Trumpworld has had a spasm—as expected—to a religious leader who had the nerve to call on the President to be a real religious person, not just someone who uses faith as a political crutch.
It started with the President himself, who has proclaimed that God saved him from an assassin’s bullet so he could become the nation’s leader. Washington, D.C. Episcopal Bishop Marianne Budde looked at the President in a national prayer service the day after his inauguration and told him, “You have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now.”
She really stirred the Trumpian bladder when she continued, “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country. We’re scared now. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes, and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurdwara, and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that 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.”
She also pleaded for him to be merciful to the LGBTQ+ community.
Trump can’t stand anyone who speaks truth to him, especially a woman. He was deeply offended: “She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart. She failed to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into our Country and killed people. Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the USA. Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job! She and her church owe the public an apology!”
Long on invective. Short on facts. Donald being the usual Donald. Another “nasty” woman had confronted him. And the several studies that show the crime rate among immigrants is well below the crime rate of native-born Americans are of no interest to him. But don’t expect him to respect any facts other than those he creates.
The cutaways during the service showed someone who probably preferred to be anywhere but there.
One of the offended parties is Congressman Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma. We’re going to challenge an opinion piece he wrote in the wake of the well-deserved pulpit remarks and we are going to take them apart piece by piece.
As a believer, I attended the service for the purpose of praying for our nation, President Trump, the president’s family, and the success of his administration.
(He obviously fails to understand that is exactly what most of us pray for these days, although our definition of “success” will differ from his. He wants success for Trump while others want success for our nation—the two not being alike.)
I purposely left the prayer service early after realizing how the pulpit was being used for left-wing activism and not for true worship unto God, to seek His will and wisdom. Mr. President, what accosted you at the prayer service was political–not biblical.
(Oh, really? This is in contrast to a President and his supporters who have used religion for his right wing political purposes, peddles grossly overpriced reprints of a 17th Century Bible and claims it is his favorite book but seldom darkens the door of a worship center and shows inclination to do unto others what he would want to be done unto him or—better—the reverse.
Congressman Brecheen likes to cite Bible verses to support his assertions. That’s one of the Bible’s problems; it can be cherry-picked to support any position.
We have or are thinking of a series of verses with which he and other Trumpians appear to be ignorant or choose to ignore, verses that Contributor Annette Griffin has written for Biblestudymaterials.com are a “series of blessings highlighting the qualities and attitudes valued in the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Matthew 5, 3-12:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
That seem to pretty well cover all of the people President Trump doesn’t like.
The congressman is correct. The Bishop made the mistake of building her remarks on the Sermon on the Mount when she should have fallen in line and accepted the Psalm of J6.)
We wonder if the scowling super-Christian President who shills for his personally-endorsed book where these simple statements are found can quote any of the Beatitudes. Wonder if he can even spell the word.
Brecheen goes on:
“When we tolerate lies, we are empowering a distortion of the truth. It is time for every believer to take a stand, get in the exit row, and walk out of services where the full counsel of biblical truth is being distorted.”
(This is an important observation oozing hypocrisy. If it were carried out elsewhere as the congressman suggests happened in this service, Mr. Trump would have been speaking to empty auditoriums throughout his campaign, to an empty Capitol Rotunda during his inauguration, and to an empty room at the luncheon afterward—not to mention the his speech on January 6, 2021 to his tourists/hostages.)
Why didn’t the other believers walk out of the “service” on January 6? Because they tolerated lies, distorted truth, and then they savaged the Capitol.
Brecheen might be excused for some of this because he was not among members of the House and Senate who fled for their lives while the tourists were paying a peaceful visit. He joined the House in 2023.
Many know of the faith of our Founders and the biblical influence on our nation.
(Such as the Pilgrims and the Puritans banishing Roger Williams and other Baptists from Massachusetts Bay because they weren’t Puritan enough to present Rhode Island, which he founded as a place where “liberty of conscience” was allowed. Or maybe we should emulate those Christians who murdered women branded as witches in Salem, etc. And who can overlook the deeply Christian beliefs claimed by the Ku Klux Klan decades later?)
Brecheen:
Even as recently as the 1950s, President Eisenhower and Congress declared “In God we Trust” our nation’s motto and added “one Nation under God” to our Pledge of Allegiance.
(We wonder if we aren’t dealing with a little toleration of lies and distortion of truth here., too. The Pledge was originated by former Union Army officer George Thatcher Balch in 1885 not as a religious statement but as a way to teach patriotism to school children. Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister—another trouble-making Baptists such as Roger Williams—is credited with modifying the pledge in 1892 to read most of the way we recite it today to promote the sale of American Flags. But here is something important to remember about Bellamy—he left out any religious references ON PURPOSE because he was an absolutist on the issue of church and state.
Bellamy was a self-proclaimed Christian Socialist, an interesting characterization in today’s political world. But he might fit right in with The Gospel of Donald because he wrote, “Where all classes of society merge insensibly into one another every alien immigrant of inferior race may bring corruption to the stock. There are races more or less akin to our own whom we may admit freely and get nothing but advantage by the infusion of their wholesome blood. But there are other races, which we cannot assimilate without lowering our racial standard, which should be as sacred to us as the sanctity of our homes.”
Trump could love this guy after all.
Religion was not added as the result of any 20th Century Great Revival. It was added to make sure Americans knew we are superior to the “Godless Communists” of that time.
Brecheen seems to think the words “Under God” were added during the Eisenhower administration because Eisenhower had two legs:
A man of faith, President Eisenhower’s heart was set on this path from a young age when prayer saved him from death after his leg became infected and required amputation. The Lord answered these prayers, saving young Eisenhower’s leg, and thus, our future president was set on the trajectory of attending West Point and becoming the Supreme Allied Commander during World War II. This would have never happened had President Eisenhower’s leg been amputated.
What that has to do with the creation of the phrase in the pledge, we don’t know. History tells us Eisenhower had nothing to do with creating the phrase nor was he the biggest advocate for it. He got behind the political movement to include it and signed the bill creating it.
Brecheen asserts that Eisenhower approved the change after finding the greatness of America in church: “Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great!”
That latter reflection seems to argue against the point Brecheen is trying to make. It’s pretty hard to see the harsh attitude toward immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community—or even to the Episcopal Bishop of Washington —as being “good.” And a strong argument can be made that making American great again is the opposite of the message Trump uses to gin up his base.
Brecheen continues;
Unfortunately, a day after President Trump promised that his administration “will not forget our God,” Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde distorted the truth and used her position at the National Prayer Service to seek political fame and selfish gain. By ignoring biblical teachings that God made humans distinctly male and female (Genesis 1:27), that we must go to someone in private before accosting them in public (Matthew 18:15-17), and that we must obey the law of the land (Romans 13:1-3), Budde ignored biblical truth.
(The truth was sitting right in front of her. I read the lessons of the New Testament to be positive ones. Is it not true, or more true than Brecheen wants us to accept, that Jesus’s message was one of inclusion rather than exclusion? Is not the story of the Good Samaritan a core lesson? Is not the story of Cornelius, a centurion becoming a Chrisian an extreme example of loving one’s enemy?)
In her sermon, Budde cited a Bible verse commonly used in left-wing arguments, that “We are to be merciful to the stranger.” To understand this verse, we must understand the word stranger in its full meaning, as taken from the original Hebrew language.
This particular Hebrew word is specifically used to describe a foreigner who fully submits to the customs and culture of their country of refuge. Illegal aliens are not submitting to the laws of the land–they’re defying them.
(There he goes again. He chooses one word and used it to distort the truth of the Sermon on the Mount. And the facts show a far different view of whether illegal aliens submit to the laws of the land. If Native-born Americans committed crimes at a rate as low as those committed illegals, would country would be much better off.)
Ecclesiastes 8:11 warns us against ignoring laws being broken, saying, in effect: When the law is not enforced, the people’s hearts are enticed to do more evil. Let’s not forget the murders, rapes, and gang violence that the lawless southern border has perpetuated.
(Maybe Brecheen needs to get his nose out of the collected, selected verses from Trump’s favorite book and read numerous reports by federal agencies and private researchers indicating that comment simply is not true. And we won’t comment on the pardons of 1500 tourists when it comes to someone “ignoring laws being broken.”)
The left frequently ignores such teachings, taking Scripture out of context and using half-truths to justify their politics. Do not fall into this trap! A half-truth is always a full lie.
(Is he preaching to himself or to Trump here? To us, the truth in his statement applies more to the Trumpian empire than it does to those hated people on “the left.” Using half-truths to justify politics is something St.Donald uses far more effectively than St. Paull ever did.)
The pulpit did not flame with righteousness during Budde’s sermon but instead promoted principles that inherently contradict biblical truth.
(If the pulpit did not flame with righteousness, why do the President and his supporters feel burned?)
If we are to return our country to one nation under God, we must speak the truth in love. Love without truth is not real love.
(Now, THAT is profound. But if we turn to Trump’s favorite book, we find a more expansive definition of love:)
“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
“Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
That’s from Paul’s first letter to the Christians at Corinth. Of course, the President says he doesn’t want to get into his favorite Bible verses because “its very personal.” He has modestly conceded that Jesus Christ is more famous than he is worldwide. He once did reveal that his favorite verse. It is the Old Testament’s “an eye for an eye.”
Brecheen:
Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
(Who can argue with that? The problem is that the “love” chapter of the Bible is in First Corinthians and the “liberty” verse is from “Two Corinthians,” as the Bible scholar/President puts it. The question for the writer of this sentence is whether the spirit of the Lord resided in the pew with the stony-faced attendee (we shall not call him a worshiper) or whether it resided that day in the pulpit.
When it comes to quoting scripture, perhaps Trumpworld and its leader should ponder this passage from the 11th chapter of Luke’s Gospel:
“Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples: ‘The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So practice and observe everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, burdensome loads and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.
‘All their deeds are done for men to see. They broaden their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels. They love the places of honor at banquets, the chief seats in the synagogues, the greetings in the marketplaces, and the title of ‘Rabbi’ by which they are addressed.
‘But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth your father, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.’”
Too bad Trumpworld lacks the compassion to recognize that we are all brothers (and sisters).
Trumpworld’s follow-the-leader response won’t change Bishop Budde’s mind or standing. She told the Associated Press, “I don’t consider him an enemy. I believe we can disagree respectfully and put our ideas out there and continue to stand for the convictions we’ve been given without resorting to violence of speech.”
THAT is the Christian.
Trump showed his sincerity as a Christian by skipping church, as usual, yesterday.
(The knee-jerk reaction of Trumpworld went far beyond thc Congressman’s reaction. I suggest you check out Bryan Kaylor’s column for A Public Witness: (7) After Viral Sermon, GOP Threatens Religious Liberty
Bryan is a minister following in the footsteps of earlier troublesome Baptists. He is the co-author with Beau Underwood, a Christian Church/Disciples of Christ minister, of Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism
(Editorial Cartoon is from the Tribune Content Agency)