Essay

Church and state

Creed

Politics

20 February 2025

7 min read

How to test the religious claims made on Trump

An old Puritan offers a way to question the assertions.

Anthony Baker

Anthony is a theology professor at Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas.

A montage shows a bishop, a preacher and a president being looked down upon by a puritan.

Jonathan Edwards considers.

Christian theological language is a fairly constant garnish to the dish that is American political theater. In recent weeks, however, with the rhetoric responding to the initiation of Donald Trump's second term, such language has arguably shifted into a substantial side dish, if not the main course.

At the Inauguration, Rev. Franklin Graham prayed, "Father, when Donald Trump’s enemies thought he was down and out, you and you alone saved his life and raised him up with strength and power by your mighty hand." He compared the new President to Moses and Samuel of the Hebrew Scriptures, and implied that the years of the Biden administration were akin to Israel's years of enslavement in Egypt.

The President himself made a bold claim of divine intervention in Inaugural address:

"I was saved by God to make America great again."

Christians, however, are far from united in this interpretation. Pope Francis suggested prior to the election that American voters were facing a choice between two evils. He has since called Trump's mass deportation plans "a disgrace." The Episcopal Bishop of Washington went viral just after the Inauguration when she called on the newly elected President to amend his rhetoric around sexuality and immigration in the name of mercy: "Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were once strangers in this land."

The discipline of theology can seem like an exercise in evaluating faith language against the grid of personal conviction. Rev. Graham has his theology, Pope Francis his, Bishop Budde hers. But as any true student of theology knows, the tradition is rich with critical tools that go far beyond private taste or political orientation.

Good theology acts as a grammar for the language of Christians. Think of how German or French has rules that keep our subjects and objects aligned and that connect propositions and antecedents. Sentence-diagramming, that dreaded rite of passage for the language student, shows those connections visually on a chalkboard. Cumbersome as they are, such structures allow us to make the most sense possible when we go to put thoughts into words.

So too in the language of faith traditions: we can fail to make sense by ignoring the long evolution of "grammar" that is that tradition's critical reflection on its own faith.

What forms and structures might allow us to evaluate claims about whether or not God's hand is at work in the election and vision of a new U.S. President?

Divine intervention never shows up "full strength," given that it only ever arrives through the words and acts of human beings.

In the eighteenth century, American Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards weighed in on arguments about whether God was at work in the movement of revivals that we have since taken to calling the First Great Awakening. His careful evaluation of arguments and claims for and against the revivals could serve as a model for evaluating the political theology of our day.

Edwards is most famous for his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," a text that my high school English teacher justly called a stunning piece of rhetoric and an alarming bit of theology. Less famous, though, are the writings that explore the true center of his theological vision. For Edwards, the world was created out of the bounty of God's own character. Call it a theological aesthetic: God delights in the beauty of his own goodness and truth, and so makes a world whose character is, at its best, a reflection of of a good and beautiful God.

This aesthetic runs like a soft bass line through his short treatise The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God. This work opens with a passage from the first Epistle of John. The writer says that Christians should not believe every spirit, but rather "try the spirits whether they are of God." Edwards is surprised to find that this invitation is not one that his contemporary theological evaluators have taken up. There's his aesthetic running in the background: If God made us to be Godlike, then we ought to be vigilant in our attention to the energies sweeping through the world, and certainly "try them" before we decide to trust or mistrust them as the presence of God's own Spirit.

When he addresses those who deny that the hand of God is at work the Awakening, he takes seriously their criticism that some preachers are excessive, or harmful, or even riddled with errors in their sermons. Edwards doesn't disagree or defend such preachers, but rather reminds the reader that one must consider the distance between the eternally holy and righteous God and the temporally limited and fallible creature. God made us to be Godlike, but that likeness is a calling, not a presumption. For this reason, "If some fall away into gross errors or scandalous practices, it is no argument that the work in general is not the work of the Spirit of God." In fact, "if we look into church history, we shall find no instance of a great revival of religion but what has been attended with many such things." In effect, humans are imperfect receptors of divine transmission. Acknowledgement of our imperfection is not a denial of divine activity. This is, for Edwards, as for the whole of the theological tradition, a key principle of good theological grammar. Divine intervention never shows up "full strength," given that it only ever arrives through the words and acts of human beings.

The "proof" of God's hand, theologically speaking, is not in the strength of one's conviction or in the number of people who hold it.

When he turns from what might negate the claim of divine action to what might affirm it, Edwards says, first of all, that a growing affection for Christian teachings is an integral part of such evidence. "The devil has the most bitter and implacable enmity" against the whole story of the virgin birth and the redemption wrought by Jesus' death and resurrection. If people begin falling in love with the beauty of the story, he suggests, it is a pretty solid indicator that God is at work.

But this alone is not sufficient evidence, if for no other reason, Edwards says, than that there are false prophets who mislead even as they speak in ways that sound pious. For this reason, a love of truth-telling supplies a touchstone for our theological grammar. "If we see that a spirit operates as a spirit of truth, leadings persons to truth, convincing them of those things that are true, we may safely determine it is a right and true spirit." For Edwards, if I speak out loudly in favor of the divinity of Christ while lying about my own actions or intentions, you should not trust that I am a faithful witness to the work of the Holy Spirit.

But the most important of all marks of the work of the Spirit of God is neither of these; or perhaps, it is a mark that lies within and shapes all other evidences. Edwards says that "humble love" of God and fellow humans is the "highest evidence of a true and divine Spirit." The adjective here is important: a love that is self-aggrandizing is not the love that shares in God's own character.

Here again the aesthetic sounds the bass line: God's love changes us like a beautiful memory or a lovely person does. We want to belong there, we want to be like that. If the energy, the spirit, sweeping through a culture is not that sort of energy, then it's likely not the work of the lovingly humble God.

Edwards ends his own treatise by grading the revivals on his grammatical grid, and determining that it is, in fact, the work of God. For our current moment in U.S. society, the evidence is not yet in. Will the Trump administration cause an increase in affection for Christian teachings? Will it explode in an epidemic of truth-telling and a cultural outrage at falsehood? Will the policies and practices of the next four years demonstrate humble love? If so, Christians will have good reason to attest that the interpretations of leaders like Reverend Graham are accurate.

The "proof" of God's hand, theologically speaking, is not in the strength of one's conviction or in the number of people who hold it. It is rather in the humility, Christian devotion, and the divine and neighborly love that grows from the events in question.

On this note, Bishop Budde's admonition invites a reading that not far from the theological grammar that Edwards supplies. "You have felt the providential hand of a loving God," she reminded the President. "In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now." If it was in fact God's mercy that spared you, it was so that you could be merciful. The proof of providence will be in the pudding of practice, Mr. Trump.

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Article

Climate

Comment

Politics

27 November 2024

7 min read

Neighbours, nimbys, and politician power plays

Is there a politics that takes both love of the land and climate concerns seriously?

Joel Pierce

Joel Pierce is the administrator of Christ's College, University of Aberdeen. He has recently published his first book.

A sign protesting a proposed wind farm stands on flat moorland.

A Scottish wind farm protest sign.

Richard Webb, Wikimedia Commons.

It was easy to forget the fury of the past few winters in the gentle light of the golden autumn which enveloped our corner of rural Aberdeenshire over the past month. The scars Storm Arwen tore through the landscape three years ago, toppling whole hillsides of trees, and the flood-soaked fields of last winter were hard to conjure when faced with the thousand colours that painted the landscape. The smoky green of pine forests in twilight, the shocking scarlet of apples my daughters picked from our neighbour’s tree, the little violet fireworks of elderberry clusters hanging above the path to our house, these chased away worries about the future and the past and demanding attention to the present. Amid this array, it was easy to see why Queen Victoria chose our corner of Scotland for her rural retreat over a century and a half ago. The changing of the season has something of the eternal, sacred, and inviolable in it. “Let the field be joyful and all that is therein; then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice,” sang the ancient Psalmist. Surely, if ever a land was obedient to this command, it was our valley’s, this October. Surely too, it is our duty to preserve it so that it can sing out for a thousand more such autumns?

This drive to preserve is evident in the signs that appear regularly on fences as you drive through our valley. “STOP MONSTER PYLONS” and “NO WINDFARM ON HILL OF FARE” they say in capital letters large enough to communicate their creators’ anger. Our valley, which connects the Highlands to the sea, is prime real estate for the sorts of development necessary to transform the UK economy, which still gets 77 per cent of its energy from burning fossil fuels, into one built on renewable energy. Our hills are ideal for turbines and our land must be crossed if transmission lines are to carry electricity from wind farms in the north to population centres like Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, and London. To many of my neighbours this sort of construction amounts to an industrialisation of the countryside, an irreversible scarring of pristine land in service of interests far away which care little for them. This view is common enough that almost all of the local village councils have expressed opposition to the developments. When my neighbours are characterised by senior government ministers as “the blockers, the delayers, the obstructionists”, I suspect it only hardens their resolve.

It is not hard to imagine Adam the gardener or Abel the shepherd attending to their land and animals with similar care to that of my neighbours.

Sometimes I wonder if what politicians have in mind when they think of my neighbours are the sorts of toffs featured in Rivals for whom the countryside is a playground of upper-class indulgence. I am not rich. Neither are most of my immediate neighbours, many of whom rely on waiting tables at the local farm shop or cleaning holiday lets to make ends meet. My understanding is that most of the local farmers consider themselves lucky if they turn any profit at all from their long and exhausting hours. Every year we wonder if there will be enough pupils to keep our local primary school open. Every winter we prepare for the inevitable interruptions caused by power cuts, school closures, and unplowed roads.

If I had to guess at what keeps my neighbours here it is the land itself, watching and admiring it, caring for it, aligning the rhythms of their life to it. Autumn can be wonderful, but so too is spring. I drive to work past newborn lambs trying out their stilt-like legs, anticipate the sudden return of house martins to their nests under our eves, and enjoy weekend walks up the hillsides amid the sun-yellow mazes of coconut-scented gorse bushes. Each season land presents itself to us, demands our attention, calls for our admiration.

In the two creation stories of Genesis, what it is to be human is to be made in the image of God and to be given the task of tilling and keeping the land, respectively. A way of reading these together is that humans are to be priests to creation, recognising and praising its beauty and caring for it in a way which reflects God’s love for it. In my last article for Seen & Unseen, I discussed philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s concept of practices and how the human activities he identifies as practices can order and give meaning to our lives and communities. Another way of thinking about these practices is that they are all, in some way, an expression of this original edenic imperative, to see, to respond to, and to care for God’s creation. If this is true of any practice, it is perhaps most transparent in rural ones. It is not hard to imagine Adam the gardener or Abel the shepherd attending to their land and animals with similar care to that of my neighbours.

The practices we engage in have a way of becoming enmeshed with our identity in such a manner that it can be hard to imagine ourselves without them. That is why, I believe, opposition to wind farms and pylons runs so deep here, and why, as geographer Patrick Devine-Wright has demonstrated, attempts to offset the financial downsides of developments through local grant programmes and other compensation do very little to swing public opinion in favour of development. As he demonstrates, at the root of such opposition is an affective attachment to the land, one that money cannot buy away and which resists even the most well-reasoned arguments which attempt to ignore it.

And yet, I know, my neighbours know, that all is not well with the land. Although we draw sizable crowds on Easter and Christmas, the most packed I’ve ever seen our parish church was when a locally born climate scientist came to present his research on Antarctica. He walked us through what it is like to live there, how scientists survive the winters, and what they eat, but all anyone was interested in the Q&A that followed is what can be done about climate change. It is hard to ignore it. It is there in the good and the bad: in the pleasant, nearly tropical breeze that ushered my children from house to house on Halloween; in a mild winter making ticks and Lyme’s disease a regular visitor; and in the onslaught of storms felling fifty year old forests in a single night and cutting road and railway connections to the rest of Britain for days on end. If we are to keep these changes from becoming more extreme, if we are going to bequeath to our grandchildren a countryside with the beauties admired by Queen Victoria and countless others, we need to slow this change. We need to move away from fossil fuels and to renewably generated electricity and given that, as I said above, 77 per cent of our energy is still made by burning carbon, we need to produce not just a little more electricity, but a lot. The answer to the oft repeated question, “Wouldn’t these be better, if they were built somewhere else?” is that, yes, they will need to be built somewhere else and here, and in many other places, if we are going to get anywhere close to a carbon-free future.

The land will be changed either way. Our choice is some scarring now, or a terminal decline later.

What might a politics look like that both took my neighbours’ attachment to the land and these realities seriously? What it shouldn’t be is one that castigates my neighbours for that attachment. That only feeds suspicions that what is really at play is an exploitation of the countryside to feed the excesses of the cities. Such exploitation runs deep in the folk memory of Scotland. The Clearances only lightly touched our valley, but a little travel here or there takes one by abandoned villages. Those who resisted then, clinging tightly to their land, also might have been called blockers, delayers, and obstructionists by modernising absentee landlords the sitting rooms of their Edinburgh townhouses, intent on replacing them with more profitable sheep.

However, the possibility exists for drawing my neighbours’ attachment to the land into the conversation about why these developments are needed. The land, the planet, is sick, and sometimes the scars of a necessary surgery are a price worth paying for survival. The alternative to roads rising up our hills to turbines and to transmission lines cutting through now fertile fields is a future of longer droughts, hotter heat waves, and more extreme storms, bringing with them infertile fields, forest fires, and landslides. The land will be changed either way. Our choice is some scarring now, or a terminal decline later.

But for such a rhetoric to work, politicians need to be serious about everyone bearing someone of the burden of climate solutions, both here in the UK and across the world. It can be tempting to give up hope in this regard. More than one article about our area has cited farmers complaining about how what we do won’t really matter anyway since China and India will burn away any positive effects of renewables here. But there are problems closer to home too. When UK governments and traders gush about the possibilities of new, power-hungry technologies like AI and cryptocurrency it can give any discussion of net-zero an air of unreality. Turbines and transmission lines can be part of caring for the land and can be shown to be in continuity with those other practices of care, but if other changes aren’t made, they will be as useful as a keyhole surgery on a patient who is bleeding out.