Donald Trump has positioned himself as a defender of the Christian faith, and found somewhat unlikely bedfellows in American evangelicalism.<\/p>\n
This seems a politically expedient choice for someone who has previously shown no interest in faith nor has a record of attending church.<\/p>\n
Equating the \u201cradical left\u201d with communism, Trump has\u00a0promised to protect\u00a0the public symbols of Christianity such as crosses from those who would tear them down. Whether crosses are actually under threat is unclear.<\/p>\n
Christianity is \u2018left\u2019 or \u2018right\u2019<\/h3>\n
If anyone tuned into the DNC expecting to see this \u201cradical left\u201d inciting crowds to tear down crosses, they would have been disappointed. Instead, biblical language permeated the speeches.<\/p>\n
Michelle Obama appealed to a sense of community over individualism in political life, quoting the Bible\u2019s golden rule \u201cdo unto others\u201d and \u201clove thy neighbour\u201d. So familiar are these phrases to a Christianised America that she didn\u2019t even need to quote the entire verses.<\/p>\n
Pete Buttigieg drew on apocalyptic imagery to describe Trump\u2019s worldview as \u201cdarkness\u201d. Senator Raphael Warnock, a pastor,\u00a0quoted\u00a0Micah\u2019s injunction to \u201cdo justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God\u201d.<\/p>\n
At the Republican Convention weeks earlier, Christianity was also on display, but with a very different tone.<\/p>\n
Christian images and language infused the rhetoric of Christian Nationalism, a movement that is predominantly white, male, authoritarian and unabashedly puts America first.<\/p>\n
God bless America! It blurs the lines between patriotic and Christian symbols in the belief that Christianity should be privileged and in power in America.<\/p>\n
A Christian nationalist agenda is one that seeks to dominate and shape the community according to a narrow set of \u201cbiblical\u201d values.<\/p>\n
These are the kind of values\u00a0outlined in Project 2025, which claims to be a blueprint of \u201cbiblical principles\u201d for the nation.<\/p>\n
Its principles look\u00a0a lot like patriarchy: A system that relies on male domination, wants women pregnant and back in the kitchen, and leaves no space for anyone whose diversity of gender or sexual orientation challenges the hierarchy.<\/p>\n
Historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of\u00a0Jesus and John Wayne, argues that Christian Nationalism is a political movement, not a Christian one.<\/p>\n
It has moved a long way from biblical values or traditional evangelical Christianity.<\/p>\n
By contrast, the Democrats seemed to reclaim Christianity as a liberal and liberative religion.<\/p>\n
They portrayed Christianity as a faith that makes space for LGBTQI+ families, embraces diversity and affirms a woman\u2019s right to choose (and one that makes space for a diversity of religious or non-religious views). Moreover, they embodied Christian qualities such as joy, promise and hope for the future.<\/p>\n
The Bible is political, but not party political<\/h3>\n
Though my sympathies lie with the Democrats in this particular political contest, no political party has ever been able to truly claim the \u201cChristian\u201d mantle.<\/p>\n
Christianity is inescapably political, but it is not party political, and never can be. Christianity can be found in both these somewhat polarised forms.<\/p>\n
While religion and its extremes play out in particular ways in American politics, we are na\u00efve if we think such narratives do not exist in Australia.<\/p>\n
Globally, there are those who lean into the liberative aspects of faith, finding in the pages of the Bible a radical call for justice, an affirmation of diversity and a demand for loving action.<\/p>\n
And there are those who emphasise a narrowly drawn set of supposedly Christian moral standards, often reflective of some ideal past.<\/p>\n
One end of the spectrum focuses on community and common good, the other on individual behaviour and responsibility. One liberates, the other seeks to control. One is a big tent, the other seeks to draw tight boundaries about who is in and who is out.<\/p>\n
Both of these sets of thinking \u2013 the liberative and the controlling, the diverse and the patriarchal \u2013 can be found within the Bible. This is why the Bible should be used carefully in public discourse, not weaponised or co-opted for visions that are not in keeping with its teaching.<\/p>\n
As religion\u00a0declines\u00a0in the West, there is a danger that voters are less well equipped to evaluate how religion is used in political life and what constitutes a poor or dishonest use of Christian theology.<\/p>\n
While the interpretation of almost any biblical passage can be debated (and is), at the heart of Christianity is the term gospel,\u00a0euanggelion<\/em>, which literally means \u201cgood news\u201d.<\/p>\n When Jesus spoke about \u201cgood news\u201d, he spoke about it in terms of release from captivity, the liberation of the oppressed, and favour for the poor (Luke 4). It is not a bad measure by which to assess political discourse that claims to be Christian.<\/p>\n It can be tempting in the face of the diversity of Christian opinion to want to keep religion out of politics entirely. But the answer to bad theology is not an absence of theology. It is good theology.<\/p>\n When Christianity is invoked in politics, people of all faiths \u2013 and none \u2013 should examine how the way it is being used sits alongside the central Christian message that God is love, and that the people at the very bottom of society always come first in Jesus\u2019 teaching.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Americans face a stark choice this November between two very different political visions. As I watched the recent Democratic National Convention (DNC), it struck me that it is also a choice between two very different kinds of Christianity. Donald Trump has positioned himself as a defender of the Christian faith, and found somewhat unlikely bedfellows […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4370,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-world"],"views":44,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4368"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4371,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4368\/revisions\/4371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}