Believer

By Andy Kachel

In the past four years, I have gone through all the stages of grief and have settled into a stale acceptance of Trump being president. Not that I support him in the least, but I've come to realize that, despite feeling great optimism for our country before Trump, I no longer feel that way now. I think I had false optimism, and the reality is that many evangelicals have maintained a steadfast belief in Trump, no matter his actions or beliefs. In fact, according to a January 2020 PRRI report, 82% of "Republican and Republican-leaning white evangelical Protestants" want Trump to be their nominee in 2020. 1 Despite evidence to the contrary, how can these evangelicals maintain a steadfast commitment to Trump? The answer is simple: He offers them certainty and someone to believe in.

Not all evangelicals are so willing to go along with the current president. John Fea, a professor of American history at Messiah College, has been a staunch critic of the president and the evangelicals who would follow him. Fea has picked up on one of the president's tendencies in his speeches: “When Donald Trump speaks to his followers in the mass rallies that have now become a fixture of his populist brand, he loves to use the phrase 'believe me.'” 2 And Fea is right, because as the Boston Globe reports, "In the 12 Republican debates, [Trump] used ['believe me'] some 30 times — at a rate 56 times greater than his opponents, who used it a combined three times." 3 What is intended is that Trump's followers are to have complete confidence in him. And maybe if the U.S. evangelical movement has been quick to confide in Trump, it is because he espouses many of their beliefs, prejudices, and fears; and so they unquestioningly follow him, no matter the price.

And the price has been great: Children have been locked in cages, families of foreigners separated, and white supremacists have been empowered, and even killed people. Some days it seems like it doesn't matter what the president or his administration does, no matter how heinous or deceitful, there will be no consequences. According to the January 2020 PRRI report, "Only 36% of white evangelical Protestants, compared to 62% of all Americans, say Trump’s personal conduct makes them less likely to support him." 1 The trade-off seems to be that no matter his actions, Trump provides a false sense of certainty in an ever changing world. Where once communities in American might have looked alike, prayed to a similar God, or loved alike, the very fabric of our country has changed. Trump even campaigned on the promise to "Make America Great Again," a promise to combat change. But Fea argues:

Instead of doing the hard work necessary for engaging a more diverse society with the claims of Christian orthodoxy, evangelicals have become intellectually lazy, preferring to respond to cultural change by trying to reclaim a world that is rapidly disappearing and has little chance of ever coming back. 2

Truly, the trade-off for supporting Trump is a loss of religion free of political fervor.

Bonhoeffer’s “Religionless Christianity”

A study in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's early pondering on "religionless Christianity" might help us to understand the events of our world better. Bonhoeffer lived in a similar time to our own, but one colored by more extremes. He was a German pastor and a dissident of the Nazi regime. In the last years of his life, he wrote several letters to a friend while imprisoned for his beliefs. 4 In one letter he wrote:

We are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore. Even those who honestly describe themselves as 'religious' do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different from 'religious.' 5

Bonhoeffer never got to define with great depth what he meant by "religionless," because the Nazis killed him. What comes through the most, to me, is how exhausted Bonhoeffer sounds in this piece of writing. Bonhoeffer writes with great emphasis that people "simply cannot be religious anymore," and I believe what he means is that to be a "religious" person during his time meant being an amoral person. Religion is a human construct, like politics. Religion helps people who share similar beliefs organize and feel a sense of belonging. This construct then helps one group differentiate themselves, their traditions, and their beliefs from other groups who believe something different. The problem is when a religion is hijacked by someone who would seize power, such as a politician. Religion then tends to take on the beliefs of that singular person, rather than being divinely inspired and inclusive. What we see now, and what Bonhoeffer saw in his day, is quite different from "the religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless." 7 We are living in a time when the great moral failings are being perpetrated, not by wayward teenagers, prostitutes, or godless atheists, but by believers who claim to follow the architect of morality, Christ, but fear foreigners, turn a blind eye to injustice, and maintain support for Trump, who champions these sins.

While Bonhoeffer might say we need "religionless Christianity," Neal Gabler, a journalist, writes that, "True religion, I believe, begins in doubt and continues in spiritual exploration. Debased religion begins in fear and terminates in certainty." 2 It might sound strange to ascribe positive spiritual attributes to doubt and spiritual exploration, but I believe it is the path we must walk if Christianity is to continue untarnished. If Christians are to continue along a path of tribalism, fear, and nationalism, as we are seeing in the world today, Christianity will be debased, or devalued. If anything about Christianity remains unshaken, it is that those who have faith have found something more precious than those who only have belief or certainty.

Belief and Religion Without Faith

There is nothing inherently wrong with belief or a group of people sharing a common belief in religion; however, belief and religion are insufficient without faith. The poet T.S. Eliot so eloquently writes,

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope. For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith but the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. 6

I have often marveled at the singsong nature of Eliot's words. What did he mean? True faith, true religion in fact, is born in darkness and doubt. If you have belief or confidence in a person, you do not need faith because you are already being led by them. But when your spirit abides in doubt, when you make uncertainty your dwelling place, then the only thing left to do is to walk out in faith. It is in this liminal and empty space that faith is born. Is this any different than Peter walking on water? If Peter were compelled by anyone else, say a ship captain, he would not need to demonstrate his faith and meet Christ in the stormy seas.

When we have faith we can be "sure of what [we] hope for and certain of what [we] do not see." 8 Certitude does not come from following a "strong man." Instead, we should be in the world the same way as when Christ first sent out his followers. He sent them out like this: "He told them: 'Take nothing for the journey—no staff , no bag, no bread, no money, no extra shirt.'" 9 Those are not words to found a nation upon, and how is anyone to feel certain with that kind of direction? I do not believe God only abides in moments of great spiritual ecstasy, or times of plenty, or national fervor, or at the zenith. Much of the imagery in scripture is about darkness and yet being comforted by something more. In Psalm 23 the writer is walking "through the valley of the shadow of death," in Genesis 1 the Spirit of God is hovering over the dark "formless and empty" Earth, and in Psalm 139:8, the writer states, "if I go down to the grave, you are there." Religionless Christianity, or true religion, is not needing to make anything great again. There is no need to exclude or win. It is about existing without on the outside, but having something more on the inside.

Sources

1 “White Evangelical Protestants Attitudes Toward Donald Trump, 2015 - 2019.” PRRI, January 3, 2020. https://www.prri.org/spotlight/white-evangelical-protestants-attitudes-toward-donald-trump-2015-2019/.
2 Fea, John. Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2018.
3 Viser, Matt. “Donald Trump Relies on a Simple Phrase: ‘Believe Me’.” BostonGlobe.com. The Boston Globe, May 24, 2016. https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2016/05/24/donald-trump-relies-heavily-simple-phrase-believe/0pyVI36H70AOHgXzuP1P5H/story.html.
4 Osborn, Ronald. “The Church in Crisis: The Religionless Christianity of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” Spectrum Magazine, December 26, 2018. https://spectrummagazine.org/article/2016/09/30/church-crisis-religionless-christianity-dietrich-bonhoeffer.
5 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. “Extract - Religionless Christianity Bonhoeffer’s Letter from Prison.” Philosophical Investigations, September 27, 2017. https://peped.org/philosophicalinvestigations/extract-religionless-christianity-bonhoeffers-letter-prison/.
6 Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets. New York, NY: Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1943.
7 James 1:27, NIV
8 Hebrew 11:1
9 Luke 9:3