Congressman Elijah Cummings (RIP) took congressional oversight seriously. Overseeing the Department of Homeland Security, he is like a mother bear protecting her cubs. His judgment rises from compassion. Addressing convicted felon Michael Cohen, he speaks like a grandfather to a grandson.
Rep. Elijah Cummings (RIP), former Chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee
We have met the enemy
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa broke through the wall of apartheid. Can a process of honest confession (truth-telling), and forgiveness reconcile us in America?
In the real world, I have often confused good and evil. I come up short until I remember that I live in Pogo’s world. “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Like the biblical prophets, Elijah Cummings confronted the worst in us and encouraged the best in us. “We can do better,” he says. I wonder if we can. “We’re better than this.” I wonder whether we are.
STOP! Listen up!
“If you bite and devour one another,” wrote the Apostle Paul to a church whose people were biting and devouring each other, “watch out that you are not consumed by each other.” (Epistle to the Galatians 5:15). The warning is more than a suggestion. In the Greek text, “WATCH OUT!” is to morality and ethics what “Halt!” is to soldiers:“STOP! LISTEN UP!”
Groaning too deep for words
What makes us human is not power or the capacity to create chaos and division. Or to make noise. Or to take center stage. Noisy gongs and clanging cymbals distract us from hearing the groaning that rumbles deep within every human heart. These groans are the labor pains by which a better Michael Cohen, a better Donald Trump, a better America, a better world, and a better us are born.
Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf & Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN, July 16, 2025.
The date June 14 had multiple layers of meaning for my family this year. June 14 (Flag Day) was my mother’s birthday. Muriel Eva Titus Stewart would have been 110 this year. It was Donald J. Trump’s birthday; it was the day of the military parade celebrating the President’s birthday and the 250th Anniversary of the United States Army.
It was the day a gunman killed Minnesota Speaker of the House emerita Melissa Hortman (DFL-Brooklyn Park), her husband, Mark, in their own home, and critically wounded Sen. John Hoffman (DFL-Champlin) and his wife, Yvette, in their home.
A Brooklyn Park Police advisory to secure our property and stay put during the search for the suspect.
Later that day, downtown Minneapolis Interfaith Clergy representing Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Unitarian-Universalist congregations published the following statement on hate and violence.
Downtown Interfaith Clergy Statement, Jun 14, 2025
We are a multi-faith coalition of clergy representing more than 35,000 Minnesotans from congregations across the city of Minneapolis.
Many of us have had the honor of offering prayers in the chambers of the Minnesota House of Representatives and the Minnesota Senate. As clergy, we pray for unity, peace, and guidance for our elected officials—public servants working toward the well-being of all Minnesotans.
It is unimaginable that Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and Senator John Hoffman, his wife Yvette, and their daughter were targeted in an act of extreme political violence. We mourn alongside the family of Speaker Emerita Hortman and her husband in their time of inconceivable grief, and we send our prayers for a complete healing of body and spirit to Senator Hoffman, Yvette, and their daughter.
In these deeply troubling times, we stand united against the rising culture of hatred and fear that has been allowed to take root in our communities. Violent words lead to violent actions, and we must not let depravity become the new normal in our world. Together, we will work to counter it wherever we see it.This is a time of great divisiveness in our country. As people of faith, we are called, as the prophet Jeremiah teaches us, to seek “peace in the city, and in the places where we dwell.” (Jeremiah, 29:7) As interfaith religious leaders, we have worked to maintain connections across faiths through thoughtful and respectful dialogue, even when we disagree. Such conversations between people of faith offer a powerful alternative to division and hostility.
Interfaith relationships have brought us closer to our own faith and convictions. This work has opened the door to deeper engagement with our holy texts, our sacred communities, and our relationships with God. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But it does not bend on its own. We must bend it—with courage, conviction, compassion, and action.
God help us to live our lives with moral courage, to strengthen our communities, and to stand together for justice.
Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman, on behalf of the Downtown Interfaith Clergy
Rev. Jeffrey Japinga, Westminster Presbyterian Church; Rev. Dan Adolphson, First Christian Church; Rev. Jullan Stoneberg, First Unitarian Society; Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay, Hennepin Ave United Methodist Church; Pastor Elijah McDavid III, Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church; Rev. Timothy M. Kingsley, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral; Rev. Jen Crow, First Universalist Church; Rev. Peter Nycklemoe, Central Lutheran Church; Makram El-Amin, executive director, Al-Maa’uun; Father Daniel Griffith, Basilica of St. Mary;Father Kevin Kenney, St. Olaf Catholic Church.
Downtown interfaith Clergy statement, Minneapolis, MN, June 14, 2025
Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, host of Views from the Edge, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN, June 30, 2025.
Before Mitchell Dahood’s Anchor Bible Commentary on the Psalms (Psalms II) caught my attention, I had read Psalm 94 as addressing ‘the God of vengeance’. I don’t like vengeance, retaliation, or retribution. I see their results every day in others and in myself. “I am your retribution,” says Donald Trump on the campaign trail. The way of Jesus counters vengeance with mercy, retaliation with forgiveness, retribution with the sweet taste of kindness.
The God of vindication, Yahweh, The God of vindication, shine forth.
It was the God of vengeance whose wrath terrified Augustinian monk Martin Luther until Paul’s Epistle to the Romans relieved his distress. “God of vengeance” is mistaken; God was sovereign, yet His heart was for us; not against us. We were no less sinful than Luther had said, but Divine love surpasses our sin. One is ‘justified’ by divine grace through faith.
Father Dahood, Professor of Language and Literature at the Pontifical Institute in Rome, translates the Hebrew word which most translations render as ‘vengeance’ altogether differently. Psalm 94 addresses” the God of vindication.”
I confess that I sometimes hope for vengeance. “’Vengeance is mine; I will repay,’ says the Lord.” So where is it? Is it hiding? If so, why? Is it a projection? Painting God in our image? A Benedictine spiritual guide once replied to my statement, “I don’t believe in Hell” with “Well, we Benedictines say that Hell is real… but there’s probably nobody in it.” The monk was preserving God’s sovereignty as Judge, while maintaining God’s essence as Love.
Whether it’s God of vengeance or vindication, I feel the psalmist’s cry for God to show up, shine forth, come out of hiding. Show Yourself. Vindicate Yourself!
Dahood’s translation is also strange for spelling out the Hebrew Name for God. The Hebrew name was originally four consonants without verbs: YHWH, the inscrutable Name given to Moses out of the burning bush on Mount Horeb. “I Am,” “I Am Who I Am” or “I will be Who I will be.” The Name too holy to speak is above every name – the Breath that breathes in me, in us, in all life. Who , then, am I––little I— to come before You. Who am I to shrink You to a name, you who are the Mystery beyond and within the chaos, neither friend nor foe, “Immortal, Invisible, God only wise, in light inaccessible hid from our eyes.”
Rise, judge of the world, give the presumptuous their deserts
I want the world to be judged by an angry God, a vengeful God, but that God is AWOL –– either absent or indifferent to the carnage inflicted on the people of Gaza and Ukraine, indifferent to the wounded, dead and dying, the maimed and the starving, the blank eyes of babies and children dying of malnutrition.
Here in the USA, disinformation replaces reality. Presumption is everywhere without consequence. It sits behind desks in Moscow and in Washington, D.C. God’s name is spoken, but it is a god of vengeance that is invoked. Presumption waves a chain saw, smashes the good, destroys the boundaries that keep life human and humane.
How much longer shall the wicked, O Yahweh, How much longer will the wicked exult?
I watch the still-to-be sentenced convicted felon entertain his followers, alone on stage at a campaign rally, moving awkwardly, like a teenager who never learned to dance, swaying to the music of YMCA. I see an arena full of adoring fans who have no problem watching the 35-minute visible display of self-absorption.
How long will they pour forth defiant words, shall all the evildoers flaunt themselves?
I watch the richest man in the world jump up and down on stage like a clueless clown, brandishing a chain-saw to rescue prisoners held captive by the forest whose shade and shelter keep them free and sane. I ask what is wrong with us. What has become of us?
Your people, Yahweh, they crushed, and your patrimony they afflicted. Widow and stranger they killed, the orphan they murdered, Thinking “Yah does not see, Jacob’ God takes no notice.”
There is no Higher Power to judge our cruelty, no Holy One to hear their speeches or rebuke their misuse of authority. Though God is dead to them, ‘God-talk’ remains useful for their purposes. “God saved me,” says the POTUS after surviving two assassination attempts. “I felt then, and I believe even more so now, that my life was saved by God to make America great again.”
Learn some sagacity, you dolts, fools, when will you understand? Yahweh knows how vapid are men’s thoughts.
Our thinking is askew and dangerous. Our thoughts are vapid, a narcissistic revolt against our finitude, presuming dominance over the web of nature, indifferent or willfully blind to the harm our presumption has wrought: the increasing frequency of 100-year storms, winds, and fire that leave wide swaths of Hawaii, Los Angeles, and Ashville in embers and ashes; the rising sea levels, floods, and tsunamis which the Māori and other aboriginal peoples see as signs that the gods were angry — a clear message to run to higher ground; the warning of climatologists that we are at the point of climate departure when there is no way back.
William Blake painting of “Cain fleeing from the wrath of God “as Adam and Eve look on in horror following the fratricide.
I think of ‘Hevel’ — The Hebrew name translated into English as Abel, the slain brother in the Genesis story of Cain (Kay-in) and Abel (Hevel) — and wonder what the story-teller is telling us by naming the murdered brother Hevel (a mere short breath) and by leaving us with the image of Hevel’s blood crying from the ground. I hear Hevel’s voice screaming from the ground in Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan, Sandy Hill, Uvalde, Parkland, Ferguson, Minneapolis. How ‘vapid’ are my thoughts. I am a puff of air, nothing less and nothing more than a vapor that appears in the morning and by evening vanishes. “What is your life?” asks the Epistle of James. “For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.”
How have we mortals become such dolts that we would regard our species as inextinguishable? How does a Puff like me become wise? How does a descendant of Cain atone for spilling Hevel’s blood on the ground? How will I, a puff of air, live less pretentiously, more humbly before the Breath of Life itself, YHWH, God only wise, hid from my eyes?
I think of Elie Wiesel’s story of Rebbe Baruch and his grandson Yahiel. Wiesel tells the story in Four Hasidic Masters and Their Struggles with Melancholy. When Yahiel walks into his grandfather’s study in tears, Rebbe Baruch greets him with great tenderness. “Why are you crying, Yahiel?” His answer opens the door for Baruch to teach Yahiel about his relationship to God, and the character of God. Yahiel and his friend had been playing Hide-‘n-Seek, but the game ended before they had finished. Yahiel had hid so well that his friend gave up looking for him. He ran home in tears
“That’s not fair,” says Yahiel to his grandfather.
“God is hiding, too, Yahiel,” says the Rebbe. “God is crying because we have stopped searching.”
YHWH is hiding. God, too, is crying.
Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, host of Views from the Edge, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN, April 29, 2025
I’ve never been much into hell. I mean, I don’t believe in Hell, not that I’ve never been there, mostly of my own making. Though I think of Hell as a symbol of alienation and estrangement, it feels more real every day in America. The search for faith and hope that Love has the final word led back to this sermon from a decade ago. I am less the preacher than a listener now, in need of reassurance that cruelty and criminal insanity will not prevail.
Christus Victor: the Harrowing of Hell
Thanks for coming by Views from the Edge. Grace and peace,
Gordon
Gordon C. Stewart, PC(USA) minister (HR), public theologian and social critic; host of Views from the Edge: To See More Clearly; author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf and Stock), 49 brief meditations on faith and the news; Brooklyn Park, MN, January 25, 2025.
Within hours of pledging allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, the newly sworn-in 47th President of the United States of America broke his oath. Exercising his power to pardon, he paid tribute to the Oath-Keepers, Proud Boys, and others who raided the U.S. Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power January 6, 2021.
Taking the Oath with One Hand
Taking the oath with one hand.
Does Nothing Mean Anything Anymore?
By pardoning seditionists who had pled guilty, and had been sentenced for their crimes, President Donald Trump wiped clean his own crime of sedition. Whether he did not understand the oath he had taken (again), or was lying when he raised his right hand and kept his left hand at his side without touching the Bibles the First Lady was holding, or was disingenuous when said “So help me God,” or was not quite sane, as in criminally insane – “not guilty by reason of insanity” – is an urgent matter for discussion before nothing means anything anymore, and the democratic Constitutional republic crumbles into the madhouse.
Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, Presbyterian Pastor, host of Views from the Edge, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Part, MN, January 23, 2025.
January 6 is the Day of the Epiphany on the Christian calendar. It strikes me again this year, as it did January 6, 2021, as a two-fold manifestation. It celebrates the manifestation of Light and opens our eyes to the darkness. We cannot celebrate light without facing the darkness in Herod, who invites the foreign sages (Magi) to report back to him when they have found the new-born king, “so that I too might worship him.” Herod’s stated intent is a fraud. He worships nothing higher than himself. He says nothing to the Magi about the slaughter of innocents.
Epiphany opens our eyes to the Light of truth and goodness, on the one hand, and the darkness of deceit and malice, on the other: the contrasts of light and darkness, hope and despair, fear and love, goodness and evil.
Jimmy Carter as a manifestation of goodness
President Jimmy Carter (1924-2024), RIP
As President Jimmy Carter lies in state in the nation’s capitol, and President-elect Donald Trump chooses a group of billionaires to join his cabinet, is it too much to ask for a pause to ponder what has happened to us, who we are, and what we aspire to become?
Whatever our differences, I have heard no one question Jimmy Carter’s character or motives. I have yet to hear criticism of Jimmy Carter as ruthless or vindictive, or the charges that his efforts for peace arose from self-serving motives, or that his policies on climate change responsibility were rooted in vested interest or ill intent.
The solar panels on the White House are long gone, but the prophetic light of the good man who put them there will not be forgotten. What happened in the nation’s Capitol on Epiphany 2021 and in the years that followed expose a darkness no eye can see, no court indict, no jury acquit or convict.
Of Treason and Traitors:the Supreme Judge of the People
Nothing in history is sealed in a vacuum. What seems unrepeatable gets repeated. The names are different, the places are different, but they are essentially the same. The past is never dead. Those who ignore it are doomed to repeat it.
“The Night of the Long Knives” is one such moment. In June, 1934, six months after Hitler took the oath of office required to become Chancellor, an irreconcilable conflict arose between the two paramilitary forces that had brought Hitler to power. On “the Night of the Long Knives” Hitler settled the dispute. The SS carried out Hitler’s covert plan to seek and execute members of the of the SA (the “Brownshirts”). As news of the covert operation began to leak, Reich “Minister Without Portfolio” Joseph Göring ordered police stations to burn “all documents concerning the action of the past two days.”
Newspapers were told not to publish the names of the dead. In a radio address to the German people, Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Hermann Goebbels went to the airwaves to inform the nation that Hitler had prevented traitors from creating social chaos and overthrowing the government. Eleven days later (July 13, 1934) Hitler’s address to the Reichstag (the German equivalent of Congress) filled the airwaves of an anxious nation by conflating the nation with himself. The Strong Man who made Germany great again proclaimed himself “the Supreme Judge of the German people” and called those who opposed him “traitors”.
Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, social commentator, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN. January 6, 2024.
Thanks to Carl Krieg for permission to republish “The Rule of Law, No More” from Progressive Christianity. Information about Carl follows the commentary.
The Rule of Law, No More
As the American public reels in the face of the many trials of Donald Trump, delayed again and again by rules only a lawyer could ever know, we are consoled again and again by the analysts who assure us that this only proves that we are a nation wherein the rule of law is supreme and applied equally to all. Baffled though we may be, we Americans want to believe that in drafting the Constitution, the “Founding Fathers” exhibited unparalleled wisdom in creating the bedrock of our society, our law and our democracy. The problem they could not anticipate, and therefore could not adequately prevent, was the possibility that a definitive proportion of that society would ever reject the freedom they were offered and instead choose a dictator. The bedrock of our society, however, is not the Constitution itself, but the public consensus that grants validity to it. Without the mutual agreement that we all accept the rule of law with the Constitution as the foundation, – without that consensus, democracy becomes untenable. And we have lost that consensus.
The Supreme Court interprets the Constitution as it chooses, searching for ways to make the Constitution say what the Court wants it to say. The Republican Party refuses to guarantee that it will accept and support results of future elections. And the Leader of this Party mocks courts every chance he gets, encouraging his disciples to chaos, disruption, and violence. Meanwhile, dictators around the world, fearful that successful democracy elsewhere might loosen their own grip on power, also work to destroy our consensus, covertly undermining the helpful discussion and dissent that characterizes democracy and replacing it with diatribe and demonization. Achieving consensus in a nation of immigrants, such as the US, was never an easy proposition. But maintaining consensus when one of the two major parties refuses to abide by majority decision, is impossible.
That is the situation we now face. Trump and the Republicans will of course accept the results of an election “if it is fair”. But if they lose, by definition the election was not fair. And they will not accept it. As we gather steam toward November, Republicans, please think long and hard about your party’s refusal to abide by election results. We went that route once before and wound up shooting each other as the nation was thrown into civil war. And to all you evangelical Christians, without whom the Republican party could not exist, is this really what you believe God wants of you?
Thanks for coming by, Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, host of Views from the Edge; author of Be Still! Departures from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN, May 20, 2024.
Bumpa: Who are you talking about, Elijah? You sound worried.
Don’t ya know, Bumpa? Don’t you watch Rachel? They’re coming after us!
You mean Rachel Maddow?
Yeah, I’m sorry! Mommy said I should be clearer with you and Gramma ‘cause you can’t hear so good without your hearing aids. I apologize, Bumpa.
No offense taken, Elijah.
I’m not talking about football, don’t ya know?
I’m sorry. I wasn’t talking about football. I meant, “I won’t hold that against you.”
Hold what?! I didn’t do anything to get penalized.
Like I just said, I won’t hold it against you. I would never penalize you!
Yeah, the Vikings hold a lot! Their Offensive line is offensive. I’m not talk about the Vikings, don’t you know.
Well, the Vikings need help. Maybe next week they’ll hit the jackpot in the draft. It depends on what they do with Cousins.
I love Calvin and Isabelle. They’re fun, like Uncle Andrew! Don’t the Vikings like cousins?
No, no, no, Cousins is the name of the Vikings’ quarterback. He’s a free agent. He can sign with whatever team he likes best.
Is he going after them or are they coming after him?
Well, I’m sorry to say it doesn’t really matter. It’s all about money. Whoever has the most money gets Cousins. The teams that pay big bucks can afford the best defenses and offenses. Cousins might leave Minneapolis.
So Calvin and Isabelle are safe? They’re not coming after them?
Right. They’re safe. So are you. Who do you think’s coming for us?
The Publicans, don’t you know?! Rachel says so. They’re coming for us ‘cause we like Shifty Schiff, Crazy Nancy, and Crooked Joe.
I think you misunderstood. Rachel was talking about the Republicans. The Publicans are in the Bible. The Republicans control the House!
Not our house! Right, Bumpa? And not Uncle Andrew and Aunt Alice’s either. And Calvin and Isabelle are safe in their house, too. Right, Bumpa?
Right. Not to worry, Elijah. You tell cousin Calvin and Isabelle they’re pretty safe, too.
But what about what about Shifty?
I know you’re only in the first grade. Maybe Ms. Marple hasn’t yet taught you about how to talk about other people. We don’t call people names. It’s not right to call other people “RHINOS” or “Shifty” or “Crazy” or “Crooked.” We need to be more respectful.
Right! We’re not Publicans. We’re nice here n Minnesota, and, we’re Christians, too. Right, Bumpa?
Yes, Elijah. We try to be respectful. Often, people who do bad things can’t stop insulting other people confuse being prosecuted with being persecuted. Bumpa has known people like that. I was their pastor. They were in the Big House or in hospitals for the criminally insane.
Whoa! I’m tired, Bumpa. I’m only six! I’ve never heard of, what’d you call it?
Criminal insanity?
Yea, that.
I understand. We’re both tired. I’m late for my nap. We’ll discuss the Big House and the hospital for the criminally insane later, when we’re not so tired. But you won’t have to wait long, Elijah. It’ll be all over the news.
Bumpa and Elijah, Views from the Edge, Minnesota, USA, March 10, 2024
“God Made Trump” is a masterpiece of cunning. Borrowing creation images from the Book of Genesis 1-3 and the Good Shepherd of fPsalm 23, Ezekiel 34:2-34, John 10:1-2), the three-minute video posted on Donald Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, goes like this:
“And on June 14th, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, 'I need a caretaker,' so God gave us Trump," the narrator says in the same style that the Book of Genesis in the Bible is written, while a video of Earth from space flashes to a photo of a young Trump.
"God said, 'I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, fix this country, work all day, fight the Marxists, eat supper, then go to the Oval Office, and stay past midnight at a meeting of the state, so God made Trump," the narrator says.
Trump is shown interacting with world leaders, signing executive orders, posing for photos with his supporters, hugging the American flag, and walking onto Air Force One, with former First Lady Melania Trump as the narrator describes God's "need" for the former president.
"God said, 'I need somebody who will be strong and courageous. Who will not be afraid or terrified of the wolves when they attack," says the narrator, while the viewer sees a wolf baring its teeth and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), "a man who cares for the flock. A shepherd to mankind who won't ever leave or forsake them."
Personal Reflection: ‘God’ and ‘the gods’
The Reform tradition of Christianity in which I stand views the Bible as a pair of spectacles through which to see God, the world, and oneself more clearly. Looking more clearly at “God Made Trump,” you will see something missing — the letter ‘s’, as in, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” We live among the gods that become God for us. A fitting title would be “The gods Made Trump.”
James Tissot, “The Good Shepherd.”
Mr. Magoo
“God Made Trump” is a rip off that takes off our glasses and turns it viewers into Mr. Magoo. It takes advantage of impaired eyesight. It blurs the ability to differentiate between hype and reality, fraud and truth, pretence and piety, subterfuge and honesty. We are all easily confused. “A little learning,” wrote Alexander Pope, “is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.”
Impostors of God
A cursory reading of the biblical creation and Good Shepherd stories is a shallow draught. A deeper drink guides the reader into what Karl Barth called “the strange new world of the Bible,” in which we see more clearly. Though monotheists, atheists, and agnostics are of diverse opinions about the one God, they agree that there is not more than one, i.e., the gods do not exist. Those who claim the Bible as their source of truth and life should know better.
Constitutional lawyer, lay theologian William Stringfellow describes the gods as “imposters of God,” which the great theologian and philosopher of culture Paul Tillich saw as substitutes for the “God above god” (life’s Ultimate Concern) and the gods of real but penultimate concern among which all of us live in daily life, e.g. religion, work, money, family, status, sex, patriotism, which, although part of the fabric of human life, become substitutes for that which concerns us ultimately. Living anxiously among the gods leaves us restless – “Our hearts are restless,” said St. Augustine, “until they find their rest in Thee.”
Jacket of An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange LandPaul Johannes Tillich (1886-1965)
Serious study of the Bible leads a reader to notice something missing in “God Made Trump.” The gods of the First Commandment have been deleted – “I am the LORD your God. You shall have no other gods before Me. No longer are their other gods before God. Cut in half, the First Commandment is castrated, but, in reality, only the gods remain.
Seen through the eyes of the First Commandment, Stringfellow, and Tillich, the real question is not whether God made Trump; the question is two-fold: “Which gods made Trump?” and “Which gods are making us in their images?
The Incarnation of the gods
On June 14th, 1946, the gods look looked up and said, “Let us make a creature in our images who will incarnate all of us,” and, so they did. For six days the gods who aspired to be God laid aside their competitive urges to work together as a consortium. They would be godlier than “the God above god” (Paul Tillich), Maker of heaven and earth, whose fatal flaw was to grant the gods freedom to do their mischief.
So, the gods of Pride, Greed, Wrath, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, and Sloth laid aside their several powers for the sake of greater effectiveness. They put their heads together to craft an Immaculate Conception suited to their purposes.
Their creation would be the Incarnation of themselves and would embody all that the less-blessed creatures wanted for themselves: freedom from anxiety, absolute certainty, security, safety, and wealth. So, the gods found a virgin in Queens, and Mary Anne gave birth to her fourth-born child and named him Donald. The things the lesser creatures envied and desired for themselves – his unshakeable self-confidence, freedom to have any woman he wanted, his mastery of the arts of entertainment, prevarication, hypocrisy and greed, exemption from legal restraint and pangs of conscience, fearlessness in the valley of the shadow of death and prosecution, and palaces of silver and gold – would be theirs, just like him.
“God Made Trump” is an adaptation of “God Made a Farmer,” Paul Harvey’s speech to the 1978 Future Farmers of America convention that paid tribute to the American farmer’s dedication to caring for the land, plowing the fields, caring for animals. “God Made a Farmer” honored the farmer without idolizing him. It did not make wrongful use of the Name of God.
Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian and social critic, author of “Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness” (2017 Wipf and Stock), 49 short commentaries on faith and life. Writing from Brooklyn Park, MN, Feb. 7, 2024.
This 2020 commentary has stayed hidden in Views' draft file for reasons perhaps as obvious as the reasons for posting it now.
Every deed in the grand manner on this earth will in general be the fulfillment of a desire which had long since been present in millions of people, a longing silently harbored by many. Yes, it can come about that centuries wish and yearn for the solution of a certain question, because they are sighing beneath the intolerable burden of an existing condition and the fulfillment of this general longing does not materialize.
These words are not Donald Trump’s. “The intolerable burden that yearns for a solution” did not refer to the continuing dispossession of America’s First People, or the descendants of men, women children whose labor produced the wealth of their white kidnappers.
They are the words of Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, the book Ivana Trump said her husband kept in his bedroom.
Nations which no longer find any heroic solution for such distress can be designated as impotent, while we see the vitality of a people, and the predestination for life guaranteed by this vitality, most strikingly demonstrated when, for a people’s liberation from a great oppression, or for the elimination of a bitter distress, or for the satisfaction of its soul, restless because it has grown insecure – Fate some day bestows upon it the man endowed for this purpose, who finally brings the long yearned-for fulfillment.
Adolf Hitler, Chapter 8, The Strong Man Is Mightier Alone, Mein Kamp
A Man Endowed for this Purpose: To Save the Nation
The president is a moral predator who feeds on fear of “the other.” Predators show no respect or compassion. Not for the sick and dying during the new coronavirus pandemic. Not for African Americans disproportionately affected by COVID-19. Not for at-risk first responders: doctors, nurses, orderlies, and hospital custodians and kitchen staffs begging for more masks and ventilators. Not for journalists who bring facts to disinformation press conferences. They show no respect for anyone or anything and hold nothing as sacred. They pose with Bibles in front of churches, but never read them.
Is it unreasonable to suppose that a president at risk of losing his fight to keep his tax returns from public scrutiny, fearful of losing his bid for re-election in November, and facing multiple criminal charges after leaving office would use the playbooks his first ex-wife and ghost writer alleged to have been by his bedside?
Hermann Goebbels, Minister without Portfolio Joseph Göring, Minister of Public Enlightenment and PropagandaErnst Röhm, SA co-founder and Chief of Staff
The Supreme Judge of the ________People
As news of the covert operation began to leak, Reich “Minister Without Portfolio” Joseph Göring ordered police stations to burn “all documents concerning the action of the past two days.” Newspapers were told not to publish the names of the dead. Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goring took to the airwaves to announce to the nation that Hitler had prevented traitors from overthrowing the government and throwing the country into turmoil. Eleven days later (July 13, 1934) Hitler gave the nationally broadcast speech to the Reichstag (the German equivalent of the U.S. Congress) in which he conflated the nation and himself. The strong man who made Germany great again proclaimed himself “the Supreme Judge of the German people” and threatened opponents as traitors.
If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this. In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people. I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason, and I further gave the order to cauterise down to the raw flesh the ulcers of this poisoning of the wells in our domestic life. Let the nation know that its existence—which depends on its internal order and security—cannot be threatened with impunity by anyone! And let it be known for all time to come that if anyone raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.
Adolf Hitler speech to the Reichstag, July 13, 1934.
Concerned with potential objection from the Reichstag and the courts, Hitler acted quickly to push official approval by the Reichstag the expansion of his powers. The change was approved immediately and retroactively, serving as official justification for the massacre of the Night of the Long Knives. On July 3rd his administration’s cabinet approve a measure that declared, “The measures taken on June 30, July 1 and 2 to suppress treasonous assaults are legal as acts of self-defense by the State.”
The Blossoms of Disrespect
Had journalists asked former civil rights and peacemaking activist William Sloane Coffin what he would say about the self-proclaiming law-and-order U.S. president and his loyal partisans in Congress, I imagine he might repeat what he said years ago of public figures who insist their language bears no responsibility for hate and violence.
“Trent Lott, Gary Bauer, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell– all insist their words contribute nothing to an atmosphere that might legitimate anti-gay violence. Don’t they know that the seed of disrespect often blossoms into hatred?”
William Sloane Coffin Jr., Credo (WJK)
All who seek a respectful future do well to remember how quickly good gets twisted into evil, and how even a society’s best intentions for a just society can fall prey to the law of unintended consequences: the end of a Constitutional democratic republic by little men with little mustaches and deranged men with orange hair.
Views from the Edge 