Month: February 2025

How would you define fidelity? A commonly understood definition is faithfulness to a person, cause, or belief, demonstrated by continuing loyalty and support. So the question is to whom or what is your fidelity pledged?

I recently listened to a documentary about the last few days in the Hitler bunker and was deeply saddened by the unwavering fidelity that those closest to him pledged him and everything he stood for. They believed, in some terribly distorted way, that his dream would have led to a paradise on earth for them and people like them. Rather than surrender to the truth, they chose to die with him and his delusions.

To whom or what do you pledge your fidelity? I imagine for many of us the answer is uncertain. We are not sure. Well, what about the pledge to your marriage or perhaps to a close friend? When you pledge allegiance to the flag and the republic for which it stands, to what are you pledging? What is an oath of office if not a pledge of fidelity? Some claim to be true only to themselves. How reliable can that be?

The things to which we pledge fidelity, however wobbly, reveal the center of our lives. As scripture put it, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” The treasure is whoever or whatever claims our fidelity, revealing a great deal about the sort of person we are. It’s a revelation that dissolves masks, facades, and pretensions, exposing deep truths about each of us. Maybe that is what makes us a bit shy about admitting where our fidelity lies; we even hide it from ourselves.

To pledge undying, unwavering fidelity to any thing, cause, or person in this material world can never be reciprocated fully. Even the best of us let each other down. Most often, we fail each other without intention. At other times we can, as Oscar Wilde put it, resist anything but temptation. At worst we can be cruel, vindictive, and intentionally hurt others. 

The most promising of all political causes demanding our fidelity has been liberal democracy, and yet we see it flailing against the storm of authoritarianism. Its only strength is in the commitment of citizens to their freedom and common good; without that, it has no inherent strength of its own. If a nation is persuaded that its citizens are not up to the hard work of keeping a democracy, they may be persuaded to give their fidelity to a person and cause that promises to take control, asking of the people only unwavering obedience. It happens when civic duty is displaced by complacency, grievances, and fidelity pledged to things like money, property, social status, etc. None of them have any inherent value or strength that can endure, nor can any return to us the fidelity we give to them. 

What persuades us to take an oath to anything or any person? In premarital counseling, I often asked a couple what persuaded them that pledging their fidelity to one another was a good idea. It’s an important question we should ask of each other about everything that has become the treasure demanding our fidelity. What inspires some of us to pledge fidelity? What persuades us are marketing schemes in their various forms that promise the good life, just beyond our reach, that can be ours if we would only buy this thing or that service, follow this supreme leader or give our lives to that cause. It’s a very seductive fantasy that works well. It ends with us outsourcing moral judgments to market manipulations.

Who or what is most persuasive in our lives matters. It matters that we be willing and able to examine the persuasive issues in our lives and to honestly recognize the fidelity demand of us in exchange for promises that can never be fulfilled. The consequences of being persuaded by lies and illusory promises lead at best to disappointment, moral failure, and destruction of self. At worst, the consequences are the destruction of the moral integrity of society, death of millions, and the triumph of evil.

A previous column explored how determined obedience to Jesus and the way of the cross may require Christians to engage in non-violent civil disobedience when the way of the government becomes irreconcilable with the way of the cross. I also said that God had high standards for what makes a nation just but writing about it was for another time. This is the other time.

We live in a world of nation-states, countries bounded by borders and defined by specific sets of laws and constitutions. When God, speaking through the prophets, declared the standards by which nations were judged, he did not mean a nation-state in the modern sense but the entire people of a place that consider themselves a nation. The important question when reading the prophets is to examine what made God angry about the injustices of a nation. 

Speaking through the prophets,God has defined injustice that creates a perimeter within which nations are to work out what is just for their people,  approximating what it means to in workable ways love God, love one’s neighbors, and love oneself. I think Amos  provided the most concise listing of what God makes for an unjust nation. My interpretation of them is as follows:

• Destruction of an enemy’s food supply
• Ethnic cleansing
• Betrayal of treaties
• Promoting cival violence
• Manipulating the poor into the bondage of debt
• Cheating the poor out of the necessities of life
• Denying the poor a full measure of justice
• Oppression of the marginalized
• Having a society in which the rich behave with contempt toward the lower classes
• Conducting elaborate, meaningless religious ceremonies
• Presuming God’s grace for oneself while oppressing others
• Condoning corrupt courts and judges
• Taxation that benefits the rich and burdens the poor
• Tolerating an excessive wealth gap between the rich and poor

Other prophets recorded God’s word condemning land grabs, self-aggrandizing rulers, and ostentatious lifestyles of the wealthy.   It is an uncomfortable indictment  of many in our own day. God has heard every excuse and self-righteous justification for why none of this applies to them. It must be meant for somebody else. He has heard every angry protestation that they have been offended, mistreated, misunderstood, and lied about. He heard it all in the time of the prophets and wasn’t fooled then and isn’t fooled now.

I have no illusion that society’s malefactors would do more than sneer derisively at everything written so far. I expect Christians will take it to heart, adjusting their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors accordingly, not for their own benefit but for the common good. It will not mean marching in drill formation unity. We will remain a people muddling through as best we can, arguing about the right thing to do and the way to do it. Our unity will always be in coherence around God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the way of the cross. It is a coherence through which nations can be moved toward godly justice.

Nonviolent civil disobedience is an effective tool for generating opposition to unjust laws and social conditions that have oppressed and suppressed people on the margins. It has also helped raise public awareness of serious issues related to national safety and social conditions, making life more difficult than it otherwise would be for marginalized people. Civil rights marches are the most obvious example, as are the varieties of sit-ins, work slowdowns, and mass demonstrations in my lifetime. Nonviolent civil disobedience has always meant disobedience to existing unjust laws and conditions.

In these next few years, nonviolent civil disobedience will take another direction. It will become determined disobedience of demands from the administration, undermining our democracy and its liberties. It will mean voicing verifiable, fact-based truth as loudly as possible, in as many public places as possible, to overcome the gigantic propaganda machine that the administration has at its disposal.

In previous decades, portions of the church have dedicated themselves to nonviolent civil disobedience when needed, but the majority of the church remained comfortably in their pews. The majority voice was heard, but softly and in excessively diplomatic tones. Church leadership was conflicted about proclaiming boldly the good news of God in Christ Jesus and maintaining the institutional stability of their respective denominations. It always means walking in the way of the cross is sacrificed. The new way of nonviolent civil disobedience has got to change that. The majority of the church must boldly speak on behalf of the way of the cross and the godly justice that it represents without equivocation. The key to success is keeping Jesus at the center. If politics is allowed to become the central point, the nonviolent, civilly disobedient voice of the church will fail. If Jesus is kept at the center and the way of the cross is fully illuminated as the way forward, the voice of the church will have an enormous impact on society as a whole.

The way of the cross does not seek to impose the Christian faith on anybody or any groups of people. The way of the cross is able to articulate clearly the expectations and commandments of God revealed to us through the prophets and in Jesus Christ. They name what it means to be a just people. It has two sides. One side is inscribed with commandments and standards of justice that the people of God are to obey individually as best they can. The other side declares what it means to be a just society, no matter who the people are. The two sides cannot be separated; they are one thing. A person cannot walk fully in the way of the cross if they are not both intentional in their thoughts, words, and deeds and engaged in society for the common good of godly justice for all.

Holy Scripture is not shy about revealing what the commandments and standards of social justice are. They are summarized below, as drawn from the Ten Commandments and Sermon on the Mount:

• Honor ancestors whose wisdom serves as a reliable guide for us.
• Do not commit murder—including killing heart, mind, and soul.
• Do not betray the integrity of any relationship.
• Do not acquire for yourself anything to which you have no moral right, whether legal or not.
• Say nothing about others without certain knowledge of its truth, nor betray a confidence, nor with intent to hurt.
• Be content with what you are able to do and have without becoming jealous of others’ good fortune.
• See that those who live in physical and emotional poverty are nourished.
• Comfort those in emotional distress.
• Seek to be persons of true humility.
• Seek to be a person of integrity in everything you say and do.
• Let mercy guide every judgment.
• Seek peace that makes no room for hate.
• Be willing to suffer the cost of walking in the way of the cross.

God, through the prophets, illuminated in greater detail what is necessary for a nation, a society to be just, but that’s for another time. For now, commitment to following in the way of the cross will always drive toward justice and confront injustice with nonviolent boldness.

This may come as a surprise, but I am not disappointed by the initials D.E.I. being stricken from the corporate lexicon. It is far more important for corporations and public agencies to be organizations in which diversity, equality, and inclusion are simply a way of life, an unheralded part of the ordinary way of doing things.

Like so many other publicly lauded programs to improve conditions of employment, D.E.I. was, I fear, little more than the flavor of the month. Top management adopted the language, announced changes, ran workshops, and did nothing to change their own behavior. There were and are exceptions, of course, but I imagine they were and are the exceptions. Rank-and-file employees, if the past is any guide, groaned under the imposition from above of yet another new program everyone knew was window dressing to satisfy the market and social justice advocates.

That said, social justice advocates are right: the principles and goals of D.E.I. are ways to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, robustness, and future of every organization, public or private. The only way to make them work is to skip the P.R. and do the work without fanfare. Just do it, as one fanfare-loving company likes to put it.

Trump and right-wing media have flooded the nation with propaganda claiming that D.E.I. mandates quotas for the employment of physically, emotionally, and intellectually challenged persons regardless of job requirements. Race is never mentioned but clearly intended. They have said it so often and with such fierce determination that many believe it to be true. There have been real quota programs in our recent history. The most important was veterans’ preference. Veterans’ preference laws required that any veteran who met the basic standards for a public service job had to be put at the head of the line, ahead of even more qualified candidates. Veterans’ preference was intended to honor those who had served in wartime and get them back into the civilian labor force as quickly as possible. A quota system that exists today is the one Trump has announced, requiring I.C.E. to arrest and deport so many thousands every day. Another quota system currently in place is requiring federal employees to swear personal loyalty to Trump above their oath to the Constitution if they want to retain their jobs.

If we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that being a white male was the default qualification for most any job. Of course, there were other requirements, but the expectation was that those who could meet the requirements would most likely be white males. Anyone else had to prove superior capability to even be mildly considered. Even when organizations were intent on fair employment practices, it was hard to keep white males from gravitating toward the front of the line, just as veterans went to the head of the line under veterans’ preference. Anyone who claims otherwise is ignoring the plain facts. An acquaintance once complained to me that no white man could get a job as a police officer or firefighter in Hawaii. It was blatant discrimination against whites, he said. Unique among states, there is no racial majority in Hawaii, and whites do not make up a plurality. The reality is that being white in Hawaii gives you no advantage, nor does anyone else gain an advantage except for one thing: preference is given to people who know the local culture and are part of it. It imperfectly demonstrates what no-fanfare D.E.I. might look like.

The fundamental principles of D.E.I. do not lower standards; standards are raised by them because default preferences for white males are eliminated: only qualifications count.

A significant portion of the population does not believe that. They will not believe it. They cannot be convinced. Moreover, they are deeply, angrily offended when the implication is that they are prejudiced in some way. That’s why P.R.-oriented D.E.I. programs don’t work. They are seen in part for what they are: P.R. programs with little substance behind them. They are also seen for what they are feared to be: a threat to opportunities for advancement, enrichment, and achieving the American dream if all these unqualified others are allowed to take an equitable place in society. It is particularly infuriating when these unqualified others are said to be pushed to the head of the line. It is a mindset difficult to change. That is why it is more important just to do the work, let it be the way things are done in this place, and skip all the fanfare that nobody trusts or believes anyway.

A friend said he thought the drastic reductions in federal employment by Trump and Musk were a good idea. He’d heard the federal bureaucracy was bloated with paper pushers doing overlapping jobs, producing little benefit for the country. They just made life more burdensome, complicated, and difficult. If the workforce is reduced, it will automatically improve efficiency because the duplication will have been eliminated, and employees will have to do real work at less cost, so he expected. There are real problems with duplication, poor coordination between agencies, and a failure to make customer service the highest measure of effectiveness, but reducing the workforce does not improve efficiency or effectiveness.

Reducing the workforce only leaves the system in place, and it is the system that dictates whether or not things will be efficient and effective. A system that is undermanned will simply collapse under its own weight, and if that is what Musk wants, then he is on the right track. On the other hand, if the American public would like a more efficient and effective government doing what the public wants it to do with fewer people, then it is the system that must be changed.

Just what is the system? It begins with Congress. Every federal program has been enacted into law by Congress, and members of Congress tend to write laws with specific instructions about how programs are to be managed. It isn’t quite micromanagement, but it comes close. Laws instruct agencies to produce regulations that implement the programs. Why do laws get written in such complicated ways? It’s because members of Congress want to show constituents that their parochial needs are being taken care of. It’s all well-intended but doesn’t work well in practice. One way Congress attempts to show its due diligence is by writing solutions to previously known constituent complaints and other problems into the law. When solutions are piled one upon another, the result is unnecessary complexity. Maybe that’s just the price of being a democracy. A democracy is, by its very nature, somewhat messy and inefficient. For the record, every autocratic regime so far has proven itself to be messier, more inefficient, and rife with fraud. Think about it.

Trump has proudly announced that he will permit one new regulation for every 10 that are eliminated. It sounds like tough management, but it really is ducking the issue. How can you eliminate a regulation that is required by law? An alternative would be to require regulations to be no more complicated or difficult to follow than is absolutely necessary to meet the requirements of the law. Too many regulations are written to cover the rear ends of administrators should something go wrong. Others are written not to enhance the success, effectiveness, and efficiency of the intended program but to enforce particular methods with little concern for their output. It is a way to ensure that the law is not violated rather than ensuring that the intended purpose of the law satisfies the constituents it is intended to serve.

Congress is likely to continue enacting laws in the most complicated way possible. I could be wrong, but I don’t see how they are likely to change. The process of getting elected and keeping constituents happy is too powerful. Constituents are not always the people who live in the district or state but are just as often, perhaps more frequently, the people who underwrite campaigns and finance lobbying for personal benefit, which wastes resources and does little for the public good.

It really is up to the administration to improve efficiency and effectiveness. The executive cannot change laws, but it can change the ways regulations are written and administered. The slash-and-burn methods of the Musk/Trump administration are not the way to do it. They only destroy, producing nothing adhering to the benefit of the people and their common good.

I had an hour-long telephone conversation about Christian nationalism with a young colleague from another denomination. He is developing an adult ed. class for his congregation and wanted to talk things over. As it turned out, he had already done a lot of research and was way ahead of me. The best I could do was offer a few words of encouragement along with my own thoughts on the historical arc leading to today’s political effort to compel the U.S. to accept a particular brand of social norms disguised as Christianity as its state religion.

One thing led to another, and I got to wondering who and what people and organizations actively support Christian nationalism in some form. The data is easily available on the internet. There are enough sources to provide a decent sense of validity. What surprised me was how many there are. I listened to one list for an hour and did not get past ‘c’ in the alphabetical listing. A fully sighted person could scan the entire list quickly to pick out a few major players, so I’ll leave it to them and be glad to hear the results.

As for me, it was clear that the many hundreds of voices with individual grievances and agendas are not well coordinated with each other. What they have in common is the desire for the federal government to make their views the law of the land. Views on what? Quite a few are single-issue activists intent on banning all abortions, denying the reality of non-binary sex, allocating public lands to private use, and things like that. Others desire to dismantle the federal government, reducing it to defense, highway construction, and promoting business and industry. To them, social services are anathema. Still, others want the government to continue underwriting their particular interests but refrain from any form of regulation that limits their freedom to do whatever they want. The point is, they are all over the map. What gives them the appearance of cohesion is a claim of being Christian and their mutual dislike and distrust of the federal government in general and a shared desire to “stick it to liberals and bureaucrats, whoever they may be.” I suspect some of them are getting a kick out of what the Trump administration is doing. There is something emotionally satisfying about someone else suffer ingpain, watching the destruction of what they hold dear. It’s scapegoating revenge taken to the extreme. An apt metaphor might be a householder burning down his house as an act of revenge for having been required to build it to code.

If Christian nationalism is a unified movement in any sense, it is one centered on a dozen or so right-wing religious organizations in general agreement about social norms that should be imposed on the public by force of law, and who claim to be conservative, evangelical Christians. They are the descendants of the “moral majority” movement endorsed by the likes of Falwell, Robertson, and Dobson during the Reagan years. The current version may not be well coordinated for action, but individually they operate radio and television networks, internet sites, and traditional publications that reach a huge proportion of the public. Together they flood their audiences with well-rehearsed propaganda that names enemies, incites fear, and promises deliverance when the evil of secular government has been overthrown. It’s powerful stuff.

The danger, lies, and false promises of Christian nationalism are well known, documented, and cataloged in articles and news commentary. It’s only in recent months that truth appears to be making inroads among a public that has been drowning in distortions of truth for thirty years. Perhaps the complacent many are slowly awakening from their decades of moral slumber. May it be especially so among churches that have been content with prophetic pablum and uplifting entertainment as a substitute for teaching and worship, and have shied away from preaching hard truth for fear it might offend somebody.

How much support does Christian nationalism have among the general public? PRRI released an in-depth study that indicated about 10% of the public adhered to various forms of Christian nationalism and were mostly affiliated with conservative evangelical churches.¹ Another 20% were sympathetic to the idea. Two-thirds of the American public were skeptical and opposed. ² The 10 to 30% who adhered to or were sympathetic to Christian nationalism were mostly from states that vote consistently for right-wing candidates – probably not much of a surprise. The study is extensive, and if the subject is of interest to you, I encourage you to read it at https://www.prri.org/research/support-for-christian-nationalism-in-all-50-states/  

What remains to be said is that Christianity, as bequeathed to us by Jesus Christ through Holy Scripture, tradition, and reason, is antithetical to whatever Christian nationalism claims to be. In other words, nothing in it can be said to follow in the way of Jesus and the cross, nor is it consistent with God’s words spoken through the prophets. Little is known about the 2/3 of the general public who disfavor Christian nationalism. Therefore, it is incumbent on the church to proclaim loudly and boldly the good news of God in Christ Jesus that points the way toward a more just and humane society. It would be a tragic mistake to allow Christian nationalists to define what Christianity is for people who otherwise have no source of truthful information.

Federal prosecutors would be filing multiple criminal indictments against Musk and his team at any other time in the last 125 years of our history. Former US attorney Joyce Vance has called Musk’s operation a coup and I think she is right. Heather Cox Richardson, writing in her February 5th column, outlined all the moves the Musk administration has made to take over the federal government through its computer systems and linking networks. The blatant illegality of it is obvious to everyone who pays attention. The problem is, so few of the American public are paying attention.

There will be no US attorney filing indictments against Musk because the Department of Justice has been taken over by loyalists who have pledged their allegiance to Trump and not to the Constitution. If any one of them should try, they would be immediately fired anyway. Some part of the United States Senate is utterly complicit with the Trump-Musk coup. Republicans who are not complicit are complacent. They are sitting around, mumbling something incoherent, and appear to be hoping that somehow everything will work out if they are just quiet and do nothing. Democrats in the minority are speaking out here and there, but on the whole, have not united with one firm, strong voice of opposition.

Even if indictments were filed against Musk and other administration criminals, it would be to little avail since Trump, who is immune from prosecution for anything he does as president, could pardon them all. It is a perfect setup for a takeover and we can thank the Supreme Court for making it possible.

I hope that the midterms will turn over the legislature in such a resounding way that there will be a veto-proof majority of representatives and senators willing to take action and see that it is enforced with impartiality. But two years is a long way off and we’re only a few weeks into an administration that has proven its ability to destroy American democracy quickly. In the meantime, we might hope for various state attorneys general to file criminal indictments under state law. I’m not sure how that can happen but suspect that much of what Musk and Trump are doing is illegal under a variety of state laws as well as federal laws. It would take courage. Trump would immediately cut off all federal support for any state that dared to oppose him. It would be a high cost and one very much worth paying.

It was only a few months ago when attendees at Trump rallies were whipped into a frenzy over his accusations that the federal government had been weaponized against him. Everyone agreed that weaponizing the federal government against a political opponent would be wrong. Trump did not bother telling the crowds that he was being investigated for criminal behavior for which there was abundant evidence. Moreover, he had been convicted in criminal court and found functionally guilty of rape in civil court. That is not weaponization. It is the proper working of the justice system. Now those same rally attendees are getting a taste of what political weaponization really looks like and what it can do to them and their families.

I suspect Trump voters will not discover the danger they have put themselves into until it happens. In the meantime, they are likely to be living in bubbles and pretending that none of this is actually happening. It reminds me of characters featured in Herman Wouk’s book, “The Winds of War,” in which otherwise good and gentle people refused to believe that the evil confronting them was real. They were sure it was a passing thing. They would be safe. They were not.

As for those who assert that Trump was sent by God to do God’s will, I have it on good authority that God had nothing to do with Trump or what he is doing, and that you have been terribly misled and false in your prophecies. More shame on you for claiming otherwise. The proper role for Christians during these difficult days is to be as resistant and noncompliant as possible to every move of the current administration that violates godly justice. We must, in every case and despite any provocation, be nonviolent. When early Christians proclaimed that Jesus is Lord, they were telling Caesar that Caesar was not Lord. It cost some of them their lives and others much oppression. Today, when we proclaim that Jesus is Lord, we are proclaiming that Trump is not Lord. For any one of us to say that and live into it will make very little difference. If everyone says it and lives into it, it will make all the difference in the world.

What should be the voice of religion in the public debate, and its role in the public square?

One camp, deeply suspicious of religion, believes it should be separated from the state by an impregnable wall. Let religious people do what they do away from the public eye and keep them out of the political arena. It’s a camp of self-described atheists and people who believe religion is an entirely private matter, not to be discussed in public.

Another camp is intent on making the United States a Christian nation in which a particular kind of generic, conservative Protestantism, and the social norms it holds, would be endorsed by law and taught in public schools. There should be no separation between their church and state. Theirs should be the most prominent place in the public square, and they should have the loudest voice.

The media, as usual, is captivated by the two extremes and wants to force everyone into one camp or the other, but American attitudes resist being categorized as one or the other.

An October 2022 Pew research report was summarized in the following chart.

  Opens in a new window  http://www.researchgate.net

October 2022 Pew research report chart

Where does that leave us? I think we first have to state without equivocation that the role of the church, as the body of Christ, in the public square cannot be driven by opinion polls or the particular political desires of this or that party. It must be inspired and led by scripture, tradition that has stood the test of time, and fact-based reason. Our Lord instructed people, not states; God saves and guides peoples, not countries. Nevertheless, God’s people are commanded to live as best they can into the ways of godly justice, loving God, neighbor, and self. It means that Christians cannot help but have a voice in the public square.

The public square is the arena in which people work out the norms and conditions by which they agree to live together, and that’s politics. It goes far beyond candidates, elections, and the legislative process. They are subsets of the much bigger question: what sort of people do we want to be in the collective life we have? It’s a remarkable question because so few people at any time in history have had the freedom to ask the question and collectively decide the answer. Most people in most places live under conditions imposed on them by a few others who are powerful enough, violent enough, and rich enough to do it.

The church needs to be visible and audible in the public square no matter what form of government its people live under, but here in the United States, it has both a right and a responsibility to be visible and audible on issues that involve oppression, suppression, equality, and godly justice—held at arm’s length from social norms and cultural biases. In other words, it must have something to say about public policy. Whatever it says must be consistent with what Jesus taught and commanded, seconded by the prophets and epistles. The visibility and audibility of the church have a certain triune face to it. One is the church as an institution; the second is the church as preacher, priest, and pastor. Third is the church as each Christian behaving and speaking in ways that illuminate the kingdom of God that is near at hand. The church is a public expression of a public faith in the public arena. It is not a private affair. It must seek to influence public attitudes, behaviors, and policies in godly directions, but it can never be the agent of secular law, nor may it do anything to impose its beliefs on others.

What of other religions and their voices? They, too, have wisdom to share and something to teach us. In American democracy, they should feel safe and comfortable taking their places in the public square, where they can be seen and heard. Nothing they offer can diminish our Christian faith. To the contrary, what they offer may strengthen it while contributing to the good of secular society as a whole.

Author’s note: Blind Guy typing does not know why the chart in his draft failed to get reproduced in the published text