Guest Reflections On The Week's Events: "A Shameful Chapter In The History Of White American Christianity"

Benjamin on his front porch at the Savage
Mountain Farm.

This is a Facebook post by Benjamin Jay Yoder of Meyersdale, Pennsylvania, that I use with his kind permission. He and his wife Hana are parents of Rosie (4) and Henry (2). They attend the Springs Mennonite Church and operate Savage Mountain Farm where they sell produce and pasture raised meat.

I'm awake here after a very disturbing dream in which I was at JFK's funeral. I don't post much these days but here are some thoughts.

As usual, my thoughts and heavy heart turn to my local community, about which I feel a special disappointment tonight. I know you weren't there and you would say that you don't condone what happened yesterday, and I believe you. What weighs on my heart, however, is what feels to me like the complete revocation of any claim white American Christians have to being a witness of the Peaceable Kingdom. 

This is a shameful chapter in the history of white American Christianity. You found yourselves on the side of nihilism, idolatry, hero-worship, and groupthink. Sadly, many of you have very real, very deep relationships with Christ and I am the better for knowing you--but this has been a blindspot for you, and the people you are supposed to be a Light to are not impressed. 

Unfortunately, many of these people will never get close enough to you to see, because of this blindspot of yours, the powerful Light that I know you have. Rather than being an irresistible Light to the world, your political idolatry has become an abrasive deterrent for anyone who seeks anything deeper in this world. Donald Trump became an idol, whether folks will recognize that or not. People put their faith in Trump and not in the long view parable of the mustard seed. (Matthew 13:31-32)

Christians must always take the long view. For us, the means never justify the ends. We must operate as if the means ARE the ends. Achieving a future where we have a "robust economy" or "fewer abortions" is a pitifully anemic picture of the Kingdom we are striving for--and achieving those thin, frail objectives by "telling it like it is", "not taking any crap," stoking division and bullying your way there is the way of the world, not the way of the Mustard Seed.

 

I know I have plenty of beams in my own eye, but give me some grace as you consider the speck in yours. I look forward to the day when my local Christian friends and family can shed this new phenomenon of aligning themselves more strongly with a political party than with their faith, especially in this community that has been heavily influenced by Anabaptist thought, which historically has cast a suspicious eye towards putting faith in politics.

What happened??? I see old school Mennonites loving on Trump. And if you're wondering whether I feel the same way about the other side, I do. I feel the progressive white churches and the African-American church put way too much faith in the Democratic Party as well. But this post isn't about that--it's about the reckoning the Christian Right needs to have with this particularly ugly chapter. 

Do you remember when Focus on the Family's primary mission was combatting American consumerism, commercialism and materialism? Do you remember when any Christian business was heretical if they opened for business on Sunday? I know I'm remembering the past a little too nostalgically, but it seems that the Market Force has fully captured the Christian's interest--to the point that they're willing to follow a man like Trump in order to protect it. 

Almost invariably, when Im discussing Trump with local folks who claim to be Christian, and I'm sharing my reservations about his attitude, behaviors and general demeanor, they ultimately fall back on "jobs and economy".

Think about that. Is that of number one importance to Christians? 

Christians must express their resistance by leaning radically on the side of love, inclusiveness, patience, temperance, a willingness to defer, a willingness to sacrifice, a willingness to be persecuted in the short term for the long term work of the Spirit. A Christian's solutions to the world's problems must be so radical that there is no way anyone in the Capitol building could implement them. 

Christians do not loudly complain about their treatment, fight like dogs for this or that policy to be implemented, use force to enter a building, victimize themselves, fight to "take back" some ideal or principle, much less political power. In fact, if government officials compel them to carry their suitcase one mile, they subvert them not by refusing to do it, or fighting them, or working to change the rules, but by blindsiding them by offering to take it two miles.

Please remember this going forward, friends. American political institutions are not, have never been, and never will be the method by which we achieve the full blossoming of the mustard seed.

So while I know very few people from this community who would have participated in yesterday's events, I can't help but see the ways in which this has all been propped up and brought to this point by Trumps evangelical support.

Just think about it. Pray about it. I'll keep doing the same.