peace in a town that extremists have sought to divide. People who I have most closely opposed like Stephen Yaxley Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, and Paul Golding are closely allied to Alex Jones. (You can google Jones and Infowars. I try to not link to such stuff.)
How could it possibly be that Christians could tolerate such hatred on a platform from which they were calling for prayer? How could they stand by, let alone roar their support as Jones declared that Joe Biden is going to be “removed one way or another?”
“God is on our side! … We will never back down to the satanic pedophile globalist new world order and their walking-dead reanimated corpse Joe Biden. And we will never recognize him. … So I don’t know who’s going to the White House in 38 days, but I sure know this: Joe Biden is a globalist, and Joe Biden will be removed one way or another.” (here)
Jones could be taken for a Christian from his language. It is not for me to judge his heart allegiance but I have never seen a Christian ethic in the causes he supports or his manner. He is a peddlar of conspiracy theory and purveyor of hatred and bigotry.
The other highly problematic piece in the puzzle for me was Eric Metaxas. Once upon a time this would have been for very different reasons than my concern at Alex Jones. But in this very strange situation we are in old certainties are shattered. I have really only known of Metaxas through his books on early 19th Century anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce, and anti-Nazi theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer. While I had a few problems with his understanding of Bonhoeffer I still respected him as a Christian intellectual of note. So it was a major shock to me when Metaxas emerged as an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump in the run up to the 2016 election. My question then was how could someone who had a deep familiarity with Bonhoeffer, a Christian theologian who opposed the evil perpetrated by Hitler and the Nazi regime for so many years, have such an uncritical view of a populist right wing politician like Trump? My question now is perhaps more pressing, and asks how Metaxas could, on several occasions in recent days, have stated that he is willing to die fighting for the rightful presidency of Donald Trump? And he has called others to join him.
“I’d be happy to die in this fight. This is a fight for everything. God is with us.” on a call to Donald Trump (30.12.20)
“Everybody who is not hopped up about this … you are the Germans that looked the other way when Hitler was preparing to do what he was preparing to do. Unfortunately, I don’t see how you can see it any other way. … We need to fight to the death, to the last drop of blood, because it’s worth it.” In an interview with Charlie Kirk (9.12.20)
Clearly he willing to do whatever it takes to see the election restored to Trump. And just as Bonhoeffer, practically a pacifist, was willing to support the 1944 plot to kill Hitler, Metaxas is seeing himself in Bonhoeffer’s shoes as he says he is willing to support Trump and oppose Biden to death.
A detailed and perceptive commentary on the six hour Saturday event has been written by a conservative Rod Dreher on his blog. What I saw at the Jericho March tells us about the speakers and offers an insightful background from someone whose commitment to a conservative politics and worldview is very clear. I regularly had to bite my tongue at his comments about the woke left. However in spite of his political inclinations Dreher’s horror at what he was hearing as he forced himself to follow all six hours on line was clear.
Dreher knows Eric Metaxas well it seems. He wrote: “He is one of the sweetest men you could hope to meet, gentle and kind, a pleasure to be around. Not a hater in the least.” I have no reason to doubt him. Dreher’s however raises important questions, perhaps the most important being:
What kind of person calls for spilling blood in defense of a political cause for which he does not care if any factual justification exists? What kind of person compares doubters to Nazi collaborators? A religious zealot, that’s the kind. The only way one can justify that hysterical stance is if one conflates religion with politics, and politics with religion.
As Dreher reviews the March he draws out the recurring theme in what Metaxas and his fellow guests on stage say. At one point Metaxas states: “When God gives you a vision, you don’t need to know anything else.” That certainty in his spirituality, in the belief that God can speak directly to believers, is key to his claim.
An article on Metaxas in early December that traces his spiritual journey notes the same certainty:
At Tuesday night’s prayer meeting, Metaxas, repeating claims that God will intervene in the 2020 election, warned other leaders not to believe what they see with their eyes or with their “natural” self but to trust in the supernatural. He described the controversy over the election as a walk of faith, one in which Jesus will prevail — and his nemeses in the church and the media would not. … I want to encourage people that we must not give in to the lies, to the half-truths,” he told fellow believers on the call. (How Eric Metaxas went from Trump despiser to true believer)
In his report on the Jericho March Dreher concludes:
“It’s one thing to claim that God told you to change churches, or something like that. It’s another thing to claim, especially if you have a national microphone, that God told you that the election was stolen, and that people need to prepare themselves to fight to the last drop of blood — an actual quote — to keep the libs from taking the presidency away from Trump. Watching the Jericho March, I saw that what I encountered for the first time in conversation with my friend over two decades ago is actually pretty common. Most of the Jericho March speakers, in one way or another, asserted their certainty about the election’s theft. The fact that courts keep throwing these Trump lawsuits out only proves how deep the corruption goes. See how that works? They are willing to tear down the country for a belief that they cannot prove, but that they will not believe is disprovable,”
It is not my purpose here to stray into a discussion of whether God speaks to his people today, how he does so and how we receive that. I will be clear, I myself do believe God speaks to me, personally and for others and into situations, in the church and wider society. This is what the New Testament calls the gift of prophecy. It is an important gift. But I believe it is vital to build safety factors around it. The most important I would suggest is humility. Humility that offers the recipient the option to hear or reject, a humility that has the one who brings it saying, I may be wrong.
I have come over the years to be very cynical where prophecy too conveniently enhances support for the known political stance of the person bringing that word. And sadly Metaxas is just another name to add to those who have used what they claim to be God’s word to bring support for Trump. I suggest the president’s spiritual advisory group led by Paula White have long abused God’s word in his support, as it would seem have many of those held to be prophets by parts of the church. Just a few weeks ago national US intercessory leader Dutch Sheets instituted Operation Valkyrie, again claiming God’s support for a prayer strategy to overthrow those seeking to steal the election. The name again likened the cause to Bonhoeffer’s part in the plan to overthrow Hitler.
This is a high risk game for the church. What we are witnessing is I suggest a vast misuse of the prophetic, and it horrifies me. And, while I say this believing that President Trump has lost, I believe it is wrong whether he somehow wins through or not. It is a result of poor practice in the church over many years, of big egos and few challenges to those egos, and a total unwillingness to weigh the so-called word of God against God’s principles and the wisdom of humanity. Way too often there have been so called prophetic words that are blatantly wrong, and they have never been acknowledged, withdrawn, apologised for. Instead they dig in, conveniently forget it, make excuses, I believe this is the path of deception. And it has now I suggest led to a situation where many Christians in the USA are taking a very dangerous path.
There is much more that could be said about this, not least the way the language of the so called prophets reflects the conspiracy theories that are out there, not least Qanon. I won’t go there now except to say that the language of Alex Jones was full of Qanon references, eg “the satanic pedophile globalist new world order.” And QAnon with its language of an overthrow of the child abusing deep state does not stop short of believing a fight is coming and necessary.
However my focus here is the US evangelical church’s response to the result of the election, not the prophetic or conspiracy. These have been important though in understanding why so many support Trumps claim of a stolen election. I may return to the subject of the prophetic on my personal blog. And I do not believe we have heard the end of QAnon.
So where are we?
The result of the past six weeks since election day has been that a large majority of President Trump’s supporters are aggrieved that he lost, and believe it to be unjust. Moreover they do not like what Joes Biden stands for. A good portion do not base that on the facts but on their own instincts or what they believe to be prophetic words. And leaders they respect are saying they will fight. It does not look good to me.
I repeat what I began with. As Christians we are called to be peacemakers. Not war mongers. Let that be our prayer for the church in a deeply divided society.
PS. As I review this before posting, I am seeing that key speaker at the Jericho March, General Mike Flynn, former National Security Advisor, has been urging President Trump to deploy the military in key states where they feel the election was stolen, to seize voting machines, and to rerun the election. Trump has denied these rumours however in a tweet: “Martial Law = Fake News.” Maybe, but the very fact of such possibilities being discussed is simply frightening for the future of a democracy.