Senior vice president and dean of the chapel at the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York City, Michael W. DeLashmutt, wrote an interesting observation on Trump's interest in religion.
The Emperor's GospelThe Episcopalian priest is saying that President Donald Trump is exploiting Christianity to execute his own political agenda.
He has alienated different groups of Christians that don't fit into his unique "nationalist, triumphalist" framework.
"The Christianity most visibly aligned with Trumpism is one that emphasizes strength, victory and cultural dominance," DeLashmutt wrote. "It is a Christianity that views theological complexity with suspicion and prophetic dissent as disloyalty, and it replaces the messy, demanding ethics of the Sermon on the Mount with a simpler narrative of winning and losing."
DeLashmutt compared Trump to the Roman emperor Constantine.
He wrote: "Seventeen centuries ago, Constantine, emperor of the Roman Empire, faced a fracturing religious landscape. Christianity, though still emerging from centuries of persecution, offered something rare: A movement capable of unifying diverse peoples around a common identity. Constantine?s so-called ?conversion? ? long debated because of its syncretistic blend of genuine religious experience with shrewd political calculation ? reshaped the trajectory of both the Church and the Empire....
He continues: "For the first time, Christian belief was not only about faithfulness to Christ; it became a matter of loyalty to the emperor. Heresy was no longer just a spiritual wound in the body of Christ ? it became a political threat to imperial order. Christianity was disciplined into a form more useful for holding an empire together."...
"In our time, the temptation is subtler but no less dangerous. If Christianity in America becomes simply another tool of political mobilization, it will hollow itself out from within. It will trade the scandal of the cross ? the foolishness of love, mercy, humility and sacrifice ? for the false security of political dominance."
Somehow his words have a familiar ring to words we've read before.
