Image thanks to Clker-Free-Vector-Images
Jesus wept because we don’t know the ways that make for peace. Jesus wept. How many preachers didn’t offer a lament but had a prayer for our soldiers? I don’t know the answer to the question but if I did we would have a strong indication of where preachers stand in relation to Trump’s War.
The NYT reports 59% of Americans oppose the war. As a preacher of the Prince of Peace, I am not ambivalent. I am not beating the war drums. I call for the end of war. War is evil. War is killing. War is unjust. I feel I must speak to our nation because war defines American political identity along with its twin, Mammon. War and Wealth – where Empire rises and falls.
A preacher worth his or her salt will go forth to confront the twin gods War and Wealth.
Where does a preacher turn when he feels called to offer a word that will not be well received in many circles, but remains a word the preacher must speak in faithfulness to God, his people, and his call to preach?
I confess to feeling a bit like Jeremiah: If I say, “I will not mention him
or speak any more in his name,”
then within me there is something like a burning fire
shut up in my bones;
I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot (Jeremiah 20:9).
I am cut from the same cloth as Will Campbell who said, “War is about killing. Most sadly it is about killing children.” Unwilling to comfort the afflicted, Campbell went on, “For certain, our nation has done its share of killing children. From the Trail of Tears to Dresen to Hiroshima to My Lai to Waco to Iran. The Iranians buried 160 children killed by the bombing of an elementary school in Trump’s war. “Ah, we have killed children, all right.” I am also upheld by the teaching of Stanley Hauerwas and a host of Christians in the peace movement, fellow pacifists. I have been schooled in the Anabaptist tradition and offer one example, Chris Huebner’s A Precarious Peace.
I have prayed over this moment, the words I have prepared, and the situation America faces in our war with Iran. I don’t take pleasure in speaking against the policies of our elected government, but I can’t be distracted from the necessity of opposing this war.
In I Kings 22 there is the account of a preacher who warned the king against going to war. His name was Micaiah.
A preacher has the license to enter a text at any point so I am coming in the back door of my text. According to the narrator, a certain spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, ‘I will entice Ahab.’ ‘How?’ the Lord asked him. He replied, ‘I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’”
I
Preachers will lie
Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about four hundred of them, and said to them, “Shall I go to battle against Ramoth-gilead, or shall I refrain?” They said, “Go up, for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.” Zedekiah son of Chenaanah made for himself horns of iron, and he said, “Thus says the Lord: With these you shall gore the Arameans until they are destroyed.” 12 All the prophets were prophesying the same and saying, “Go up to Ramoth-gilead and triumph; the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.”
MAGA evangelicals lie about Armageddon and the rapture. They lied about Trump being “God’s anointed.” They lied about Trump’s lies. They lied about Trump’s moral failures. They lied about the “hush money” paid to Stormy Daniels.” They lied about the 2020 election and the J6 insurrections. MAGA evangelicals are the lying prophets of the land. Jeremiah had no use for lying prophets. “They all deceive their neighbors, and no one speaks the truth; they have taught their tongues to speak lies; they commit iniquity and are too weary to repent” (Jeremiah 9:5).
They are still lying about secular political power being the power of God unto salvation.
Let’s not beat around the proverbial bush. The lying spirit has whispered in the ears of the MAGA evangelical preachers and they have repeated the same lies to President Trump and the nation. We are a people flooded by lying preachers and false prophets.
I know I speak against the president’s sanctuary and all his gathering of apostles and prophets. I know America is a temple unto herself. I realize American is now Church and war is America’s liturgy. The independent pentecostals who make up the Dominionists – the Seven Mountains Dominionists, the MAGA evangelicals, the premillennial dispensationalist rapture believers will condemn these remarks. They will swear I am not realistic. Philosopher Charles Taylor observed, “It is easier to be unreservedly confident in your own righteousness when you are the hegemonic power.”
The assembled rhetoric of incontinence pouring forth from MAGA preachers doesn’t deter me. I have listened to these “court preachers” tell us war is America’s central liturgical act necessary to renew our sense that we are a nation unlike other nations. I have listened to them pontificate that American possesses a righteousness lacking in all other nations. Such holy pretensions must weigh heavy on the heads of the “anointed” required to repeat that we are a Christian nation founded by Christian men.
I believe the hollowing out of the evangelical prophetic tradition is the biggest casualty of this war. The evangelical prophetic tradition has been emptied out. They have been co-opted by money and the prosperity gospel and by Trump and secular political power.
There are people who love this war. President Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth love this war. MAGA preachers love this war. The evangelical prophetic tradition has been hollowed out. When the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright condemned America for lying to her people and oppressing her people and said not “God bless America,” but “God damn America,” he was blasted by hollowed-out, sold-out Christian nationalists preachers.
The evangelical prophetic tradition, a part of it that really matters, was once the Baptists who helped Thomas Jefferson craft the first amendment. And now they have deserted the wall of separation and are working to demolish it. Evangelical dissenters were the voices leading to the abolition of slavery, the voices insisting on a government of the people, a democratic government, the voices standing up for the poor, the working class, women. The evangelical prophetic tradition in tandem with the black prophetic tradition “kept American democracy from going fascist or authoritarian or autocratic.” Now, there are the driving force behind an escalating authoritarianism rooted in an imperial president and the preacher rules the roost literalism.
Now we have the merger of the evangelical tradition with the Trump imperial project. Trump has a worldview Dr. King would have rejected but the evangelical proclaim it as the “biblical worldview.” Martin would be against Trump because of his neglect of the poor and the working class and because of the military attacks on speed boats and fishing boats, because he is a war president, because he draws up kill lists. And Martin King would have nothing to do with that.
The evangelical prophetic tradition is in league with a criminal administration. Cornel West says, “We are talking about crimes against humanity—Wall Street crimes, war crimes, the crimes of the criminal justice system in the form of Jim Crow, the crimes against our working poor that have their backs pushed against the wall because of stagnant wages and corporate profits going up,” West said. “Abraham Heschel said that the distinctive feature of any empire in decline is its indifference to criminality. That is a fundamental feature of our time, an indifference to criminality, especially on top, wickedness in high places.”
II
Politicians also lie to get what they want. Timothy Synder, in On Tyranny says, “Do not obey in advance.” Investigate. Believe in truth. Question motives are rash political actions like war with Iran. Our text really shows up big time now. The story of Ahab’s attempted land grab: “Do you know that Ramoth-gilead belongs to us, yet we are doing nothing to take it out of the hand of the king of Aram?”
Ahab sounds more like Putin attempting to take Ukraine than king of the people of God. He sounds like Trump with his foolishness about Greenland and Canada. At least Ahab’s honest about his motive. Ahab takes what he wants. His royal resume already includes taking the vineyard of a poor man named Naboth because he wanted a garden.
E. J. Dionne sounds more like a prophet than a commentator when he says, Trump “ is actually trying to destroy the traditional American system.” Like the prophet Habakkuk we must stand at the watchpost and station ourselves on the rampart;” and “keep watch to see what he will” do next. His “regime change” in Iran is a prelude to his ongoing attempt at “regime change” from democracy to authoritarianism.
Pay attention to how a man runs his own household and business and know what kind of leader he will be. Trump’s been bankrupt six times and now he’s attempting to bankrupt democracy.
Ahab was a man with no restraints, no sense of accountability, one of the “takers” in our world. He went from “taking” a vineyard to attempting to take a territory he claimed as his own.
Trump consistently shows the same lack of respect for the rule of law, the institutions of democracy, and the Constitution.
III
God always has a preacher bold enough to speak truth to power
The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “There is still one other by whom we may inquire of the Lord, Micaiah son of Imlah, but I hate him, for he never prophesies anything favorable about me but only disaster.” This is a critical turning point in the drama. Can we imagine President Trump, after a meeting with his evangelical court preachers inviting Bishop Budde to the White House and asking her if he should invade Iran?
For reasons known only to Ahab, the king was not satisfied after being told by 400 prophets to go to war and God would bless him. He wanted to hear from Micaiah. This was a remarkable request.
IV
Mighty empires shudder at the startling word of God.
God’s truth teller “shall startle[d] many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him” (Isaiah 52:15).
Trump’s war has “Trump’s folly” written all over it. This is not one of his reality television shows.
Look again at the text: Ahab was shocked by the words of Micaiah: “I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains like sheep that have no shepherd, and the Lord said, ‘These have no master; let each one go home in peace.’”
There are casualties in this war not easily seen.
President Trump didn’t ask his court preachers whether he should attack Iran. They followed because they belong to a culture of war. Trump and Hegseth have married a bastardization of Christian theology making war a necessary sacrifice for the nation to have a righteousness unlike all other nations. Our soldiers are being fed the illusion of fighting the battle of Armageddon and the lie they are fighting to get into heaven. It makes a mockery of the cross of Jesus.
There’s the casualty of the Babel-like confusing of tongues: Calling war, peace; calling the devil’s work, the will of God. Calling American power our salvation.
There’s the casualty of confusing the sacrifice of war with the sacrifice of Christ. Americans are determined to live in a world of safety even when we have to go to war to make the world safe. How can we not see the cross of Jesus is the negation war? Do we not know the power of the Cross? In the cross of Christ war has been abolished. Our task is to make peace more interesting than war and to live in this world proclaiming the gospel of war’s end even as wars keep happening.
Even more concerning is the casualty to American values. A nation built on notions of equality is now bending the knee to the strong doing as they please. There are no rules. There are no limits. If he wishes to do so, President Trump can engage in total war with any nation. The arrogance of this Strong Man illusion was stated clearly by President Trump: “This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States armed forces. I built and rebuilt our military in my first administration and there is no military on earth even close to its power, strength or sophistication.”
President Trump’s contradictory attempts to justify his war are smokescreens. He basically made the decision on having a “gut feeling” Iran was going to attack. America could attack Iran because nothing prevented President Trump from going to war against Iran. President Trump has attempted to justify his war as a just war against terrorism. One of the conditions of a just war is for the war to have an end, and the war against terrorism is a war without end.
Can America summon the courage to listen to the voice opposing war and violence abroad and at home? America is enthralled by ancient gods of power and wealth. America is enslaved to a fundamentalist free market and excess capitalism, an over reliance on military power, a sold-out evangelical faith and escalating authoritarianism (Cornel West, Democracy Matters). These destructive dogmas are the four horsemen of a secular apocalypticism created by Trumpism and MAGA.
We cannot remain silent as our nation engages another cruel and senseless wars. Dr. King said, “America must continue to have, during these days of human travail, a company of creative dissenters. We need them because the thunder of their fearless voices will be the only sound stronger than the blasts of bombs and the clamor of war hysteria.”
I believe evangelical intelligence and evangelical dissent are still there. Evangelicals are not stupid. They are not completely duped. They are scared. There are still people sitting in the pews of high-steeple FBC’s around the South who silently dissent from the crazy stuff they hear from the pulpit. They have been sitting there for decades and have always believed when a preacher came along with awful ideas, “this too will pass.” Except it is not passing but gaining momentum.
Here and now we take up the Cross of Jesus and dissent from “Trump’s War.”