Well, that was awkward. In front of a man claiming to have been appointed by God, saved by God, a man to whom conservative evangelicals have flocked, someone dared to mention … the Bible. Mercy. Compassion. Love. Among the Trump team sitting in the front pews, it was as though someone had released a stink bomb from the pulpit; brows furrowed, voluminous lips pursed, expressions of distaste, even anger.
Illustration by Dionne GainCredit:
Since the Episcopalian Bishop of Washington, the Right Rev Mariann Budde, spoke at the prayer service held the day after the inauguration, Republicans have called for her to be deported, and President Trump called her “nasty”, saying she should apologise to the American public. Others praised her uncommon courage.
So what were these incendiary words? The diminutive Budde spoke directly to the president, referring to his claim of the “providential hand of God” saving him from assassination, and asking him “to have mercy upon the people in our country that are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and Independent families, some who fear for their lives.”
She then asked for mercy on illegal immigrants: “The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labour in poultry farms and meat-packing plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants, and work the night shifts in hospitals … the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals, they pay taxes and are good neighbours …
“I ask you to have mercy, Mr President, on those in our communities whose children fear their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honour the dignity of every human being.”
Trump brandishes a Bible outside St John’s Church near the White House in 2020.Credit: AP
It’s pretty much Christianity 101, woven directly from Bible verses. But, watching the reaction, it became clear how many of those public figures who have weaponised religion in the name of their own ideology have forgotten what Christianity is actually about. That Jesus sat with the outcast, not billionaires. That he urged love and forgiveness, not contempt and hate; peace, not violence.
Many seem to associate values like compassion with “wokeism”, not with faith, although as scholars like Tom Holland (also the co-host of The Rest Is History podcast) have pointed out, wokeism owes a significant intellectual debt to Christian thinking – the idea that eyes can be opened, the oppressed rise up, the last becoming first. The fundamentals of Christian faith are not the seeking of power but an absence of power.
Jesus didn’t arrive by golden escalator but in a dirty wooden trough. He did not hype up hate, he fostered love. It has become convenient for the powerful, though, to forget this, and the astonishing, evangelical US support for a felon found to have sexually abused women, and incited January 6 violence, has enabled this amnesia, this cover-up of the actual words of the leader of the religion Trump claims as his own.
