Politics and Religion: President Trump at a National Prayer Breakfast

Politics and religion intermeshed can be a nasty business. Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, witnessed every venue of his planned tour in Europe cancel because Franklin had “called Islam ‘evil,’ attacked laws increasing rights for transgender people, and told his followers that the legalization of same-sex marriage was orchestrated by Satan.”[1] Although criticizing another religion is religious in nature, turning to laws renders the attack political too. Although Franklin Graham may have assumed that many of his co-religionists would agree with him both in religious and political terms, wading into controversial political matters risks alienating people who are or would otherwise be religious followers. Even the willingness to traverse into the political realm may not be liked by some religionists, whether followers or not, especially if the incursion is into a controversy. Some co-religionists may agree with the distinctly religious belief, yet hold dissimilar political views. Such distance created between religionists can weaken a religious leader’s credibility and even following in the religious domain. Politicians dragging their respective religious faiths into the political domain can also be problematic, though authentic applications can pay off even if there is a cost politically. The incursion of Christianity at the end of U.S. President Trump’s trial in the Senate and as he took a victory lap can demonstrate the complexities of religion distended into another domain. A politician may invoke his or her religious beliefs to justify a political position, as Sen. Mitt Romney did before he voted to convict U.S. President Donald Trump on the abuse-of-power impeachment article. In his speech justifying his vote on the senate floor, an emotional Romney said, “My faith is at the heart of who I am. I take an oath before God as enormously consequential.”[2] Obviously, his vote itself had the immediate effect of isolating him in Trump’s GOP. Even so, incorporating his religious faith in the senate chamber could have cost Romney more politically to the extent that other Republicans did not agree with his political beliefs. Some Democrats (e.g., secular or of other faiths) may otherwise have thought more of the senator in spite of his vote. Also, his denomination of Christianity, the Church of Latter Day Saints (i.e., the Mormon church) may have taken a hit in religious circles. In other words, a religionist who explicitly brings his or her faith across the border to play a role in the political domain may pay a price back on the religious turf.

Even religion itself can suffer from a politician bringing it into the political domain, especially if he or she contradicts his or her religion in political action. At a prayer breakfast on the day after the senate trial on President Donald Trump ended with an acquittal, he said he did not believe in loving enemies in spite of the fact that the teaching even though Jesus includes in his Sermon on the Mount in the Gospels. The president immediately matched his statement, “Arthur, I don’t know if I agree with you,” with attacks on his political opponents, calling them “dishonest and corrupt people” who “badly hurt our nation.”[3] Then he went after Senator Romney, saying “I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong.”[4] The charge of religion used wrongly is a good example of how extending the religious domain into the realm of politics can have political costs, as well as costs to the particular religion.

Even though Speaker (of the House of Representatives) Nancy Pelosi was prominently placed at the breakfast and had said that she prays for the president daily, Trump said, “nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you,’ when they know that’s not so.”[5] If Pelosi had lied about the praying, then her invocation of her faith meant that she was misusing her religion in the political domain. If she really had been praying in private, then the president misused his religion in going after her personally.

Instead of the New Testament preachment to love thy enemies, Trump had said that he preferred taking an eye for an eye, a teaching in the Old Testament that Jesus rejects in the New Testament. “It’s striking,” one journalist wrote after the prayer breakfast, “to hear Trump, who is a Presbyterian, so directly reject one of Christianity’s core teachings.”[6] In implying that he can be a Presbyterian and not believe in one of Jesus’ core teachings, both the president and his denomination look bad. That is, that the president cited his religious denomination and faith for political purposes hurt both him and his Church, for duplicity or hypocrisy is not generally looked on favorably.

As if to justify opposing Jesus’ dictum to love thy enemies, the president said at the breakfast, “So many people have been hurt and we can’t let that go on.”[7] He chaffed at having to like his enemies. I contend that loving one’s enemies is not the same thing as liking them. A mother may love her son but not like him, so like is not necessarily implied in love. Coming to an enemy’s aid when help could help the person—and valuing doing so—rather than attacking especially when the enemy is down—is the epitome of Jesus’ notion of loving one’s enemies. This goes beyond merely turning the other cheek when attacked. In fact, assent to valuing voluntarily helping people who have insulted, injured, or even physically attacked you can be viewed as the litmus test of whether a person is really a Christian. Even better is having helped a detractor, especially if he or she really needs help.  Resentment and retribution have no place.

In spite of loving your enemies being viewed as a strength rather than weakness by Christians, religion itself may be weak relative to political force once in the political domain. Pelosi may have been praying for the president, but this didn’t stop the president from going after her (and literally waving a newspaper whose headline was “President Acquitted” in the air) at the National Prayer Breakfast, which was “typically a nonpartisan event that organizers say is meant to provide a spiritual refuge from political warfare.”[8] Not even at such an event could religion have the upper hand; the president could disgorge Jesus’s famous dictum and attack his enemies even in victory. To be sure, that the president could be both a Presbyterian and an eye-for-an-eye guy points to a weakness within institutional Christianity. Even so, extending religion beyond its own domain into another may not be a good idea. However, if Sen. Romney bucked his own political party, which was controlled by the president, on the basis of his faith, then religion starts to look very good indeed in the political realm. Religion can be a strength even beyond its own domain, yet only if religion itself does not expand into something other than religious and, even worse, bring the other back into the religious realm as religious.

Religion must be authentic rather than employed as a political tool to have strength in the political realm. Yet even as authentic, a religious element can be vulnerable and even make the politician politically weaker. Sen. Romney and National Prayer Breakfast itself were vulnerable. The ways of the world are not those of the Kingdom of God that Jesus preached.

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[1] Rob Picheta, “Evangelist Preacher Franklin Graham Planned a Seven-City UK Tour. All Seven Venues Have Dropped Him,” CNN.com, February 6, 2020(accessed same day).

[2] Michael Warren, “Guilty Vote Against Trump Casts Romney in a New Role: GOP Maverick,” CNN.com, February 6, 2020 (accessed same day).

[3] Daniel Burke, “Love Your Enemies? Nah, Says Trump,” CNN.com, February 6, 2020 (accessed same day).

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

Politically Partisan Clergy: A Cleft in the Bright Side of Faith

Citing religious liberty, President Trump signed an executive order on May 4, 2017, the National Day of Prayer, “directing the Internal Revenue Service to avoid cracking down on political activity by religious organizations.”[1] In particular, clergy could then endorse political candidates without fear that their respective churches would lose their tax-exempt status. It is a bit extreme that such status would be lost simply because a pastor mentions a preference for a political candidate or a particular public policy, for such references are not integral or central to a clergy’s message, which is religious in nature. Nevertheless, the risk of religious faith being usurped by the political merits an attentive watchfulness, at the very least.

Outwardly, religious content can unwittingly, and without notice even to the religionist oneself, give way to political agendas, especially during an election season. In fact, such agendas—in particular, the ideologies—can “rebrand” themselves into religious garb such that even the endorsement of a political candidate can be presumed to be religious in nature. When the U.S. president signed the order, for example, he said, “For too long, the federal government has used the power of the state as a weapon against people for faith, bullying and even punishing Americans for following their religious beliefs.”[2] The implication is that endorsing a candidate is such a belief. With the distended notion of religious belief comes less room for, or a proportionate decrease in the genuine article.

 A more subtle downside—one that is actually even more likely—has to do with the impact of even occasional politically-partisan statements on the still-dominant religious ethos and message. The overlay of a cross-cutting partisanship compromises the coherence in the primary partisan axis. Don’t despair; this statement needs some unpacking.

Feuerbach (1804-1872), a European philosopher, uncovered a seldom-recognized side of faith by analyzing Christianity. Within the faithful, the partisan nature of faith is obscured by the unity of the faithful. The prejudiced nature of faith—its “(d)ogmatic, exclusive, scrupulous particularly”—does not play out among the faithful, except as it cuts off part of itself as heretics.[3] Far from being universally applicable, love gives way only within the confines of the faithful. “He is not for Christ is against him; that which is not chiristian is antichristian.”[4] It would be to dishonor God to love those who dishonor God. “Hence faith has fellowship with believers only; unbelievers it rejects. It is well-disposed towards believers, but ill-disposed towards unbelievers.”[5] Even as believers actually harbor hatred toward the disbelievers—belief being presumed to be decisive to faith—they overlook their ill-will and thus that in faith itself “lies a malignant principle.”[6] Within the faithful, it does not come into play, so faith is perceived as wholly salubrious—without a back side. Keeping disbelievers at bay ensures the apparent congruence of love and faith. Yet if another sort of partisanship is introduced within a congregation—such as political partisanship—a cleft arises such that can break up the serenity of the love of faith. Put another way, introducing political disagreement disrupts the agreement that exists within the faithful. The cost in endorsing partisan causes or candidates is in terms of the original domain—that of religion. The malignant principle of faith and political anger at the opposition are one and the same; introducing a political cleft into a congregation resonates with the partisan nature of faith, yet even as the latter can remain invisible from within the confines of the faithful.

So clergy in the pulpit should think twice before lapsing into the political arena, even as mere partisan mouthpieces. In addition to the opportunity cost of foregone attention to religious matters, the offense engendered among the faithful creates a rift on the bright side of faith that detracts from it unnecessarily.

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[1] Michael D. Shear, “Trump Eases Political Activity by Religious Organizations,” The New York Times, May 4, 2017.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 251.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid, 252.

[6] Ibid.

Kierkegaard’s Socratic Task: Delivering a Christianity of Inward Faith

Kierkegaard learned from Socrates the value of (being) the single individual, especially in the subjective pursuit of truth. Before Socrates, truth (and morality) was to be found externally, in culture and tradition, and thus in an objective sense. Kierkegaard learned from Socrates the value of the individual’s subjectivity in the pursuit of truth; that truth can be internal without devolving into relativist nihilism. The Danish philosopher appropriated what he had learned from Socrates methodologically in the self-declared “Socratic task” of auditing “the definition of what it is to be a Christian.”[i] Behind Kierkegaard’s authorship is “the task of becoming a Christian.”[ii] This applies to helping others—as a Socratic midwife!—to become Christian and, relatedly, to Kierkegaard’s own willingness accept the inexpressible grace of being sacrificed by the Danish Church—those self-declared Christians actually oriented to money. Kierkegaard ironically exclaims, “I am not a Christian.”[iii] Such irony! “I do not call myself a Christian,” Kierkegaard wrote strategically, “but I can make it manifest that the others are that even less.”[iv] Herein lies the acceptance of being sacrificed in the interest of truth. Kierkegaard observed that “’Christendom’ lies in an abyss of sophistry that is even much, much worse than when the Sophists flourished in Greece.”[v] The success of comfortable pastors justifying their earthly wealth theologically under the auspices of the Prosperity Gospel renders the Socratic Kierkegaard still relevant today.[vi] Fortunately, Kierkegaard would assure us that the individual Christian can still find truth within rather than outwardly comprehending the doctrines that the pastors, whose claim to being Christians is dubious at best, claim to know. In this essay, I show how Kierkegaard appropriates Socrates’ method in service of this point. The Danish philosopher gained from his Greek model the tools with which to undercut the doctrines as knowable (by the theologians and pastors), so he could privilege becoming and being a Christian as a matter of personally discovered inward faith yet without positive epistemological content getting in the way.
For Socrates, rather than demonstrating a thesis, the result to be achieved is “purely negative . . . no positive definition has survived the critical examination.”[vii] Socrates, the gadfly of Athens, picks apart Euthyphro’s presumed knowledge of piety while claiming to be ignorant, and yet ironically it is Euthyphro’s knowledge that is found wanting. To be sure, Socrates leaves nothing positive (i.e., aporia), and yet, ironically, this is wisdom! Kierkegaard takes on Socrates’ role as the single individual who does not fit into the crowd, insisting that he himself is not a Christian as he reduced the leaders of the crowd to aporia. The Danish church functionaries must have viewed this project as a provocation.
Socrates’ privileging of the subjective of the individual over Greek tradition resulted in the charge of “corrupting the youth.” Likewise, Kierkegaard’s question, “what does it mean to be a Christian,” was provocative to his contemporaries (e.g., pastors and theologians) for whom there was no reason to ask the question; they were satisfied with the externals.[viii] Indeed, Kierkegaard wrote of the late Bishop Mynster that he had been all too satisfied in his paid position to qualify as an “authentic truth-witness.”[ix]
The subjective quest for truth inwardly is inherently threatening to the self-appointed guardians of doctrinal truth because the mind and heart of the single individual is beyond reach. The individual Christian can believe that Jesus is her savior as a matter of faith and yet not be able to communicate the paradox even to her pastor, who is ensconced in the universal below the individual of faith. Kierkegaard argues in Fear and Trembling that the absurd of faith is above the universal (e.g., the ethical, the rational, language, etc.). Put another way, an individual taking the god’s commands on faith is above being able to comprehend them. The self-contradiction from the divine-commands revealed to Abraham cannot be made sense of, much less communicated to the crowd.
Communicating faith would distort its inner nature, as language is of the universal, so clerics and theologians cannot get at the faith held by individuals. Therefore, theologians cannot compare what an individual accepts in the inwardness of her private heart to the value of comprehending doctrines, so no judgment can legitimately be made. This can only be frustrating to clerics for whom the subjectivity beyond reach of other people can only be perceived as an obstacle to be overcome. Whereas the typical pastor looks to the collective of his congregation, Kierkegaard esteems the single individual above the crowd. Similar to ethics to Socrates, inward faith to Kierkegaard cannot be delegated to the collective but must reside within the individual.[x]
Emphasizing the element of subjectivity that Socrates introduced into the field of ethics, Kierkegaard claims “there is something infinitely important and valuable in each individual, but to get at this one must occasionally get away from the crowd. . . . one must focus instead on one’s own inwardness and religiosity.”[xi] This subterranean ground of faith is unfathomable by the theologians whose doctrinal knowledge—a corruption—is subject to the irony and negative aporia that Kierkegaard appropriates from Socrates.
In Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard applies Socrates’ method of aporia to the doctrine of the Incarnation. On the chopping-block are the “Sophist” theologians who have claimed quite astonishingly to know the absolutely different unknown, which cannot be known even though reason is drawn to the frontier. Socrates claims in Phaedrus that he does not contemplate the gods because he is trying to know himself, and he is ignorant of himself. Kierkegaard sees in this a paradox: namely, the desire “to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.”[xii] Specifically, “(t)he understanding wants to grasp what is unknown, and is constantly frustrated when it encounters what is unknown. This unknown must be something that is absolutely different, since if it were similar to us, we could know it by recognizing certain aspects that we’re familiar with. The human mind can’t grasp what’s absolutely different.”[xiii] If Kierkegaard, and by implication, Socrates are correct, such knowledge cannot possibly be requisite to salvation, for such knowledge is impossible. Put another way, if the god extends beyond the limits of human reason and perception, then the divine must eclipse the grasp of the human mind, and must instead be grasped inwardly by the human heart in faith that surpasses all understanding.
In the doctrine of the Incarnation, the god-man is “the unity of God and an individual human being.”[xiv] This involves an unresolvable paradox: the eternal and infinite god becoming temporal and finite. “The God-man is the paradox, absolutely the paradox. Therefore it is altogether certain that the understanding must come to a standstill on it.”[xv] How is it that a particular human being can be the god? Doesn’t this ignore the abyss that separates Creation from its Creator? Socrates was “on guard duty,” Kierkegaard points out, “keeping watch so that the deep gulf of qualitative difference between [God and mankind] was maintained . . . that God and man did not merge in some way . . . into one.”[xvi] So unlike Hegel, Kierkegaard claims the contradiction in the absolute paradox of the god becoming flesh as Jesus cannot be mediated in the sense of being synthesized within a higher organic structure. The paradox must simply be accepted on faith in the heart of the individual Christian—something beyond the reach of the cleric and thus inherently suspect.
Similarly, in Stages on Life’s Way, Kierkegaard is amazed that theologians think they have understood the doctrine of Jesus forgiving sins. “Surely,” Kierkegaard has Socrates say, “what you are asking about is a difficult matter, and it has always amazed me that so many could believe that they understood a teaching such as that; but it has amazed me even more that some people have even understood much more.”[xvii] For instance, theologians think that the post-forgiveness state is identical to the initial immediacy between the god and humans, and yet how do those Christian “thinkers” know this? The faith grasped inwardly in the heart of the individual is on much more solid ground—on this ground I will build my Church, Jesus says of Peter’s inward faith not built on understanding. Doctrines such as the Incarnation and the Forgiveness of Sins “are to be accepted in inwardness and passion” rather than understood and comprehended.[xviii] Hence Kierkegaard applied Socratic aporia to any positive content of the understanding regarding the theological doctrines.
So—and this is extremely relevant in churches today!—rather than delivering expository sermons, pastors should be conversational, Kierkegaard insisted, as the Socratic dialogues are. Like Socrates and Kierkegaard, the sermonizer should be a midwife of sorts, rather than a source of doctrinal “knowledge,” urging parishioners to look inward for faith that surpasses all understanding. A good pastor should take look back to Socrates as “the occasion for the student to arrive at the truth.”[xix]  Socrates doesn’t teach the truth.  Likewise, Kierkegaard points out that Jesus “is the occasion for his followers to learn the truth.”[xx] So Socrates’ notion of midwifery can be useful for contemporary clerics. For Socrates, the idea is that “though his questioning and conversation, the individual is led to find the truth within himself. . . . So also with the sermon, the pastor instead of simply preaching some external fact or bit of knowledge, encourages the individual members of the congregation to find the truth of Christianity in themselves—each in their own way. Every follower of Christ must appropriate the Christian message for him or herself.”[xxi] A preacher can only go so far externally, and each Christian is thus tasked with having to search his or her heart for glimpses of the truth held inwardly.
In conclusion, the truth according to both Socrates and Kierkegaard is something inward—something that a person must appropriate for himself. Because the truth is presumed to exist, and is the object of the quest for faith, the subjectivity does not devolve into relativism and nihilism. In other words, truth keeps subjectivity from becoming its own anchor. Truth is above the universal, which includes ethics and even language; hence, to Kierkegaard, “Christianity is concerned with the inwardness of each and every individual; it’s about the passion of the individual in the face of certain ideas that are paradoxical, absurd, and contradictory.”[xxii] Reasoning can only go part of the route, and thus doctrinal Christianity too falls short. Using Socrates’ method, Kierkegaard wanted to “undermine the different positive doctrines about Christianity” in order to return to the paradox, absurdity, and contradiction that are intrinsic in Christianity “as a sort of inward disposition that focuses on the individual subject.”[xxiii] This point is relevant to clergy today, as sermons can indeed be reoriented to honor and facilitate (as a midwife) the individual’s inner birth of faith. In other words, the Socratic Kierkegaard connection is indeed still relevant, as Christianity still has its externally and collectively oriented doctrinal truth-sayers who presume even just that truth can be known, even at the expense of the single individual's leap of faith in accepting, like Abraham, the absurd and also the absolutely paradoxical; both of which transcend the limits of human cognition and perception and thus cannot be comprehended.

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[i] Soren Kierkegaard, The Moment, in The Moment and Late Writings, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, trans.  (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 341

[ii] Soren Kierkegaard, The Point of View: On My work as an Author, the Point of View for my Work as an Author, Armed Neutrality, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, trans. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 55.

[iii] Soren Kierkegaard, The Moment, in The Moment and Late Writings, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, trans.  (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 340.

[iv] Ibid., 341.

[v] Ibid.
[vi] On the historical shift in theological interpretation from anti-wealth to pro-wealth, see Skip Worden, God's Gold (Seattle, WA: Amazon, 2016).

[vii] Jon Stewart, University of Copenhagen, Lecture (2016).

[viii] Peter Sajda, from Jon Stewart, University of Copenhagen, Lecture (2016).

[ix] Soren Kierkegaard, The Moment, in The Moment and Late Writings, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, trans.  (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).

[x] Peter Sajda, from Jon Stewart, University of Copenhagen, Lecture (2016).

[xi] Jon Stewart, University of Copenhagen, Lecture (2016).

[xii] Soren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, trans. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 37.

[xiii] Jon Stewart, University of Copenhagen, Lecture (2016).

[xiv] Soren Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, trans.  (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 82.

[xv] Ibid.

[xvi] Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, trans. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 99.

[xvii] Soren Kierkegaard, Stages on Life’s Way, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, trans. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 482.

[xviii] Jon Stewart, University of Copenhagen, Lecture (2016).

[xix] Ibid.

[xx] Ibid.

[xxi] Ibid.

[xxii] Ibid.

[xxiii] Ibid.