Who We Need To Be

Facing The Future The Morning After

The results are what they are; Donald Trump is the 47th President-elect.

In the coming days and weeks, there will be a flurry of analysis attempting to account for the how’s and the why’s. There will be projections and predictions.

My friend Bob Stevenson over at

Letters to my Friends

shared some sobering exit polls from the AP: 57% of white evangelicals find Trump trustworthy, and 59% are unconcerned about whether his views are extreme. In contrast, among black evangelicals, 86% find him untrustworthy and 83% remain concerned over apparent extreme views. In many respects, we find ourselves here out of a profound failure to listen to each other, a profound willed ignorance over another’s interests.

But one thing is clear: at the heart of the social and cultural ascendancy of White Christian Nationalism is a raging theological crisis. One that is not new. But has always raged in American life. I am thinking this morning of the words of Howard Thurman from his short reflection “The Fascist Masquerade” in 1946:

“The bitter truth is that the Church has permitted the various hate-inspired groups in our common life to establish squatter’s rights in the minds of believers because there has been no adequate teaching of the meaning of the faith in terms of human dignity and worth.”

Thurman went on to question the “curious” problem of the “social result” of the Church’s doctrine of salvation. That the very categories of “saved” and “damned” — projected onto our politics and our social world, he writes, “load the scales on the side of inequality in intrinsic worth.” The theological support for authoritarianism lies here in our attempts to draw the line of God’s grace to organize our social orders.

Connecting this theological question to his own contemporary issue of Jim Crow segregation, Thurman concludes, “Unless that state [of salvation] is for all and enjoyed by all potentially, there is no fundamental difference between the spiritual arrogance arising from my state of grace and the spiritual arrogance arising from the incident of race.” The projection of “saved” and “damned” onto our politics is the theological propellant for authoritarianisms of all shapes and sizes.

The path for the Church is clear: we must not give any quarter to creeping and ascendant authoritarianisms, to the theological distortions of confession in service of partisan causes.

But I want to conclude with a bracing reminder that pushes us towards gritty hope and responsibility. It comes from Bonhoeffer’s private essay After Ten Years, written in 1943 and circulated amongst a close group of friends. In it, Bonhoeffer reflects on how people continued to go along with the regime. How, in speaking with them, “one finds one is not speaking with them at all” but with slogans and catchwords. Bonhoeffer reflected that perhaps only an act of external liberation—a radical political change or collapse—would bring about the internal liberation required, the fear of God as the beginning of wisdom.

But then he turns to the future. To what sort of people he and his friends will need to be. I’ve drawn a lot of strength from this vision. And we will need it in the days ahead as solidarity with the suffering demands. Bonhoeffer writes,

Experience has rendered us suspicious of human beings, and often we have failed to speak to them a true and open word. Unbearable conflicts have worn us down or even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? We will not need geniuses, cynics, people who have contempt for others, or cunning tacticians, but simple, uncomplicated, and honest human beings. Will our inner strength to resist what has been forced on us have remained strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves blunt enough, to find our way back to simplicity and honesty?

We need honest human beings in the days ahead. We need bold but heartfelt pastors and faith leaders. We need to be the people our days demand. And this begins with confession.

The morning after, we can and should rightfully confess “Jesus is Lord.” But realize this confession fuels only responsibility and resistance; it destroys forms of “Christian” piety that blind us to the plight of others, allowing us to interpret election results by a vague providence that leaves us resigned to act. Confessing “Jesus is Lord” by the Spirit of Jesus makes us responsible, honest, and simple—that is what the days ahead demand.