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

Assisted dying

Care

Comment

Politics

7 May 2025

4 min read

Assisted dying is not a medical procedure; it is a social one

Another vote, and an age-related amendment, highlight the complex community of care.

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

Graffiti reads 'I miss me' with u crossed out under the 'mem'

Sidd Inban on Unsplash.

Scottish Parliament’s Assisted Dying bill will go to a stage one vote on Tuesday 13th May, with some amendments having been made in response to public and political consultation. This includes the age of eligibility, originally proposed as 16 years. In the new draft of the bill, those requesting assistance to die must be at least 18.

MSPs have been given a free vote on this bill, which means they can follow their consciences. Clearly, amongst those who support it, there is a hope that raising the age threshold will calm the troubled consciences of some who are threatening to oppose. When asked if this age amendment was a response to weakening support, The Times reports that one “seasoned parliamentarian” (unnamed) agreed, and commented:

“The age thing was always there to be traded, a tactical retreat.”

The callousness of this language chills me. Whilst it is well known that politics is more of an art than a science, there are moments when our parliamentarians literally hold matters of life and death in their hands. How can someone speak of such matters as if they are bargaining chips or military manoeuvres? But my discomfort aside, there is a certain truth in what this unnamed strategist says.

When Liam McArthur MSP was first proposed the bill, he already suggested that the age limit would be a point of debate, accepting that there were “persuasive” arguments for raising it to 18. Fortunately, McArthur’s language choices were more appropriate to the subject matter. “The rationale for opting for 16 was because of that being the age of capacity for making medical decisions,” he said, but at the same time he acknowledged that in other countries where similar assisted dying laws are already in operation, the age limit is typically 18.

McArthur correctly observes that at 16 years old young people are considered legally competent to consent to medical procedures without needing the permission of a parent or guardian. But surely there is a difference, at a fundamental level, between consenting to a medical procedure that is designed to improve or extend one’s life and consenting to a medical procedure that will end it?

Viewed philosophically, it would seem to me that Assisted Dying is actually not a medical procedure at all, but a social one. This claim is best illustrated by considering one of the key arguments given for protecting 16- and 17- year-olds from being allowed to make this decision, which is the risk of coercion. The adolescent brain is highly social; therefore, some argue, a young person might be particularly sensitive to the burden that their terminal illness is placing on loved ones. Or worse, socially motivated young people may be particularly vulnerable to pressure from exhausted care givers, applied subtly and behind closed doors.

Whilst 16- and 17- year-olds are considered to have legal capacity, guidance for medical staff already indicates that under 18s should be strongly advised to seek parent or guardian advice before consenting to any decision that would have major consequences. Nothing gets more major than consenting to die, but sadly, some observe, we cannot be sure that a parent or guardian’s advice in that moment will be always in the young person’s best interests. All of this discussion implies that we know we are not asking young people to make just a medical decision that impacts their own body, but a social one that impacts multiple people in their wider networks.

For me, this further raises the question of why 18 is even considered to be a suitable age threshold. If anything, the more ‘adult’ one gets, the more one realises one’s place in the world is part of a complex web of relationships with friends and family, in which one is not the centre. Typically, the more we grow up, the more we respect our parents, because we begin to learn that other people’s care of us has come at a cost to themselves. This is bound to affect how we feel about needing other people’s care in the case of disabling and degenerative illness. Could it even be argued that the risk of feeling socially pressured to end one’s life early actually increases with age? Indeed, there is as much concern about this bill leaving the elderly vulnerable to coercion as there is for young people, not to mention disabled adults. As MSP Pam Duncan-Glancey (a wheelchair-user) observes, “Many people with disabilities feel that they don’t get the right to live, never mind the right to die.”

There is just a fundamental flawed logic to equating Assisted Dying with a medical procedure; one is about the mode of one’s existence in this world, but the other is about the very fact of it. The more we grow, the more we learn that we exist in communities – communities in which sometimes we are the care giver and sometimes we are the cared for. The legalisation of Assisted Dying will impact our communities in ways which cannot be undone, but none of that is accounted for if Assisted Dying is construed as nothing more than a medical choice.

As our parliamentarians prepare to vote, I pray that they really will listen to their consciences. This is one of those moments when our elected leaders literally hold matters of life and death in their hands. Now is not the time for ‘tactical’ moves that might simply sweep the cared-for off of the table, like so many discarded bargaining chips. As MSPs consider making this very fundamental change to the way our communities in Scotland are constituted, they are not debating over the mode of the cared-for’s existence, they are debating their very right to it.