An authentic Christian democracy would be just what its label says: a form of democratic politics inspired by Christian values of inclusion, pluralism and freedom to – among other things – not be a Christian. Trump and his white evangelical thugs are the opposite of this concept.
I am not advocating an American form of Christian democracy as recently formed wide swaths of Europe’s politics and social welfare since the end of the Second World War. That said, with so much involvement by people claiming to represent some sort of Christian politics in the Trump era it is worth noting that authentic Christianity is incompatible with materialism. Thus as it stands now no Christian could vote for the Republican Party.
Christianity commands a duty of charity towards the poor and needy. In other words, Republicans who voted for Trump would be condemned by the entire historic church.
In case people forget, barring a few exceptions in northern Europe, it was primarily Christian democratic – not social democratic – parties that came to power in continental Europe and built the modern welfare state American Trump Republican evangelicals hate. As Carlo Invernizzi-Accetti and Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins write in an article I’m borrowing from in this blog – “Can Christian democracy save America from Trump?” (the Guardian) –
[European] Christian democracy demonstrates that religious conservatism need not be linked with nationalist populism. American evangelicals can learn from this tradition, one that has influenced American Catholic thought, instead of becoming pawns of the far right.
A former pro-choicer who is currently embroiled in a legal dispute over hush-money he paid to cover up an extra-marital affair, Trump is a model not for Christian democracy but for the white evangelical leaderships’ terminal money-grubbing hypocrite character and actual behavior.
White evangelicals should be ashamed of Trump, not because of his porn-star entanglements, but because of his anti-Christian determination to curb compassionate social policies including healthcare coverage for vulnerable groups. That is what should jar voters with Christian values most of all.
Trump’s exclusivist nationalism is in tension with Christianity’s inherent universalism too. Traditionally Christian ethics found expression in the evangelical extensive foreign aid missions. These missions went to Trump’s “S-hole” countries.
Trump is (as it were) a mistake the religious right already committed in Europe in the 1920s and 30s: hoping they could get more protection for religious values out of an alliance with authoritarianism than an alliance with liberal democracy. After Hitler, Mussolini and Franco the case was closed… until recently with the emergence of a new European white nationalist movement also using religion to justify a new wave of xenophobia in places like Hungary and Poland.
The likes of Mussolini and Hitler turned on their religious supporters in pursuit of their own pagan/brutal political projects. As Trump attacks the poor, the sick, the “other” at our borders he’s trashing everything evangelicals said they stood for. His real “gift” to the evangelicals will be to have destroyed their credibility for at least a generation.
America is a religious country. As such, religion can’t be counted out. However, America will succeed in moving beyond the present political chaos only if there is a reformed form of political conservatism capable of liberating the religious right from its Faustian pact with Trump’s disastrously anti-Christian secular authoritarianism. For Americans who love our country and also count themselves as religious believers, becoming part of that reform movement is the only option.
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2 Comments. Leave new
Well,
I love our dear franks blog
However, what is reality?
It’s created right here
And someone who I love when she decides to prey
Things happen
She lives his spirit
Personal experience
Poetry deniability
N
Dear Frank Schaeffer:
The intensification of brutal attacks on what remains of basic social programs is but one component of a broadening frontal assault on the working class. JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon speaks of plans to break resistance to wage cutting and austerity, and to punishing the working class by sharply raising interest rates. This will bring economic growth to a halt and create unemployment. This — at a time when Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are targeted for elimination.
Dimon noted last week that when initiated in 1935, the average lifespan after retirement was 13 years. Now it is 25 years. In other words, THIS ATTACK on health care and economic power of the working class intends to lower working class life expectantly dramatically.
Reference ‘compassionate social policies’ and ‘health care coverage’ and ‘the poor, the sick’ and ‘the “other”’ all you want. The Democrat party surrenders on health care, surrenders on immigration, and surrenders on education. Where ‘defense’ or ‘security’ or ‘the wall’ go, the Democrats are on board. The one place Democrats seriously challenge Trump is an attack from the right for his being insufficiently hostile against Russia and preparations for war against Russia.
The rightward shift of US political discourse you lament is driven by austerity and budget cuts inflicted on the working class in the Bush and Obama years, and are not continued and intensified under Trump. The trajectory hasn’t changed. That is why reformism is a political dead-end.
The working class alone can lead the way. Teachers are leading the resistance against austerity, budget cuts, slashed medical and other benefits. These struggles must be taken from union/Democrat hands and be directed by independent rank-and-file committees elected directly by teachers.
Frank, you need to take a stand. Stand for teachers in their struggle for education, health care, pensions, decent pay and other benefits. If you don’t, you have absolutely no ground for complaint when the working class abandons institutions of governance as it has been abandoned by them. You will have no grounds for complaint when the working class itself forms a Congress of the streets. Get onboard with at least SOMETHING progressive Frank!
The time to speak is NOW!
Easter blessings!