Category Archives: Social Commentary

American ICE and a BURNING COAL from the Altar

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“Here am I,” says Isaiah, ”Send me,” in reply to the question of the Holy One,” “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?”––Young’s Literal Translation

Christian Nationalism is a Parasite

Propaganda is a parasite. It can’t live without a host. ‘Christian Nationalism’ sucks the blood out of sacred texts. Few biblical texts are as beloved as the calling of Isaiah. In the original Hebrew text, Isaiah speaks in the present tense: “In the year that king Uzziah died, I see the Lord, high and lifted up, and his train is filling the temple.” He sees the seraphs flying above the throne, singing “Holy, holy holy, [is] Jehovah of hosts, the fullness of all the earth [is] his glory.”

A Homeland Security promotional recently featured an ICE recruit attributing his sense of call to become an ICE agent to Isaiah in the temple, “Hear am I, Send me.” The Homeland Security promotional [since taken down from X] turns Isaiah’s call into a parasite that sucks the blood of compassion from its host. “We will cut you down,” the voice-over of a helicopter sighting two migrants moving through the night toward the U.S. southern border, displaces the “Holly, holy, holy.” The whole earth that is full of God’s glory is shrunk to the parcel of earth.

An Autobiographical Reflection

It was in college that the calling of Isaiah took hold of me. I don’t remember who put Frederick Buechner’s The Hungering Dark in my hands, but I’ve never forgotten the impact of Buechner’s reflection on the call of Isaiah (Isaiah 6:1-8). I was not in the Temple in Jerusalem; my dormitory room was not filling with smoke; I knew nothing of seraphim, let alone seen them flying overhead or heard them calling to each other their song of praise for God’s holiness. No seraph had touched my lips with a hot coal from the altar. Even so, I knew this story the way a child ‘knows’ a story before the codes of reason ridicule its sense of wonder. Like Isaiah in the year that King Uzziah died, the foundations of what I once thought to be solid were trembling. The world was a mess. So was I. I was a man of ‘unclean lips’ living among ‘a people’ of unclean lips.

The summer before reading The Hungering Dark, my foundations had been shaken by the daily trips on the Red Arrow bus and Philadelphia subway that took me back and forth between where I lived and the squalor of Opal Street in north Philadelphia. Two landmark institutions gave stability to north Philadelphia: the Pennsylvania State Penitentiary and Corinthian Avenue Chapel. The eight homeless men with whom I had spent the afternoons that summer had been guests of the penitentiary before they were released to the streets. Corinthian Avenue Chapel, the empty shell of a once thriving Presbyterian church, vacated by white flight, was three blocks north of the prison.

It was a game of dodgeball with the kids who lived in the tenements on Uber Street that introduced me to the men of Opal Street and set the course for the rest of the summer. There was no traffic on Opal Street. My focus shifted from working with kids to an altogether unexpected summer with “the Brothers of Opal Street.”

An errant throw sent the dodgeball through the circle of ‘winos’ (their designation, not mine) who gathered every afternoon, seated on wooden orange crates, in the middle of Opal Street . After apologizing for interfering, I continued walking to the far end of the block. Like the condemned tenements that lined the east side of Opal Street, the far end of the street was blocked by a boarded-up fence. The chalk outline of a body was still fresh on the pavement

When I returned with the ball, the men asked what I was doing there. When I spoke of games for the kids, one of them drew laughter when he asked, “Do you have any games for us?” “I do,” I said. “Any of you ever play quoits?“ “Quoits?” Again there was an uproar of laughter. “Well, how about horseshoes?” Corky had played horseshoes in the Army. The next day I set up the Quoit stakes on the street. Every afternoon, we played Quoits until the men could no longer stand.

On my last day with them, the men wanted to have “a little talk.” I had expected the sharing of good-byes. What happened was something else. In retrospect it was life-changing, A one-of-its-kind Isaiah in-the-Temple moment. No seraphim flew above us, singing “Holy, holy, holy.” But there was smoke, a red-hot coal striking my lips, and a realization that I was a man of unclean lips among ‘a people of unclean lips’.

“Why did you come here?” they asked. “Don’t come back here. ‘Your people’ own this place. Look around. You don’t see any white faces. Your people never show up around here, but they own this place. It’s too late to help us. But the kids? If you want to make a difference here, go back to ‘your people’ and change things there.”

I had come to Opal Street as a disciple of Jesus, wanting to be of service among the “less fortunate,” like the good Samaritan who crossed the road to show compassion to the man who’d been left half-dead in the ditch. It had seemed that simple at first. I had assumed the western Main-line suburbs and Opal Street were worlds apart. One was wealthy, the other was poor. One was white, the other was black.

Now, after a long, hot summer, the ‘winos’ and ‘junkies’ of Opal Street had shattered the myth of separate worlds. Power and powerlessness, parasites and hosts live in the same world. I returned to college, confused, at sea, questioning everything I had been taught, and threw myself into contemporary philosophy and political science in search of answers to questions that have lasted a lifetime.

Years later, Kai Erikson’s Wayward Puritans provided a sociological framework that deepened my understanding of why and how we human beings ‘other’ each other. Cultures need deviants, outsiders, stereotypes who threaten the majority’s view of itself. Witches became the scapegoats that served to define what the majority was not. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was Christian and moral; witches were neither. The witches of Salem, the banishment of Mr.s Anne Hutchinson and the execution of Mary Dyer, served to save the Bay Colony’s religious–racial consensus from fraying further.


A BURNING COAL melts ICE

The Department of Homeland Security likening the call of Isaiah to a call to join ICE is chilling. It’s bad theology, bad faith, and bad patriotism. But heat always melts ice. Isaiah’s calling is remarkable for its sense of holiness and wonder. The Homeland Security rendering of “Here am I, Send me” is a call to cruelty and unmatched power over the ‘other’. It confuses divine calling with a call to dominate. In the ICE propaganda, there is no sense of the young man feeling lost, no sense of woe, no awareness of unclean lips or of one’s own people as a people with unclean lips, no hot coal from the altar burns away the sin. ICE’s adaptation of Isaiah is a parasite. It replaces the burning coal with an ice cube. Where the seraphim sang of the whole earth filled with God’s glory, border patrol helicopters buzz overhead migrants seeking a better life with the message, “We will cut you down!”

Every person of honest faith and good will is being called in this moment of American history to answer “Here am I, Send me!” Isaiah’s call is not past tense. It is now.

Gordon C. Stewart, Presbyterian Church (USA) pastor and public theologian, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock), writing from Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, August 6, 2025.

American Rhinoceros

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The video of a rhinoceros killing a lion and throwing it into the air like trash called to mind Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. As I remembered it, Rhinoceros, like other works of The Theater of the Absurd, tore back the curtain of presumption that keeps us from seeing who we really are. If Rhinoceros was about anything else, it was about order and chaos, dominance and subservience, power and the wannabe herd that surrenders its power to the Rhinoceros.

A day in Brooklyn Park

My sense of the absurd grows every day. I see myself as E.E. Cummings’ “Little i” –– Who am I, “little i” among the herd of “little i’s” clamoring for dominance? I know so much less than I once knew. The sense of absurdity has shredded my confidence in the unseen hand of divine providence.

Kay and I live in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, where a police bulletin advised all residents to stay in our homes until a future advisory. Keep the doors locked while the police searched for a shooter at loose in our neighborhood. The man is armed and dangerous. Do not answer the door under any circumstances. The suspect may be dressed like a police officer. Do not answer the door for anyone until you receive a further advisory.

The next day we learned that a suspect had been arrested. He had shot and killed former Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and had critically wounded MN state Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette.

Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives


The Army of God and the ‘unhumans’

The shooter had abandoned his van to flee on foot. The van contained a hit list of 40+ public servants. Everyone on the list was prominent member of the Democratic-Farm-Labor Party (DFL). To some, it came as a shock that the suspect identified himself as a Christian. On most Sundays, he attended worship at an evangelical megachurch. Others were not surprised. They recalled Stephanie McCummen’s article, “The Army of God Comes Out of the Shadows” (The Atlantic, January 9, 2025). The far-right New Apostolic Reformation has quietly sweeps through charismatic-evangelical Churches with its message of Christian nationalism.

“Our study of history,” says a book endorsed by JD Vance, “has brought us to this conclusion: Democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the unhumans. It is time to stop playing by rules they [i.e.‘unhumans’] won’t [keep].”

Earlier in American public life, residents of Brooklyn Park did not imagine that hate, heartlessness, and cruelty would define their community. Nor would they have thought of a Christian drawing up a hit list, disguising himself as a police officer driving a squad car facsimile loaded with guns, rifles, and military-style weapons used for assassinations and executions of public servants. There was, as there always is among humans anger, frustration, scapegoating, and loathing of others, but the community, for the most part, observed its own cultural commandments of do’s and don’ts.

Living with the Absurd

The ethical norms required for a healthy society have been eroded so slowly that we wonder how we got to the America of 2025 so quickly. Like buildings of brick and mortar, nations, religions, and communities need maintenance. Without it, they crumble.

While a student at a small Christian college, the Theater of the Absurd suddenly came to make more sense than the “Life-of-Brian” view of divine providence in which God’s in his heaven and nothing can go wrong. Things were not right with world. Unless God is a sadist, the world made no sense. I was 19 years-old when Eugene Ionesco, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre pulled me, dragging and screaming, into the Theater of the Absurd. I had experienced the angst to which Camus’ The Plague, Sartre’s No Exit, and Ionesco’s Rhinoceros gave expression, but I did not know enough history to understand the Sitz im Leben from which they wrote.

Don’t you see?

Photograph shows South African White Rhinoceros, courtesy of Working with Wildlife, Wikimedia Commons
White Rhinoceros, courtesy of Working with Wildlife, South Africa

All these years later, I get it. Life in 2025 bears ghostly resemblance to these authors’ experience almost a century ago. In an interview published in 1983, Ionesco described the circumstances that led him to the image of a rhinoceros:

I first thought of the rhinoceros image during the war, as I watched Romanian statesmen and politicians and later French intellectuals accommodate themselves to Hitler’s way of thinking. They might say something like, “Well, of course the Nazis are terrible, terrible people, but you know, you must credit them with their good points.” And you wanted to say to them: “But don’t you see, if you start granting them a good point here, a good point there, eventually you will concede everything to them.” Which is exactly what happened. But they looked upon you as an alarmist, then a nuisance, finally an enemy to be run down. They looked like they wanted to lower their heads and charge.

Eugene Ionesco, Le Nouvel Observateur, February 1983

Conceding Everything

The statesmen, politicians, and intellectuals who today accommodate themselves to the thinking and morality of a rhinoceros are not Romanian, German, or French. They are Americans. The way of thinking is the same. The psychology is the same. Though the targets are different, the phenomena are the same. If Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals became the scapegoats that propped up the illusion of Aryan racial superiority in Germany, today in America, the enemy is leftists, socialists, communists, people of color, immigrants, and migrants poisoning the blood of our country. The scapegoat mechanism is the same. The excuses and accommodations are the same. The results are the same.

The strategy and tactics that now threaten democracy in the U.S.A. have a history. Too little has been made of the similarity of the Nazi’s failed coup d’etat –– the Beer Hall Putsch (November 8-9,1923) in Munich –– and the attempted coup d’etat in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021. Or of the fact that Adolf Hitler was tried and found guilty of treason and the charges in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump in the wake of January 6. Or that the book Hitler wrote in prison, Mein Kampf, and the Speeches of Hitler, were, according to members of the Trump family and the co-author of The Art of the Deal, Tony Schwartz, were the only books in his bedroom. Most poignant is the Nazi decision to shift from the strategy of violent revolution to a slower evolutionary road to victory. It would happen more slowly and less spectacularly, but it would succeed. They would destroy democracy from within. And they did.

“Hitler’s lesson from the failed putsch,” wrote historian Christopher Browning in the February 2022 issue of The Atlantic, “was that he needed to pursue revolution through ‘the politics of legality’ rather than storm Munich City Hall. The Nazis would use the electoral process of democracy to destroy democracy.”

The late Bill Moyers (RIP) described Donald Trump as a man who has an open sore where a soul should be. Eugene Ionesco saw a Rhinoceros, and a herd of wannabe rhinoceroses, tromping behind the Rhinoceros whenever a snort tells them to lower their heads and charge.

Gordon C. Stewart, Presbyterian Church (USA) pastor, social critic, and public theologian, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock), 49 brief commentaries on faith and public life, Brooklyn Park, MN, July 9, 2025.

The Miracle of Donald Trump

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“Beware the Ides of March,” says the seer, warning Caesar that his reign would end that day. ”Well, the Ides of March are come,” declares Caesar, mocking the seer with a sneer. “Aye, they are come,” says the seer, “but they are not gone.” — Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.

A very long day

When words escape me, I look to a psalm, a poem, or work of fiction. Today I find words for what I feel in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, and in the exchange between Caesar and the seer in the Ides of March. In 2025, it happens, if it happens, on more than one day. The day for us is longer––weeks, months and years – when we are suspended between Caesar’s sneer and the seer’s prophecy.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk continue to turn the Oval Office into a whipping post, the headquarters of a demolition crew, and a showroom for a car dealership. None of us has lived through a period like this. Which is why good fiction like Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 offers a different lens to see what is happening in real time.

Joseph Heller’s character without character: Milo Minderbinder

The setting of Catch-22 is a U.S. Army Air Corp base during World War II. First Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder, the squadron’s entrepreneurial mess officer, finds a way to turn the weapons of war to his financial advantage without a hint of principle or scruples.

The result, M&M (Milo & Minderbinder Enterprises) is all about Milo. Led by Lieutenant Minderbinder, M&M Enterprises amasses weapons of war through the black market and by a covert deal with the enemy. By the end, Milo takes pleasure watching the explosions that kill and maim his own troops.

Good fiction lifts the veil on reality,

How does an author describe someone like that? Heller calls him ‘a miracle’. “It was miraculous” is an apt description of what is happening to America now, in real time. Four years ago, it was unthinkable that the American electorate would return Donald Trump to the White House. It would take a miracle, or so it seemed. Until Mr. Trump, like Jesus, walked on water. Heller’s description of Milo Minderbinder jumps from the pages of Catch-22. “It was a miracle,” Heller says,

” It was almost no trick at all, he [Milo] saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.” — Joseph Heller, Catch-22.

The MAGA miracle of Donald Trump walking on water.

It takes a character like that to lead others to see you as a miracle, as happened in the Weimar Republic of Germany on Feb. 27, 1933, when the Reichstag (Parliament building) went up in flames. It happened a month after Hitler became Chancellor. Hitler and his devotees blamed the Communists.

Some events outlive their dates on the calendar. Like COVID, Polio, and Measles, they disappear, but never go away. They lie dormant until the circumstances are ripe for their return. Social, cultural, political, economic, and spiritual alienation is the challenge now as it was in Germany. A charismatic sociopath turned Germany into a cuckoo’s nest where morning becomes night, goodness becomes evil, the fear of death turns hearts into stone, mortality into delusions of grandeur, faith into demagoguery, courage into cowardice, patriotism into cruelty and carnage. It’s happening now in America.

Criminal Insanity requires no character

Serving churches and a public defense law office has brought me face-to-face with the likes of Milo Minderbinder. They were patients in the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Their delusions and illusions had created their own worlds. None of them had access to nuclear codes. They were burdened, but no one bore the burden of national security. They lived in secure quarters within the real world.

Aside from the nuclear codes, former daily national security briefings, drawing the global spotlight, extreme wealth and power, multiple women, wives, and lawyers, and well-practiced skills to avoid legal consequences, Donald Trump seems undistinguished from similar souls suffering from the worlds in their heads. He, Donald, is its center. His wants, wishes, and desires — and his alone — define reality. He is, in fact, the weak man, the needy man, the sick man who puffs himself up to be a man’s man, the strong man with authority to separate truth and falsehood, good and evil. He is the star who can do no wrong— in a lingerie section of an upscale department store, on an airplane, or in a Moscow hotel suite. His charm beguiles millions of Americans to believe January 6 was an act of patriotism, deserving of pardons, rather than a poorly executed insurrection, an act of treason.

Fiction and reality

Author George Saunders’ work of fiction, “The Moron Factory” (The Atlantic, March 2025) captures what many are feeling in the world’s very long day:

Sometimes feel life stinks, everything bad/getting worse, everyone doomed. Then day like today occurs, reminding one that yes, although life stinks, does not always stink to same extent, i.e., variations can occur in extent to which life, from day to day, may stink.

Today strange.

Maryanne Trump Barry speaks candidly of her younger brother Donald in terms akin to Heller’s description of Milo Minderbindinder:

“He [Donald] has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this. . . It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel.”

Donald Trump and Elon Musk in a hospital for the criminally insane, setting fire to the Constitution

Today is March 27. The Ides of March have passed, yet nothing has changed. Milo and M&M Enterprises are still undermining the country I thought I knew.

Get up and walk around

You can’t make this stuff up. But novelists and poets can and do. They remove the veil of ignorance. Creative imagination allows us to see reality as it is. Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, George Shakespeare, belong in the same guild as Heller and Shakespeare. Kesey saw in Shakespeare’s work a moral imperative.

“When Shakespeare was writing,” said Kesey, “he wasn’t writing for stuff to lie on the page; it was supposed to get up and move around.”

Poetry and fiction may yet save us from Caesar and Milo Minderbinder and our worst selves. That will only happen if we get up and move around.” This long day has not yet passed. Get up and move around!

Gordon C. Stewart, author of "Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness"(2017 Wipf and Stock), 49 brief commentaries on faith and public life, Brooklyn Park, MN; June 4, 2023.

The OATH-BREAKER and the Oath-Keepers

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Photo of Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection

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

Donald Trump oath-taking 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.

The Dark Power of Propaganda in Anxious Times

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As a child, I wondered why and how the home of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart could become the land and culture of death, led by an insane little man named Hitler. I no longer wonder. The German people and institutions fell under the spell of propaganda. I now know how. An old friend commented on a recent Views from the Edge post.

Reader’s Comment

I think that your explanation is correct but I also think it has very much to do with the same effect that elected Hitler as chancellor. It’s a matter of convincing a people that they are victims. It’s a word that we don’t hear much – propaganda. The German word for propaganda in Nazi Germany was Propagandaministerium, which translates to the Ministry of Propaganda. The Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was the central institution of Nazi propaganda. It controlled all German mass media, including the press, literature, film, theater, music, and radio. Joseph Goebbels was in charge of the ministry.

Make no mistake – if Trump is elected, such practice will become the norm. As it is, his campaign is already using propaganda as the tool to convince the people that their lives are suffering because of the Democrats.

— Jim haugh

A documentary on how Hitler rose to power

How to win an Audience: Basic Principles of Propaganda from the Diary of Joseph Goebbels

Constantly repeat just a few ideas. Use stereotyped phrases.

Avoid abstract ideas — appeal to the emotions.

Give only one side of the argument.

Continuously criticize your opponents.

Pick out one special “enemy” for special vilification.

Photograph of Joseph Goebbels and Nazi basic principles of propaganda.

I no longer wonder. I think I know

During the Third Reich, the Dutch family of Willem Zuurdeeg defied the laws of Nazi occupation. They became a safe harbor to Jews. He questioned what it was about homo sapiens that led good people to follow a madman. This inquiry became his life quest. His search for answers became his life passion. As a philosopher of religion, his search exceeded the boundaries of any particular school of philosophy.

photo of Professor Willem Zuurdeeg

Willem Zuurdeeg was Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. His early death at the age of 57 left his work unfinished. He entrusted his work to his colleague, Esther Swenson. She carried it forward to publication under the title Man Before Chaos: Philosophy Is Born in a Cry (1963, Abington Press).

In Man Before Chaos and An Analytical Philosophy of Religion, Zuurdeeg discusses language as the way human beings “establish their existence” in time. We are born in a cry for what is beyond our ability to produce. We are, in Zuurdeeg’s view, less homo sapiens (“man-who-knows”) than we are homo loquens (“man-who-speaks”) and homo convictus (“man-of-conviction”) who look for a secure footing in an anxious world.

Homo Convictus makes easy prey for propaganda. It happened in Germany. It has happened here. God help us!

Gordon C. Stewart, Public theologian, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf & Stock), 49 brief, stand-alone meditations on faith and public life. Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, January 14, 2024.

Oaths of Office: A Constitutional Dilemma

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Inauguration 2026
2017 Inauguration

On January 20, the Constitutional duty of administering the presidential oath of office fell again to the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Chief Justice holds his position by virtue of his own oath to the Constitution.

Supreme Court Justice Oath of Office

I, ___________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge all the duties incumbent upon me as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court under the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

Supreme Court Justice oath of office, Curator of the Supreme Court

Question

Does a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court violate his Constitutional Oath of Office by fulfilling his constitutional duty to preside over the administration of a President-elect’s oath-taking when the Court is in possession of evidence that the oath-taking was, and again will be, disingenuous, and for purpose of evasion?

Rhetorical or Serious?

The question seems rhetorical. It’s not. It’s serious. On January 20, 2025, the former president who violated election law by silencing a porn star, burying the story in a deal with a gossip tabloid; refused to honor the Constitutional peaceful transfer of power in 2021 and rallied the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and his supporters in a violent insurrection that threatened his own Vice President‘s life; promised to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists; mastered the five principles of effective propaganda outlined by Third Reich Minister of Propaganda and Enlightenment Josef Goebbels; maneuvered the rule of law to evade trial; denounced the American justice system, courts, judges, prosecutors and court personnel as “rigged” against him; refused to surrender top secret national security documents after leaving office; and who continues to mock the juries that convicted him, and to use the powers of the presidency to exact retribution–– courts-marshal, imprisonment, or execution for treason––stood before Chief Justice John Roberts, ‘forgot’ to place his hand on two Bibles, raised the other hand, and “solemnly swore” the oath he had given no reason to trust.

Subversion by any other name is still subversion

A jury unanimously found the president-elect guilty on all 34 felony counts. Mr. Trump had already broken the presidential oath he took in 2017, but shrewd maneuvering through the state and federal court processes, Donald Trump is a convicted felon in the state of New York but has yet to be sentenced, and the more consequential federal indictments have been dropped. When Yogi Berra said “It’s not over til it’s over, “he had in mind the nine innings of a baseball game, but, like many other Yogi-isms, it describes real life beyond baseball.

If perception is nine-tenths of reality, the Supreme Court and the rule of law have lost. So has Congress. Oath-taking has become performative. The rule of law is at the point of implosion. It has been subverted by a well-heeled criminal well-practiced in using the law and judicial procedures to escape accountability under the rule of law. If there is a crack to be found, Donald Trump will find it and crawl through it unscathed.

It happened once. If we’re not careful, it can happen again.

History records moments like this. Ten years after conviction for “high treason” following the Beer Hall Putz, a failed coup attempt, Adolf Hitler rode the wave of public frustration and anger with the Weimar Republic to become Reich Chancellor and Führer. Six months after he took the oath of office, the Constitution was changed. It put Hitler where the Constitution had been. The United States Holocaust Museum tells the story.

Those who do not remember their history are doomed to repeat it

Following the death of President von Hindenburg in August 1934, Adolf Hitler assumed power as Reich Chancellor and Führer. Shortly thereafter, on August 20, 1934, the longstanding oath taken by state officials was changed so that they no longer swore loyalty to the German constitution but rather to Hitler as head of state.

Although in retrospect this change seems to indicate another step in Hitler’s consolidation of power, at the time many would have understood it differently. By replacing “Constitution” with “Hitler,” the oath was meant to convey that Hitler’s will was the same as that of the nation and the people and that his will could not, by definition, contradict the imperative to ‘observe the law and conscientiously fulfill the duties’ of office. In this way, the oath appeared to equate Hitler’s authority with the constitution and to ensure that it would be limited by the primacy of law and duty in public office.”

Oath of Loyalty for All State Officials as of August 14, 1919: “I swear loyalty to the Constitution, obedience to the law, and conscientious fulfillment of the duties of my office, so help me God.”
[Translated from Reichsgesetzblatt I, 1919, pp. 1419-1420.]

Oath of Loyalty for All State Officials as of August 20, 1934: “I swear I will be true and obedient to the Führer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, observe the law, and conscientiously fulfill the duties of my office, so help me God.”
[Translated from Reichsgesetzblatt I, 1934, p. 785.

Is one’s word one’s bond? Or is it subterfuge?

The Hierarchy:: Adolf Hitler (L), Joseph Goebbels C), Hermann Goering (R)

The Oath of Office to which President-elect Donald Trump swore for the second time was either what it appeared to be, or it wasn’t. Whether the German felon convicted of “High Treason” authentically swore to be loyal to the Constitution is a question no one can answer. Some oath-takers and their administrators are honest, but their personality disorders contort the language to equate the people’s constitution and the nation with themselves.

This commentary is not the product of the power of positive thinking, but Christ does not call me to be willfully blind. Sharing this commentary, I feel like Sir Alfred Hitchcock driving by a remote church in the Swiss Alps. Seeing a priest standing next to a little boy with his hand on the boy’s shoulder, Sir Alfred rolled down the rear window of his chauffeur-driven Bentley limousine and cried out, “Run, little boy! Run for your life!!!

God help us all!

Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, Presbyterian Minister (HR), author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN, January 13, 2024.

Two Roosters in a Cockfight

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A WORD OF INTRODUCTION: The death of President Jimmy Carter prompts me to share this previously unpublished social commentary. Jimmy Carter was different. He wasn’t into cockfights. He was a rooster who ruled the roost for four years without drawing attention to himself. He didn’t strut. He didn’t crow. He returned home to his small town in rural Georgia to resume his long-standing practice of teaching Sunday School. He picked up a hammer and saw to built houses with Habitat for Humanity.

Cockfighting in 2024

Cockfighting is illegal in most places, but whether a cockfight is legitimate or illegitimate makes no difference to the roosters or their handlers. A rooster rules the roost. He struts and crows – all roosters do — to mark his turf, secure his harem, and brag about the size of his hen house. A cockfight is a battle of the pecking order. One wins; the other loses. God help the smaller rooster who walks into the wrong hen house!

Illustration of roosters
Two roosters before the cockfight

Anticipating a Cockfight

Watching Donald Trump and Elon Musk, I see a cockfight waiting to happen. Roosters in a cockfight strut and crow, surrounded by rooster handlers and on-lookers who’ve come to see the feathers. Soon Donald will again take his place as the most powerful man in the world, and Elon will still be the richest man in the world. Donald is proud that Elon has come into his yard; Elon is proud to have been appointed to a powerful position in the most powerful man’s barnyard. Elon ionly boundary is Donald’s will and ego.

True Story

Years ago an acquaintance stole all his father’s roosters. When his father, exhausted by the roosters waking him at sunrise, and decided to exercise his right to capitol punishment, his 30-something year-old son rescued all the roosters in the middle of the night. For the next few weeks, the son took pride in having saved the roosters. The roosters freely roamed the son’s barnyard and hen house, and. But after six weeks of waking at sunrise to the crowing of the cocks, he shot them all to stop the crowing.

America in 2024

In America two roosters crow every morning. They strut all day in front of the crowd. One rooster crows that he’s legitimate; the other doesn’t seem to care. The smaller roosters are running around Congress like chickens with their heads cut off. They’re scared. They have a lethal stake in the game. They’re clucking up a storm, laying their bets on who to trust to save their heads from the chopping block.

two roosters beginning a cockfight with audience watching.

Gordon C. Stewart, host of Views from the Edge, pastor and former MPR guest commentator on All Things Considered, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock), writing from Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, December 21, 2024.

A Cautionary Tale: I Used to Wonder. Now I Know

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I have often wondered how the home of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart became the country of Adolf Hitler, the SS, SA, Brown Shirts and the Holocaust. I no longer wonder.

Third Reich Minister of Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels’ diary details the elements of propaganda that led German people to succumb to the spell of Hitler.

Propaganda: Basic Principles

  • Constantly repeat just a few ideas. Use stereotyped phrases.
  • Continuously criticize your opponents.
  • Avoid abstract ideas – appeal to the emotions.
  • Give only one side of the argument.
  • Pick out one special “enemy” for special vilification.
Extracted from Goebbels’ diary

A documentary on why Germans followed Hitler

The Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was the central institution of Nazi propaganda. It controlled all German mass media, including the press, literature, film, theater, music, and radio. Those who don’t know history are bound to repeat it; those who know it have a duty to learn and act accordingly.

Gordon C. Stewart, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf & Stock), 49 brief, stand-alone meditations on faith and public life. Writing from Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, Nov. 5, 2024.

In the Strife of Truth with Falsehood

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer (4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945

The morning of April 9, 1945, German Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer and other leaders of the Confessing Church and resistance to Hitler and the Third Reich were hastily tried and hanged on the scaffold of Flossenburg Military Prison. Bonhoeffer was killed years a go, but his execution did not extinguish his light.

Bonhoeffer’s metaphor of stopping a madman from driving a car into a crowd of innocent bystanders shines a light on 2024. The American electorate in this moment will decide whether to put the steering wheel in the hands of a man who promises revenge.

Bonhoeffer and James Russell Lowell

Although the light of Bonhoeffer didn’t reach me until my early 20s, an oft-sung hymn from youth and childhood had prepared me to welcome Bonhoeffer. The lyrics of the hymn were from James Russell Lowell’s poem, “The Present Crisis.” The tune and lyrics make clear the intrinsic bond of faith and action. “Once to Every Man and Nation”was a call to abolish slavery.

Hymn Lyrics from “The Present Crisis”

Once to every man and nation Comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth with falsehood, For the good or evil side; Some great cause, some new decision, Offering each the bloom or blight, And that choice goes by forever ‘Twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper, Yet ’tis truth alone is strong; Though her portion be the scaffold, And upon the throne be wrong, Yet that scaffold sways the future, And, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, Keeping watch above His own.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, “THE PRESENT CRISIS,” 1845.

The Moment to Decide

Temptation of Christ

In this American moment the decision is between democracy and social pathology; between safeguarding the integrity of law under the U.S. Constitution and putting the steering wheel in the hands of a madman and his party. November 5 is the choice between truth and falsehood, principle and propaganda, bloom and blight. This moment will not wait for a later time.

The moment is now.

Gordon C. Stewart, Presbyterian Minister, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf & Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN, Nov. 4, 2024.

Ghosts on the Ballot

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Age has its advantages. Racing home from school to watch the House Army-McCarthy hearings, chaired by Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI), is still fresh in my generation’s memory. Some indecencies never die. They’re like ghosts. The people we thought were dead reappear when the time is ripe. The 2024 election is such a moment. Take a look.

Some dragons are not slain

Some dragons cannot be slain. They become ghosts. In this season of the 2024 national election, I can’t believe my eyes. I see the ghosts of Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn. I hear their voices and see their scorn for decency.

Roy Cohn became infamous for representing the mob, a ‘fixer’ for hire. He sullied the reputations of innocent people, represented Donald Trump, and became his mentor. You might says tha tDonald became Roy’s apprentice before he became a popular entertainer on The Apprentice.

Winning was everything, and the way to win was to attack, threaten, lie, and bully. “Always attack! Never defend!” was his First Commandment. Winning was the only thing that mattered.

Roy Cohn Quotes: Wisdom From The Legend Himself

  • “I don’t believe in the concept of regret. I have no time for it.”
  • “I have a simple motto: Always attack, never defend.”
  • “In the end, winning is the only thing that matters.”
  • “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
  • “Hate is just a tool we use to control and manipulate others.”
  • “I don’t play by the rules, I make them.”
  • “The only thing worse than losing is being forgotten.”

Vote like your life depends on it. Because it does.

Gordon C. Stewart, Presbyterian Minister, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf & Stock), 49 brief (2-4 page) social commentaries/ meditations on faith and public life; Brooklyn Park, MN, Oct. 25, 2024.