Category Archives: Spirituality

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.

Mercy vs. Vengeance: Insights from Psalm 94

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Personal Reflections in a time of vengeance

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?

You are a mist. a vapor

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

The Gospel of Reconciliation: Finding Peace in Troubling Times

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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.

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The Epiphany of Treason

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the manifestation of light and darkness

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

Photograph of President Jimmy Carter
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.

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.

How to Win an Election: Fear and Faith

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”There’s a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled. Religion is the best device used to mislead them.” — Michael Moore

Like the “Make America Great Again Bible,” the Trump campaign’s “Fear Not” marketing pitch preys on religious gullibility. For Christians, “fear not” brings to mind Jesus’s assurance: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s pleasure to give you the kingdom.” It also reminds us of the angels’ message to shepherds, abiding in their fields by night” in Matthew’s birth narrative.

How and why anyone would send the chain e-mail message asking me to “Forward this message to 10 friends… I want to spread the LOVE,” is puzzling.

The message came with a photo advertisement for a “FEAR NOT” coffee mug, featuring former president Trump in a MAGA hat. His fist is raised in defiant resolve with “Old Glory” waving in the background.

photo of Trump campaign "Fear Not" coffee mug.

So, there you have it. FEAR NOT and LOVE together on a coffee mug featuring a mug shot of the “Chosen One” who uses the word G-d on occasions when it’s useful. What could be better?

The Relationship between Fear and Love

Fear and love lie next to each other at the heart of Christian faith. The First Letter of John describes the relationship this way. “There is no fear in love. But perfect love casts out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”—1 John 4:18

The Christian story of Jesus as the Christ (the Messiah) begins and ends with fear.

And the angel said unto [the shepherds] ‘’Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.’” – Gospel According to Luke 2:10, KJV.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus of Nazareth prays to be spared the horror awaiting him the next day. His plea is not granted. Yet Christians profess him Lord and Savior. He suffers torture and death on a cross outside the city walls on the Hill of Skulls. Before the wrenching cry of abandonment, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabchtani?” (My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”), Jesus cries out from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

A surprising way to end a Gospel

The original ending of the Gospel Mark, the earliest of the four New Testament Gospels, ends with fear. Young’s Literary Translation reads as follows:

And, having come forth quickly, they fled from the sepulchre, and trembling and amazement had seized them, and to no one said they anything, for they were afraid.

The Monday following the second attempt on his life, the Trump campaign announced that “Democrats’ rhetoric inspired another attempt on former President Trump’s life.” Recalling the earlier attack in Butler, PA, the former president spoke in religious terms.

“There’s something going on,” he said. “I mean, perhaps it’s God wanting me to be President to save this country. Nobody knows.” — Antonio Hitchens, The New Yorker, September 18, 2024.

An image on the Trump coffee mug also features graphic image that intertwines two American twisted into angel’s wings. The words at the top read:

“GOD SAID: NOT TODAY”

Alexis de Tocqueville’s Reflection on America

“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.” — Alexis de Tocqueville

Whether Tocqueville said it, or the presidents, senators, and other Americans in high places mistakenly attributed it to Tocqueville, makes little difference to its wisdom and warning. Without goodness, there can be no greatness.

Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf & Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN, Dec. 15, 2024 (revised from unpublished draft written Sept. 20, 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.

Living among the gods in America: a Meditation on Psalm 82

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God presides in the great assembly; he renders judgment among the gods.

The house we took for granted is infested with carpenter ants. The gods of power, greed, privilege, fear and favor undermine the framework of the good, the true, and the beautiful, the aspirational foundations without which the house crumbles.

I watch in horror as a deranged man of White privilege claps back at the adoring crowd and wonder why real farmers in tractor hats leave their fields to applaud a city-slicker Godfather wearing a $4k Oxxford suit, red Armani silk tie, and a red tractor hat, like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood wearing sheep skin to have Grandma for lunch. If there is a God surrounded by the gods, why the trail of unjust judgments?

Then I remember Jesus’ parable of a last judgment in Matthew 25, where the Sovereign of the Universe separates the sheep and the goats, and hear the cry of the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, hanging on the cross: “Why have you forsaken me?” “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” And I wonder. 

Where is the thunder that will split the veil of religion and empire? Every day I awaken to the knowledge of my helplessness to help. I am a kindergartner in a bully’s world, asking for the gift of daily bread— enough to make it through another day of MAGA madness, another day with hearts turning to stone, another hour watching a sociopath twist law into pretzels. I have seen the crimes. I have gasped at the lies and heard his voice echoing in a swelling chorus of voices cheering on the gods who are not God, silencing the still small voice. 

Where is the God who convenes the council of the gods? Where is the God who judges the gods we confuse with God?

How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked?

The “wicked”? Seriously? The wicked? I don’t believe in an impenetrable wall between the wicked and the righteous, the saved and the damned, the sheep and the goats. I have met the wickedness that lurks in me. 

Confession

“The prestige of the wicked” and the wickedness of prestige lead me to confess my exaltation of prestige. I have confused the ladder of success with Jacob’s ladder until the wind blew me off the ladder into shame. The climb to the top has been wicked. I have learned how easily the search for excellence inflates the ego and overtakes the gift of authenticity in flesh and blood mortality. Life has a way of knocking the pretense of prestige off the ladder, and, if we’re lucky, we realize that we had it wrong.

Jacob’s ladder is not a ladder for us to climb up; it’s a stairway on which the angels (divine messengers) descend to be with us.

I know the ladder of success. I have climbed it and fallen off. I have also met the divine messengers who pick me up when I’ve fallen.

 

Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

This is not a suggestion. It’s an order! — the Sovereign’s order to the assembly of gods. In the Hebrew Bible and in our own experience, the nations are gods. This word from the Most High God addresses the gods of greed, privilege and nationalism.

Saint Patrick’s Day at the Irish Pub: A Festive Celebration

It’s the day for green beer, corned beef and cabbage, and the wearing of the green. The television monitors in the pub are broadcasting a rally in Dayton, OH.  “I don’t know if you call them [i.e., migrants crossing the southern border] people,” says the man in the MAGA hat. “In some cases, they’re not people, in my opinion. But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say.”

“I don’t know if you can call them . . . people. In some cases, they’re not people.”

The poor and oppressed fleeing tyrannical regimes, drug cartels, and gangs in El Salvador, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Honduras are not people? The people now seeking refuge on American soil are not the Jews, gypsies, and “homosexuals” Hitler loaded into cattle cars for a one-way trip t to Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald for “poisoning the blood of our country,” but they are the same: the less than human ones, the non-Aryans, animals. “Now, if I don’t get elected, . . . there’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.” There will be no rescue for the weak and needy under his watch. Rescuing the weak and the needy is the work of the woke and the weak. We have to be strong.

Jesus’ rebuke: “Woe to you!”

I hear Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” I am haunted by the curse of the Strong Man that has fallen over the world. I am not digging a mass grave in Ukraine. I am not homeless. I am not searching for food for my starving child in Gaza, Mariupol, or Calcutta. When will the rebuke — “Woe to you” — thunder across the world?  

The gods are neither ignorant nor uncomprehending

Ignorant and uncomprehending, they wander in darkness, while the foundations of the world are tottering. I had thought, “Are you gods, are all of you sons of the Most High?”

President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in conversation

Are the gods that troll us ignorant? Are they uncomprehending? No. They are crafty. They are willful. They are calculating. Andrei Navalny did not die of natural causes. He was murdered. The regime that poisoned him knew what it was doing. The gods of power, greed, violence, and war are neither ignorant nor uncomprehending. Aries and Mars are alive and well. They live in our heads. They tell us what to do, leaving Ukrainian and Palestinians to search through the rubble and step over the dead. Here at home a megalomaniac cut from the same cloth as Vladimir Putin threatens a bloodbath if he is not elected. The crowd chants and cheers.

Hearing Voices Inside and outside the hospital for the criminally insane

I am at the maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane in Saint Peter, MN. I’ve come to see Mary, who turned to the Legal Rights Center for legal counsel. Her lawyer has asked me to visit as a pastor.

Was Mary ignorant or uncomprehending the day she stabbed her nine-year old son nearly 100 times in broad daylight on Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis? Did she mean to kill her son? Or were the voices in her head responsible? 

Mary had gone off her meds the day the voices told her that her son was the Devil and that she should kill him. “Not guilty by reason of insanity” sent her to the hospital for the criminally insane. The day I am with her, she is groping in the darkness. The foundations of her world are tottering. Suicide is an option. Which is why I am here.

Driving home to Minneapolis, I hear voices like the ones Mary heard. Aries and Mars are speaking on talk radio. To one degree or another, everyone out here is insane, just a short step from the Hospital for the Criminally Insane. The gods are driving us to collective madness.

I had thought, “Are you gods, are all of you sons of the Most High?” No! You will die as human beings do, as one man, princes, you will fall.

The Mortality of the gods

Are you gods children of the Most High?  Or are you as mortal as we? Are you destined to fall, like princes and tyrants? Will you be thrown from the thrones that rule our hearts? Will the shouting and clapping fall silent? Without the language of the heart, only the impostor gods, the carpenter ants, remain to eat away the foundations of compassion and sanity. The impostor god of national supremacy may look different in “Mother Russia” than it does in the USA, but it is the same.

The World and the god of Nationalism

Arise, God, judge the world, for all nations belong to you.

Among the gods gathered for judgment, nationalism has no peer. “If I don’t win this election, we won’t have a country anymore.” He places his right hand over his heart. The crowd does the same. The sound system broadcasts the January 6 chorus of imprisoned “hostages” he promises to pardon singing the national anthem. I hear a still small voice in Alexander Hamilton’s prescient letter to President George Washington in 1792.

The truth unquestionably is that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion. Tired at length of anarchy, or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of monarchy for repose and security. …

When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.

Like the psalmist, I cry out, “Arise, O God!” Deliver us from the gods of criminal insanity.”

Gordon C. Stewart, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN, July 22, 2024.

Confronting Arrogance and Injustice: Insights from God’s Word to Sennacherib

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Journalist's photograph of Palestinian mother and child walking amid the rubble of destruction.

A personal reflection on God’s word to Sennacherib

I know your sitting down
and your going out and coming in,
and your raging against Me

Isaiah 37:28

19th-century wood engraving by Gustave Doré depicting the destroying of Sennacherib’s army outside Jerusalem.

You cannot hide. You plot and scheme as though unseen, not noticed, secure in the dark places of public life. You rise. You sit. You go out among the shadows, declaring innocence and impunity. You mislead. You cheat. You lie. You bear false witness and concoct stories to assail your neighbors. You connive, conspire, and assassinate. You poison your opponents and flood the public with fear and hate. You threaten your critics, and pay, or refuse to pay, legal fees for sycophants who have placed their trust in you. You rant and rage and rouse the people with a voice that feigns righteous indignation.

Because you have raged against Me
    and your insolence has come to My ears,
I will put My hook in your nose
    and My bit in your mouth;
I will turn you back on the way
    by which you came.

Isaiah 37:29

Uncivil, insolent, resistant, unhinged, kicking up dust on everyone around you, you mock whatever would restrict you, restrain you, expose you to the light of day, but darkness is not dark to Me. I hear you snorting, braying and bellowing. I see you bucking against all attempts to rein in your whims and schemes, your defamations and slander, your arrogance and threats, your schemes of terror, your treasonous justifications of insurrection, invasion, and assassination.

Simon the Cyrinian is compelled to carry Christ's cross

Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, author of Be Still!: Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf and Stock), 49 brief (two to four page) reflections on faith and public life; Brooklyn Park. MN, Feb. 22, 2024.