Another Voice

During the previous U.S. presidential administration (2017 – 2021), Russell Vought, a Christian nationalist born in 1976, served as the president’s director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Later, after his OMB days, he launched the Center for Renewing America which is positioned firmly in the vanguard of the Christian nationalist movement, anchored in the belief that a far-right interpretation of the Bible ought to dictate U.S. politics and public life.

        The Center for Renewing America, with its militant right-wing culture-war agenda, is based on the false belief that the United States was founded as a strictly Christian nation and must remain so. In fact, the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) appealed to “the laws of Nature and Nature’s God” and asserted that all had basic rights “endowed by their Creator.” But the document that actually enumerated and enshrined those rights, The U.S. Constitution, which became effective on March 4, 1789, lacked even those vaguely drawn references to a deity.

        As Donald Trump, now 78 years old, increasingly infuses his current presidential campaign with Christian trappings, his support is as strong as ever, among conservative Christians. When he was president from 2017 to 2021, Trump formed a political alliance with far-right Christians by giving them a six to three conservative majority on the Supreme Court. He appointed conservatives Neil Gorsuch in 2017, Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, and Amy Coney Barrett in 2020.

        Currently six members of the U.S. Supreme Court are Catholics: John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. They are all conservative except for Sotomayor. Along with these six Catholic justices, there are two Protestant justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Neil Gorsuch; and one Jewish, Elena Kagan. The most conservative members of the Supreme Court are now Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts, and Thomas.

        Trump’s supporters like to use religious lingo when promoting him. During a Trump campaign rally on March 18, 2024, in Dayton, Ohio, for example, many of the former president’s supporters wore T-shirts and hats — that were also sold at the rally — bearing religious slogans such as “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president” and “God, Guns & Trump.” 

        A key organization that is promoting the current Trump campaign is The Heritage Foundation, established in 1973. It is an activist U.S. conservative think tank based in Washington, DC. Kevin D. Roberts, born in 1974, has been the president of The Heritage Foundation, since 2021. Prior to assuming that role, he was the CEO of another conservative think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which contends, among other far right issues, that climate change does not exist.

        Roberts has a PhD in U.S. history from the University of Texas. He taught history at the college level before founding a Catholic K-12 school, the John Paul the Great Academy, in his hometown in Lafayette, Louisiana, which he led until a move to Wyoming. In Wyoming, he was the president of Wyoming Catholic College in the rural city of Lander. Roberts is a strong supporter of Donald Trump and holds Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, born in 1963, in high regard because he put Hungary on a conservative Christian path.

        Starting in 2022, the Heritage Foundation began publicly embracing national conservatism as its guiding ideology. In March 2023, it came as no surprise, therefore, that the Heritage Foundation, under Kevin Roberts leadership, established a cooperative relationship with the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based state-funded think tank founded in 2013. The Danube Institute is a center for ultra reactionary thought that gathers anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQ speakers who celebrate Victor Orbán’s “Christian Nationalist” project.

        Viktor Orbán, who has been Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010, is a close ally of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. Interestingly, Orbán met with Donald Trump in mid March 2024 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and the two men hit it off immediately. Trump heaped praise on Prime Minister Orbán. “There’s nobody that’s better, smarter, or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic,” the former president told a crowd gathered at his Florida resort. Trump added that the European autocrat is “a noncontroversial figure because he said, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it, right? He’s the boss and … he’s a great leader, fantastic leader.” Trump’s former chief strategist now in prison, Steve Bannon, once called Orbán “Trump before Trump”.

        Viktor Orbán, traveled to Florida again on Thursday, July 11, 2024, and met again with former President Donald Trump following the NATO summit in Washington. Orbán met with Trump at the former president’s beachside compound Mar-a-Lago and shared a photo of the two on social media with the caption: “We discussed ways to make peace. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”

        Orbán has been quite open about his determination to overthrow the concept of western democracy and replace it with what he has, on different occasions, called a “Christian democracy,” which is simply a variation on the theme of Christian nationalism.

        Heather Cox Richardson (born 1962), who is a history professor at Boston College and publishes Letters from an American, a nightly newsletter that chronicles current U.S. events, has become a strong critic of the Heritage Foundation’s close collaboration with Orbán, exemplified in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a plan for a right-wing takeover of the U.S. government under Donald Trump if elected president once again. Project 2025 lays out what is essentially a Christian nationalist vision for the United States, with Donald Trump as the sent-by-God authoritarian dictator.

        After the assassination attempt on July 13, 2024, Trump suggested that divine intervention spared his life. Clearly the attempted assassination has only increased the quasi-religious devotion of his followers. Then, on Monday, July 15th, Trump chose senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his vice-presidential running mate. Vance is just what the Trump campaign wants: a strong conservative Catholic and an energetic supporter of Project 2025.

        Project 2025 would strip tens of thousands of professional government workers of their civil service protections, create an army of political loyalists in government, ban abortion nationwide, set up immigrant detention camps, deport millions of people, repeal all climate safety regulations, and exact criminal revenge against reporters, judges, and Democrats.

        Heather Cox Richardson also reported on July 12, 2024, that Trump’s self-declared “Secretary of Retribution,” Ivan Raiklin (b. 1976), has compiled a “Deep State target list” of 350 people he wants to see arrested and punished for “treason” if Trump is reelected. The list includes Democratic and Republican elected officials, journalists considered to be Trump’s enemies, U.S. Capitol Police officers, and witnesses against Trump in his impeachment trials and the hearings concerning the events of January 6, 2021.

        There is nothing Christian about Project 2025 and there’s nothing Christian about Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism is an aberration that is focused on power and domination not on the way of Christ.

        I am not a pessimist but a realist. Our contemporary challenge is very real.

– Jack

 

Dr. John A. Dick – Leuven

Historical Theologian

Focus: Religion and Values in Contemporary Society

Email: john.dick@kuleuven.be

 

 

After my Values Clarification post on July 3rd, a number of people have asked me for a clarification about Catholic teaching about LGBTQ issues past and present. By way of response, here is my brief summary…

        The document On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons was a pastoral letter authored by the Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and delivered in Rome on October 1,1986 by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (1927 – 2022), who became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, and Archbishop Alberto Bovone (1922 – 1988), then Undersecretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Here are the key affirmations in the CDF document: “Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus, the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.”

        Six years later, the Catechism of the Catholic Church was promulgated by Pope John Paul II (1920 – 2005) on October 11, 1992, the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council (1962 – 1965). The Catechism states that sexual activity between members of the same sex is a grave sin against chastity and that homosexual attraction is objectively disordered. However, the Catechism also states that homosexuals “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.”

        On November 14, 2006, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued their own document Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care. “Because of both Original Sin and personal sin, moral disorder is all too common in our world,” the document stressed and continued, “there are a variety of acts, such as adultery, fornication, masturbation, and contraception, that violate the proper ends of human sexuality. Homosexual acts also violate the true purpose of sexuality. They are sexual acts that cannot be open to life. Nor do they reflect the complementarity of man and woman that is an integral part of God’s design for human sexuality.”

        In March 2021, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said that the Church cannot bless same-sex relationships because “God cannot bless sin”. On January 25, 2023, in an interview with the Associated Press, Pope Francis stressed that “being homosexual is not a crime. It is not a crime.” But he then clarified his statement by adding “but it is a sin” because sexual actions outside of a heterosexual marriage are sinful actions.

        Then on December 18, 2023, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published Fiducia supplicans, a declaration allowing Catholic priests to bless people who are not considered to be married by the Church, including same-sex couples. In a later clarification, it was made very clear that same-sex marriage is not considered a marriage.

        Well, although not everyone in the Church may appreciate it, our understanding of human sexuality – with its biological, emotional, psychological, relational, and spiritual dimensions — has developed historically and it continues to develop. Official Church teachings, sooner or later, must also be adapted to new understandings. We observe. We judge. And then we must act.

        Fortunately, not everyone in Church leadership is theologically time-bound in an old anthropology. A number of Western European Catholic bishops have clearly begun to call for changes in Catholic doctrine about human sexuality. Some examples: Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, S.J. (born 1958) of Luxembourg argues that “the sociological-scientific foundation of Catholic teaching on lesbian and gay people and acts is no longer correct.” It is, he believes, “time for a fundamental revision of the doctrine.” Bishop Helmut Dieser (born 1962) of Aachen, Germany said in an interview with the German paper Deutsche Welle on November 8, 2022: “Same-sex feelings and love are not an aberration, but a variant of human sexuality.” Similar statements have been made by Cardinal Reinhard Marx (born 1953), the Archbishop of Munich and Freising and head of the committee for social issues at the German Bishops’ Conference. “The catechism is not set in stone. One may also question what it says,” Cardinal Marx told the weekly magazine Stern in an interview published March 31, 2022. He stressed that “Homosexuality is not a sin…. LGBTQ+ people are part of creation and loved by God, and we are called upon to stand against discrimination.” 

        These bishops insist that Catholic leadership must acknowledge and accept historical and scientific understandings of human sexuality and formulate doctrines that reflect such an understanding.

        Large majorities of Catholics in Western Europe support legal same-sex marriage. In the United States, according to the Pew Research Center, more than than 60 percent of U.S. Catholics now support same-sex marriage. U.S. Catholics, in fact, have supported same-sex marriage since 2011. I know a few U.S. bishops who are not at all happy about that. But then, a May 2022 Gallup poll found that 71% of Americans supported same-sex marriage, and the 2022 American Values Atlas by Public Religion Research Institute found that 69% of Americans supporting same-sex marriage. And in fact, a growing number of organized religious groups in the United States have issued statements officially welcoming LGBTQ people as members and extending marriage rites to them.

        Sharing these thoughts with a friend, he said “OK but what does the Bible say?” Well, I suggested that biblical texts need to be interpreted in an historical-critical fashion: interpreting biblical documents in the light of their contemporary environment when they were first composed. Historical-critical scholars stress today that the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament texts never really understood something that today is called the “homosexual orientation,” because it was was simply taken for granted that EVERYONE was heterosexual.

        I would suggest that searching for biblical texts about what today is called the “homosexual orientation” is an anachronism. It would be just like searching for biblical texts about the best kind of cellphone or computer one should buy.

        Biblical passages often used to condemn homosexuality were actually based on the old and false assumption that all human beings are naturally only heterosexual. That biblical assumption is now scientifically proven to be incorrect. Contemporary sexual anthropology recognizes sexual orientation as an intrinsic dimension of human nature.

        What is “natural” in sexual activity will vary depending, for example, on whether a person’s natural sexual orientation is heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual.

        Homosexual acts are natural for people with a homosexual orientation just as heterosexual acts are natural for people with a heterosexual orientation.

        We do grow in our knowledge and understanding about human identity, and that growth has major theological, anthropological, and ethical implications.

        For further reading, I recommend two books by my Leuven-educated friend Todd A. Salzman and his colleague Michael G. Lawler from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.The first came out in 2015: Catholic Theological Ethics: Ancient Questions, Contemporary Responses. Todd and Michael’s most recent book has just come out: Pope Francis, Marriage, and Same-Sex Civil Unions, Foundations for the Organic Development of Catholic Sexual Doctrine. Excellent books for your local or parish library.

– Jack

Dr. John A. Dick – Leuven

Historical Theologian

Focus: Religion and Values in Contemporary Society

Email: john.dick@kuleuven.be

 

 

 

 

In the mid-1960s, a classroom teaching approach called “Values Clarification” became very popular. Professor Louis Raths (1900 – 1978), at New York University, developed materials and teaching strategies to help his students think about what they prized in life and examine their understanding of ethical decision-making. In 1966, along educators Sidney Simon (1917 – 1997) and Merrill Harmin (1928 – 2022), Louis Raths published Values and Teaching: Working with Values in Classrooms.

The thrust of the “Values Clarification” approach was to help students identify their values and reflect on them in discussions, writing, and small group work where the values often came into conflict. In effect, to help students work through their positions on positive and negative values like loyalty, truth, trust, compassion but also dishonesty, denigration, lying, selfishness, etc.

In my first years of teaching as a high school religion teacher in Michigan, I regularly used values clarification techniques in my classes and, as head of the religious education department in my local Catholic high school, I encouraged and helped colleagues do the same. During a departmental values clarification discussion, in fact, we actually changed the name of our department from “religious education department” to “Christian development department” because our concerns were not only growth in religious understanding but promoting genuine Christian living.

In my now many years of university and ongoing adult education teaching, I have always stressed that it is not enough to just discuss values but to reflect and think about the meaning of lived-out values. Values are more than words. Values are displayed in concrete actions. Some people can be very good actors when speaking-about-values but very deceptive performers of lived-out values in real life. I can think, for instance, of some contemporary actor-type politicians and actor-type religious leaders. Their focus is nice sounding PR propaganda.

This past week, after reading more than enough reactions to the recent debate between Joseph Biden and Donald Trump, I started thinking about Winston Smith, the main character and protagonist in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four and written by Eric Arthur Blair (1903 – 1950) an English novelist and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell.  Winston Smith was an employee at the Ministry of Truth and his task was promoting “doublethink.” Actually “doublethink” was a well-defined process of deception. According to Smith, the purpose of “doublethink” was: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies.”

Well, this is not 1984 but 2024. But the issues and challenges are similar. Today we greatly need values clarification to critique values-words and values-actions. Nice words can indeed be values deceptive. One cannot make a genuine values judgment about a person, an institution, or political behavior without seriously looking at values-actions.

I prefer to speak about healthy and unhealthy values-actions and offer four values clarification observations:

1. Healthy values-actions help people live in contemporary reality, accepting its ups and downs. Unhealthy values-actions are anchored in lies and deceptive falsehoods. Unhealthy values leaders sing pleasant tunes but hope no one is hearing their lyrics. They encourage anxious people to simply close their ears and eyes to what is happening around them and let someone in authority take control.

2. Healthy values-actions help people connect and build bridges with other people. Unhealthy values-actions create barriers that divide people by validating hatred, racism, misogyny, and homophobia.

3. Healthy values-actions empower people to take responsibility for their lives and the lives of others. Unhealthy values-actions are narcissistically self-focussed and stress over-powering other people in demeaning ways through abuse, control, and repression.

4. Healthy values-actions promote love, compassion, and collaboration.

We, the people of today, have quite a challenge ahead of us. But there is no reason to give up. We can collaborate and strive to be well-informed thinking people. But ACTIVE thinking people! As the famous Russian medical doctor, playwright, and short-story writer, Anton Chekhov (1860 – 1904), said: “Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.”

I have always liked Anton Chekhov, and he remains a prophetic example for us today because of his strong opposition to brutal authoritarian governmental repression. Chekhov’s key values were health, intelligence, love, and as he wrote “the most absolute freedom imaginable: the freedom from violence and lies.”

But I will round off this week’s reflection with the memorable words of Paul the Apostle in 1 Corinthians 13: “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”

– Jack

 

Dr. John A. Dick – Historical Theologian

Email: john.dick@kuleuven.be

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We Grow in Knowledge and Understanding

We Live in an Evolving World

Evolution is a fact not a theory. Evolution of life on earth has been going on for 3.5 billion years. Anthropologists have discovered that the first humans (Homo Sapiens) most likely developed in the Horn of Africa between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago. Cave paintings and rock paintings began to emerge on multiple continents some 30,000 years ago. The physical universe, our planet, and all living organisms are still evolving.

        It is amazing that only in the last 400 years people have begun to appreciate the size of the universe in which we live and and how long it has existed. The observable universe is more than 46 billion light-years in any direction from Earth and about 93 billion light-years in diameter.

        The sixteenth century brought a tremendous change in cosmological understanding thanks to astronomers like Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543), Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642), and Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630).

        Not just our understanding of the universe, but religious understandings have evolved as well. It is widely accepted among contemporary biblical scholars, for example, that the ancient Israelites were originally polytheistic. The transition from polytheism to monotheism was a multifaceted process that occurred from the 9th to 6th centuries BCE. The belief that Yahweh alone is God was solidified during the Babylonian exile in the sixth century, when official Israelite religion finally became monotheistic. There was also a movement away from human sacrifice, which until about the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, was an acceptable part of Israelite religion. We all recall the biblical story of the near sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham, found in the book of Genesis, most probably composed around the 5th century BCE.

        When it comes to Christianity, our knowledge and understanding have grown as well. We know today that Jesus’ disciples were men AND women. And unlike some later Christian scholars, like Jerome the biblical translator, the historical Jesus did not discriminate against women in any way. Jerome (c.342 – 420) who translated the Bible into Latin (the translation that became known as the Vulgate) had a very simple view of women. To him “woman is the root of all evil.”

        Women were leaders of early Christian households and — contrary to what recent popes have maintained — women were deacons and women were presiders at celebrations of Eucharist. The Apostle Paul tells of women who were the leaders of Christian households such as Apphia in Philemon 2, and Prisca in I Corinthians 16:19. This practice is also confirmed by other texts that mention women who headed Christian communities in their homes, such as Lydia of Thyatira (Acts 16:15) and Nympha of Laodicea (Colossians 4:15).

        Today we understand that the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church” is much broader than just the Roman Catholic Church. This is not an anti-RCC statement. But a contemporary reality. And yes, I am still a Roman Catholic or as my old friend Cardinal Godfried Danneels (1933 – 2019) said, “a thoughtful, constructive, and critical Catholic.”

        Ecumenism is not about being kind to “separated brethren” but humbly living, collaborating, learning from each other, and growing in a multidimensional faith community which is the Church of Jesus Christ.

        Today we understand much better than even a hundred years ago that all religions have accumulated images that matched the culture of a particular time and place and that some people find it difficult to abandon them as new discoveries are made, and society moves on. Historical and contemporary understandings about human sexuality and gender are a good example. Last week, after reading a book about evolution, I started thinking again about Henry Morris (1918 – 2006) and his “Young Earth” creationists who insist that the Earth is only 6000 years old. Today, however, it is widely accepted by both geologists and astronomers that our Earth is roughly 4.6 billion years old.

        As my friend William Joseph, who is a priest, physicist and computer scientist, has often reminded me: ” Just as we have science and science fiction, we also have religion and religious fiction.” I strongly recommend William Joseph’s book: An Evolutionary Biography of God: Christianity in a World of Science.

        As we journey on in our lives, the challenge is to observe, reflect, ask questions, find answers, and continue on our discovery journeys as we do grow in knowledge and understanding.

        Today my wife Joske and I are celebrating our fifty-fourth wedding anniversary. Today, as well, I am happy to announce that I am resuming my Another Voice reflections. The coming months — especially in the United States — will certainly be filled with abundant religious, social, and political developments. Key issues are sure to involve the rise of authoritarianism and the abuse of religion to foster extremism.

        I welcome your thoughts and questions. Two well know TRUTH affirmations have guided me over the years: “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32) The other is the old Latin proverb Veritas Vincit (truth conquers). The challenge today of course is distinguishing truth from falsehood.

        Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, published in 1961 has contemporary 2024 significance as well: “It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”

        In the coming months, I hope we can all be supportive and prophetic truth seekers.

Jack

 

Dr. John A. Dick – Historical Theologian

Current Focus: Religion and Values in the United States

Email:  john.dick@kuleuven.be

 

Perhaps it could emerge from the current Roman Catholic synodal movement? I would like to see a Roman Catholic constitutional convention, with a broad selection of lay and ordained members, assisted by historians, theologians, and sociologists.

The task would be three-fold:

First: Draw up a constitution for the Roman Catholic Church, as one of several – very valid and important — Christian traditions. The constitution would clarify that the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Christian Community is broader than than just the Roman Catholic Church.

Secondly: Create a new administrative structure, covering all aspects of Roman Catholic ecclesiastical governance, from the bishop of Rome to local bishops and to local parishes.

Thirdly: Clearly establish that the bishop of Rome, the pope, could be a man or a woman and should be elected for a limited term of office by an international body of lay and ordained representatives. She or he would be the chairperson of an international administrative board of directors. Much of the old Vatican bureaucracy could be dismantled.

Under the new Roman Catholic Constitution, there would be no need for a papal electoral college or a smoking stove in the Sistine Chapel. The cardinal electors could be retired and hand in their red hats. The old stove that sent up white smoke when a new pope was elected could be put in a papal museum or simply recycled.

We need to move ahead. Broad-reaching church reform is necessary. But, I would emphasize that church reform is about much more than the necessary structural institutional changes.

Genuine church reform must be primarily about how people experience and live their Christianity. About one’s pattern of life. About how one lives respectfully with others and lives with self respect.

The historical Jesus did not establish or lay down any pattern or plan for church structure. He clearly did imphasize, however, a necessary pattern of life, which we see in the “Sermon on the Mount” found in Matthew 5-7. It is a message of love, compassion, and selflessness. Jesus encourages his followers to love their enemies, to forgive others, and to care for the poor and marginalized.

Paul the Apostle reminds Christians as well, in 1 Corinthians 13, that “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always hopes, always perseveres.”

Constructive and effective reformation promotes healthy religion.

For many years I promoted and conducted performance appraisals for church ministers, calling attention to signs of their involvement in healthy or unhealthy religion. I was appraised as well by colleagues.

1. Healthy religion is grounded in contemporary life with all of its ups and downs. It deals with reality not fantasy.
2. Unhealthy religion is grounded in fantasy and longings for the “good old days,” which, we know from history, were not so good for a great many people.
3. Unhealthy religion is anchored in historical ignorance and antiquated and discredited theological understandings. The disciples of Jesus, for example, were men AND women. Women DID preside at Eucharist in early Christian communities. The historical Jesus did not ORDAIN anyone.
4. Healthy religion builds bridges between people and promotes collaboration.
5. Unhealthy religion separates people into qualitative classes. It demonizes “those who don’t fit in” and validates hatred and cruelty through racism, misogyny, and homophobia.
6. Unhealthy religion imposes power OVER people in often dismissive and demeaning ways through abuse, control, repression, and coercion. It uses guilt, fear, and overly-strict rules. 
7. Healthy religion empowers people and promotes love and respect, and compassion and collaboration.

*******

Concluding thoughts for today: As I have now done for several years, starting next week I will be away from my blog for some late spring R&R. I hope to return around mid-June with fresh thoughts. Frankly, I do not want to become just another babbling old man.

For your summer reading I strongly recommend an excellent book by William G. Joseph: An Evolutionary Biography of God: Christianity in a World of Science. It is well worth reading and available on Amazon.

Bill is a Roman Catholic priest, physicist and computer scientist. He is also a very good friend. Bill brings his knowledge and awareness to bear on biblical narratives by looking at them through the scientific knowledge we have today, with attention to the profound human truths they are dealing with. In the process Bill calls us to a deeper and richer contemporary belief. I find his book energizing.

Jack

 

In the preface for a new book about Pope Pius X, pope from 1903 to 1914, Pope Francis has expressed great admiration for his early twentieth century predecessor. “I love Pius X very much, I’ve always loved him,” Francis wrote in the preface to Omaggio a Pio X (Homage to Pius X), a newly published work by Msgr. Lucio Bonora, an Italian priest who has worked for many years in the Vatican Secretariat of State.

I find admiration for Pope Pius X rather surprising. Yes, he enabled children to receive Communion at an earlier age, age 7, and he encouraged people to receive Communion regularly. But he stressed teaching of medieval scholastic philosophy and theology in Catholic institutions, and he condemned “modernist” interpretations of Catholic teachings.

Modernists sought to explain Roman Catholic theology in terms more in sync with contemporary insights from science, philosophy, psychology, and history. They understood that theological ideas are conditioned by the historical circumstances in which they are formed.

Pope Pius X denigrated Scripture scholars who were already stressing that the Bible should not be read strictly as a collection of historical documents because it contains elements of history, religious beliefs, metaphors, and imaginative descriptions of important religious people and events. Pius X also banned women from singing in church choirs. Pope Pius XII (1939 – 1958) — whose pontificate is still being evaluated — greatly admired Pope Pius X and canonized him as Saint Pius X in 1954.

 

Thinking about popes past and current, I suggest it is helpful to examine the story of the papacy. It has its factual history, but also, from the start, some significant imagined history.

And so, we start from the very beginning… Jerusalem, after the death and Resurrection of Jesus, was the first center of Christian life and preaching. The first Christian community there was led not by Peter the Apostle but by James who was a brother of Jesus of Nazareth. (According to Mark 6:3 Jesus had four brothers and two sisters. This brings up a question perhaps for a future reflection.)

Within ten years after Jesus’ death and Resurrection, Christianity had already begun to spread along the seaways and roads of the Roman Empire, northwards to Antioch, where Peter the Apostle had a leadership role among Hebrew Christians, and on to Ephesus, Corinth and Thessalonica, under the leadership of the Apostle Paul. Paul, originally known as Saul of Tarsus, was a sophisticated Greek-speaking rabbi who, unlike Jesus’ early disciples, was himself a Roman citizen.

Called the “Apostle to the Gentiles,” Paul became an enthusiastic supporter of non-Hebrew Christians. He insisted that the life and death of Jesus not only fulfilled the Hebrew Law and the Prophets but made sense of the world and offered reconciliation and peace with God for the whole human race, not just Hebrews.

And Peter? The Apostle Peter and his wife certainly belonged to the group of young men and women, most in their late teens or early twenties, who were Jesus’ close disciples. Peter, however, was never the first bishop of Rome, because the Christian community in Rome was governed not by a bishop but a group of elders: what today we would call a steering committee. Peter was, however, martyred in Rome during Emperor Nero’s persecution of Christians, which started in 64 CE right after the Great Fire of Rome. Historians put Peter’s death as well as Paul’s death between 64 and 68 CE.

By the second and third centuries, however, we see stories about Peter springing from historical suppositions, legends, and much creative imagination by people like Irenaeus of Lyons (died 202 CE) the influential early bishop in the south of France. Contrary to what some say or think, neither Peter nor Paul brought Christianity to Rome. Before Peter and Paul would have arrived, there were already Christian elders and house churches in Rome. But there was no central administrator. No bishop of Rome. At some point Peter may have been one of these elders. We really do not know for certain.

The Roman Catholic biblical scholars, Raymond Brown (1928 –1998) and John P. Meier (1942 – 2022), were emphatic in their book Antioch and Rome: New Testament Cradles of Christianity, (Paulist Press 1983): “There is no serious proof that he (Peter) was the bishop, or local ecclesiastical officer, of the Roman church: a claim not made till the third century. Most likely he did not spend any major time at Rome before 58 CE when Paul wrote to the Romans, and so it may have been only in the 60s and relatively shortly before his martyrdom that Peter came to the capital.”

Long after Peter’s death, the Christian community in Rome did come under the leadership of a single “overseer,” as bishops were called. The bishops of Rome were strongly supported by Emperor Constantine (c.272-337), who needed Christianity to unify his empire. Thanks to Constantine and the religious devotion of his mother Helena, Peter and numerous legends and suppositions about Peter developed in third and fourth century Rome. Constantine built a church — now called “Old St. Peter’s Basilica” — over what was believed to be a burial site with Peter’s bones. Old St. Peter’s Basilica stood, from the 4th to 16th centuries, where St. Peter’s Basilica stands today in Vatican City.

When the Roman Empire began to clearly fall apart in 376, the Bishop of Rome, called “pope” (from the Latin word for “father” papa) began to exercise more civil authority. Then when the Western Roman Empire finally collapsed in 476, the pope took over the clothing, pomp, and ritual of the Roman Emperors. The papal title became Pontifex Maximus — “Supreme Pontiff” — a title that had been held by the Roman Emperors.

The first great acclamation of “Peter as a pope,” did not come, however, until the fifth century. Pope Leo I, pope from 440 CE until 461 CE, greatly contributed to the development of the belief that first pope had been Peter the Apostle. The belief was based on Pope Leo’s his personal devotion and suppositions about Peter. It was not based on any historic evidence.

Certainly, since early centuries CE, there has been a long line of papal bishops of Rome. Some were kind and benevolent. Others were crafty authoritarians or simply immoral rulers. 

Pius IX, pope from 1846 to 1878, for example, was one of the crafty authoritarians. For him the most disturbing event in his long pontificate was the loss of the Papal States, which popes had controlled from 756 to 1870. But Pio Nono, as he was known in Italian, was also alarmed about “modern” intellectual problems confronting the church. He laid the foundations for the anti-modernism of his successor Pius X, when in 1864, he issued his “Syllabus of Errors,” condemning liberalism, modernism, and the separation of church and state. Roman Catholicism, he insisted, should be the state religion in all countries.

Wishing to consolidate and regain his papal power, Pio Nono created the Roman Catholic dogma of papal infallibility, which was defined dogmatically at the First Vatican Council (1869-1870) in the document Pastor aeternus. Papal power in grand form.

Three not so exemplary historic popes were Sixtus IV, Julius II, and Alexander VI.

• POPE SIXTUS IV (1471-84), established the Spanish Inquisition but had among his accomplishments as pope the construction of the Sistine Chapel and the creation of the Vatican Library. He also was known to have a substantial sexual appetite during his time as pope. He had six illegitimate children, one of them the result of incest with his sister.
• POPE JULIUS II (1503-13), called the “warrior pope” because he led the papal army in battle, had all the attributes and corruption of an unscrupulous Renaissance prince. He is now best remembered for commissioning his friend Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. His other claim to fame is that he was the first pope to be afflicted with “the French disease,” syphilis. He got it from Rome’s male prostitutes.
• And the all-time winner of course is Rodrigo Borgia, who took the name POPE ALEXANDER VI (1492-1503). He confirmed the rights of the Spanish crown in the New World, especially after the discoveries of Christopher Columbus. But Alexander became one of the most controversial of the Renaissance popes, because he acknowledged fathering several children by his mistresses. In August 1503, the pope and his son, Cesare, began suffering from Malaria. Cesare survived, but Alexander succumbed to the disease. Pope Alexander VI left behind a legacy of corruption and scandal. Although his behavior was typical of Renaissance-era popes, he became known as the embodiment of sexual imorality, lived a lavish lifestyle, and abused his power to improve his children’s futures.

 

There are, however, two medieval popes whom I do particularly appreciate. The first is Martin V (1417 to 1431), who on December 9,1425 founded the Catholic University of Leuven, my alma mater. Next year we will celebrate its six hundredth anniversary.

The other is Pope Adrian VI (1522-1523) He studied at our Catholic University of Leuven where he was ordained a priest and became, successively, professor of theology, chancellor, and rector. The great Humanist Erasmus was one of his pupils. Pope Adrian VI was resented by the Romans as an outsider. After a pontificate of barely twenty months, Adrian died on 14 September 1523. Poison was immediately suspected.

And the papal story goes on and on…In my life time so far there have been seven popes: Pius XII (1939 to 1958), John XXIII (1958 to 1963), Paul VI (1963 to 1978), John Paul I (26 August 1978 to 33 days later), John Paul II (1978 to 2005), Benedict XVI (2005 to 2013), and Francis (elected in 2013).

The future:

Certainly, high on the list of reforms for the contemporary Roman Catholic Church must be a total reform of the Roman papacy.

How refreshing it would be if the next pope would confine to a museum or sell to theatrical costume shops all the old Roman imperial dress and ritual objects and regalia. Some things could be sold on eBay.

A truly contemporary pope should adopt a more contemporary way of dressing and walking on this earth and implement a shared-decision-making leadership style. The pope should not be an authoritarian monarch.

This week, watching young children playing in our neighborhood, I thought how delightful it would be to see the young children of a married pope, riding their bikes and playing in front St. Peters. Maybe the papal husband and wife could invite local children to an Easter egg roll in front of St. Peters on Easter Sunday afternoon.

Of course, I would like to see men AND WOMEN as popes. But they should be elected for a five-year term of office by lay and ordained representatives of the global church. They could be allowed ONLY one second five-year term. Popes should be understood not as authoritarian administrators but chairpersons of the church’s board directors.

More future ideas next week…

 

 

 

 

 

 

This week’s brief reflection is a follow-up to last week’s. A number of people have asked me to clarify the meaning of faith and how it is related to religion. Yes I have touched on this in the past, but perhaps it is good to review it for followers of my blog new and old.

 

FAITH IS AN EXPERIENCE: In the Faith Experience people do have an experience of the Divine, often described under various names: God, Creator, Father, Mother, Allah, the Ground of Being, etc. To be open to the faith experience, we need quiet and reflective time.

We are often so busy doing that we neglect simply being.

Sometimes people cannot put a name on their deepest human experiences. I still remember the observation by Dag Hammarskjöld (1905 –1961) who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961. He wrote: “God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder the source of which is beyond all reason.”

And these days I resonate more and more with the words of Karl Rahner (1904-1984) one of the most influential Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century: “I must confess to you in all honesty that for me God is and has always been absolute mystery. I do not understand what God is. No one can. We have intimations, and inklings. We make faltering attempts to put mystery into words. But there is no word for it, no sentence for it.”   

BELIEF: Belief is the attempt to put into words the meaning of our Faith Experience. Belief is really theology which is “faith seeking understanding.”

RELIGION: Religion is an attempt to interpret and systematize Belief. Any religion is a system of beliefs and practices that helps people understand and live their faith experience. Religion therefore gives people: rituals, ritual places, ritual  leaders, sacred books, sacred places, sacred days and seasons, codes of morality and creedal statements of belief. Religion provides helpful aids – MEANS – that point people to the Divine. That is good and proper. But religion is not Faith. Sometimes religion gets distorted and very religious people can be very ungodly. And all religions go through a four-stage life cycle.

RELIGION LIFE-CYCLE:

(1) They begin with the charismatic foundational state, e.g. the primitive Christian community.

Here men and women had such a vivid lived awareness of the Faith experience that they had little need for institutional structure. They relied on do-it-self and charismatic ways of praying, speaking, and celebrating. Men and women, who were local leaders, presided at Eucharist. It all seemed so very natural and normal.

(2) Then when people started thinking and asking  “how do we safeguard what we have and how do we pass this on to the next generation?” the religion entered stage two.

This is the stage of institutionalization: important statements like the  Gospels are written down, set ways of praying like official sacramental rituals and gestures are established, and properly authorized leaders are established. Ordination was then created as a kind of quality control mechanism to make certain that the Christian leaders are competent and reliable. Ordination, please note, was not originally about power over people and not about sacramental power!

(3) After some time, the religion enters stage three. I call it the stage of self-focused short-sightedness.

The institutional religion becomes so self-centered and so self-protective that it becomes less a means and path to the Divine and more and more the OBJECT itself of religious devotion. This stage comes close to idolatry.

In stage 3, the religious institution and certain institutional leaders, become religious objects and are treated like IDOLS. People get so involved in acts of religious veneration that they miss or distort the Divine.

(4) When stage three happens, the only solution is REFORMATION.

Reformation demands a serious effort to regain the vision and focus on the Divine – the spirit and life of stages one and two. To recapture the vigor and creative enthusiasm of stages one and two and create new structures and theological explanations to guide contempory believers.

All religions need periodic reformations. The old saying in Latin ecclesia semper reformanda est was true yesterday and is certainly true today: “the church must always be reformed.”

 

 

 

 

 

I was at O’Hare airport in Chicago waiting for a return flight to Brussels. A young fellow sitting near me asked if I had ever been to Brussels. I told him that I knew Brussels quite well because I lived in Leuven, which is 15 miles from Brussels. He told me he worked for a multinational and was going to relocate to Brussels. I wished him well and told him that over the years I had known a lot of US expats who worked for multinationals.

He asked what I did, and I told him I was an historical theologian. He stared at me, chuckled and said, “So you are one of those guys who plays word games with official church teachings.” I replied, in a friendly way, that historical theologians don’t play games with church teachings but try to understand what those teachings meant in the past and what they do or do not mean for us today.” He didn’t react, and, at that point, we were asked to get in line for boarding our plane. He headed for his first-class line and waved goodbye.

Church teachings do change – or ought to change – because our knowledge and our understanding of languages, cultures, and human life develops and changes. For example, Adam and Eve were once understood as historic people. Today we realize that the Adam and Eve story in the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Scriptures is not an historical account but a symbolic and cultural creation. It serves as a mythological explanation for the origins of humanity and the presence of sin and suffering in the world. The same thing can be said about the Genesis story of Noah and the myth of the global flood.

People in every age need to examine how they observe and speak about religious beliefs and experiences. That has been my point from my very first post on Another Voice, fourteen years ago. I was inspired by lines from T.S. Elliot’s poem “Little Gidding” – “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice.”

Today, we live in a world of tremendous and rapidly developing change. Understandings and realities are changing, whether people are comfortable or not about the new realities. Some people, fearful about change, are working hard to reassert their old, often prejudicial perspectives, creating an increasingly polarized society. Certainly, in the United States, we see a level of socio-cultural polarization that is higher than at the time of the nineteenth century Civil War.

We need a new stress on deep reflection and a new of level of serious conversation.

I have no desire to play word games with church leaders but the conversation we should be having with church leaders and politicians today is this: To what degree do the life and message of Jesus of Nazareth reverberate in your minds and hearts? To what degree does the Gospel guide one’s decision making: celebrating “loving your neighbor as yourself” to the extent that people genuinely care for others, support, and yes even forgive one another. This conversation undercuts racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and all human phobias.

Genuine Christianity promotes a healthy and healing ministry that sustains the individual and collective lives of people who genuinely try follow the way of Jesus.

If the life and message of Jesus do not animate and guide their lives, people who proudly wear the “Christian” label, whether conservative or progressive, are meaningless propagandists and phonies. 

Historical theology is anchored in Christian living and examines the experience of faith: the human relationship with God – described under various names such as “Creator,” “Ground of Being,” “the Sacred,” “the Divine.”

Theological understandings – statements of belief — can end up as official teachings (doctrines) when institutional leadership judges them useful guidelines for Christian life and belief. But it is important to remember that all doctrinal statements are time-bound, because language and understandings are time-bound. All doctrinal statements therefore are provisional until a better expression comes along.

 

Some guidelines for theological reflections:

•  Look less at the church as an institution and see it more as a community of faith-filled believers. What is happening within your own community of faith? What are the life-issues that really concern your family and friends? What does it mean for you to experience God today? Where do you find your support? How can you motivate and help the women and men in your community to truly minister to each other? What is keeping us from experimenting with new forms of parish life? Perhaps a parish should be a collection of many smaller communities of faith?
• Look deeper than the shortage of RCC male priests today and the questions about women deacons and women priests. Let’s look at the meaning of ministry itself. Let’s look at and examine the very idea of ordained ministry, as a ministry by trustworthy ministers. Jesus did not ordain anyone. Christian communities selected their own trust-worthy leaders for prayerful rituals and service.
• Years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, ordination was intrduced as a kind of quality control – to assure communities that the men and women who were their leaders were trustworthy and faith-filled leaders. Let’s scratch our heads about new forms of ministry and break out of the old patterns and paradigms. Why not have qualified graduate students — whether male, female, or nonbinary– with recognized faith and ministerial qualifications, helping out in liturgy and service in university parishes? If ordination is desired, could it not be for for two or three years? Does it have to be life-long? Why not ordain people for small or large group parish ministry? A parish could have several smaller “neighborhood churches.” Perhaps a parish could have many part-time ordained ministers who also have “regular” jobs? We can be creative.
• Healthy Christianity is rooted in being a healthy follower of the Way of Jesus. So, what does it really mean to be a follower of Jesus Christ today? This raises questions of knowledge and belief. What do we really know about the historical Jesus? He was not white, for sure. More likely dark brown. What about all of those very white, blue-eyed, and rather androgynous images of Jesus that really distort who he was and what he was all about? Was his biological father the Holy Spirit or the man we call Joseph? Isn’t the “virgin birth” more about saying Jesus was a very special and unique person than analyzing the biology of his conception? What if Jesus was gay or a married fellow? Would that make a difference for you? I have long thought that Jesus had a very close relationship with Mary the Magdalene. Would that destroy his meaning for Christian believers? Why? Was Jesus God? Early Hebrew Christians, including St. Paul, spoke with nuance about this. They understood Jesus as the revelation of God’s graciousness and love. And they understood that Incarnation involves all of us. As Jesus says in Luke 10:16, “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” Our humanity is anchored in divinity, whether people realize it or not.
• We need to change our conversation and move beyond the old worn-out and repetitive discussions.Changing the conversation means moving from lots of talk to making lots of real changes. And change rarely comes from the top. In my RCC tradition, for example, change usually starts at the grassroots level. People see the need and make the change. The old pattern is proven historically: (1) change is made; (2) change is condemned by church leadership; (3) change endures; (4) leadership allows the change as a limited “experiment;” (5) change becomes more widespread; (6) and finally church leadership allows it as “part of our tradition.”

 

Creative and critical reflection is not a dangerous activity, and it can be a source of life, because it brings a new focus, a new conversation, a new change, and new life. Moving beyond last year’s language.

 

 

On April 4th, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, a Detroit, Michigan Catholic bishop, passed from this life. He was 94. Gumbleton became a national religious figure in the 1960s when he was urged by activist priests to oppose the United States’ role in the Vietnam War.

Tom, as friends knew him, was a founding leader of Pax Christi USA and a prophetic leader in the US Catholic peace movement. I first met him when I was a high school student at Detroit’s Sacred Heart Seminary, where he had been a student. We met periodically over the years.

As Robert Mickens, Editor at La Croix International, wrote on April 06, 2024: “Tom Gumbleton was a friend and defender of the poor, the imprisoned, and the sexually abused, as well as those discriminated against because of their skin color, sexual orientation or female gender.”

Detroit’s strongly conservative Cardinal Edmund Szoka (Archbishop of Detroit from 1981 to 1990) and his conservative successors marginalized Gumbleton to the point that he eventually became the pastor of a parish of Detroit’s poorest and most run-down urban neighborhoods. He was still living there in a nearby apartment up to the day he died.

Tom Gumbleton’s death reminded me of the other Michigan Catholic bishop who was also a graduate of Sacred Heart Seminary and a very good friend: Kenneth Untener. On March 27, 2004, Ken, who was Bishop of Saginaw, Michigan, died of leukemia. In many ways he was my hero as well as my good friend. His death on March 27th at age 66 also coincided with my 61st birthday.

When Ken first came to Saginaw in 1980, he introduced himself to the people of Saginaw in the city hall. “Hello, I’m Ken and I’m going to be your waiter.” He loved to tell the following story: One day he was walking down the street toward a church with his genuine $12 shepherd’s staff in hand. “Look, Mom,” cried an 8-year-old girl, “there goes a shepherd,” and indeed Ken was exactly that.

Ken was “one of the few bishops for all those alienated women in the church and for liberal Catholics,” wrote Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese, then editor of America magazine, at the time of Ken’s death. “These people could look at him and say, ‘Yes, there is someone in the hierarchy who is sensitive to our views and is willing to speak out.’ In that kind of prophetic role you won’t get your way most of the time, but you know five or 10 years from now, what people call outlandish may be accepted as normal. He was a point man, and it seems the point man always gets hit first.”

A year before his priesthood ordination in 1963 Ken broke his right leg playing handball. Because he had a genetically deformed ankle, doctors removed the entire leg below the knee. Ken never regretted the amputation. “A deformed leg,” Ken later said “was socially awkward. A wooden leg is not. … You can kid about it. But the experience of my leg was most valuable to me. I think I know something of what it’s like to be the only woman in a room of men or the only black among whites. I know what it’s like to be noticed. I’ve been made sensitive to that.” Nor did the loss of his leg impair his dedication to golf and hockey, games he indulged in with a lively competitiveness throughout his career.

I conclude this meditative reflection with a prayer that continues to inspire and motivate me.

“Prophets of a Future Not Our Own,” was written by Ken Untener in 1979. It was originally written by Ken not as a prayer but as part of a homily to be given by Cardinal John Dearden in 1979, at the annual Mass for deceased priests in the Archdiocese of Detroit, Michigan.

It helps now and then to step back
and take the long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime
only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise
that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is another way of saying
that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection;
no pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds
that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations
that will need further development.
We provide yeast
that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything,
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and do it very well.
It may be incomplete,
but it is a beginning,
a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter
and do the rest.
We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference
between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future that is not our own.

 

(Another Voice is returning a week earlier than planned.)

On Tuesday of Holy week, former U.S. president Donald J. Trump said, on his social media outlet TRUTH SOCIAL, that the Bible is his favorite book. He then encouraged supporters to buy his special “God Bless the USA Bible” for $59.99. Trump’s “God Bless the USA Bible” includes copies of the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Pledge of Allegiance. It also includes country music singer Lee Greenwood’s song “God Bless the USA.” On Good Friday of Holy Week some of Trump’s faithful were saying – to DJT’s delight – that it is Donald Trump who is being crucified today.

The 45^th U.S. president is now working very hard to transform the Republican Party into a kind of Church of Trump. Robert Reich, who served as Bill Clinton’s labor secretary, observed on X (formerly Twitter) that “Donald Trump is starting the week by comparing himself to Jesus. Whether he has a messiah complex or is just conning his supporters, he’s playing to a growing GOP faction that wants America to be a white Christian Nationalist state, with Donald Trump as a divine ruler.” I thought immediately about the strongly pro-Trump Christian nationalist movement, the Society for American Civic Renewal. It is known as  “SACR.” Some even consider it a sacred movement.

SACR is an exclusive, men-only fraternal order which aims to replace the United States government with an authoritarian extreme Christian nationalism and religious autocracy. Its founders sought inspiration in the apartheid-era South African white men-only group, the Afrikaner-Broederbond. SACR is open to new recruits, provided they meet a few criteria: the potential member must be male, a “trinitarian” Christian, a heterosexual, an “un-hyphenated American,” and can supportively – meeting their far-right criteria – answer questions about Trump, the Republican Party, and Christian Nationalism.

SACR was founded by Charles Haywood, U.S. businessman, far-right commentator, and chair of the New Tomorrow Political Action Committee, formerly called Unify Carmel. It is a conservative education pressure group in Carmel, Indiana.

The SACR website describes the organization, which even has a lodge in Moscow, as raising leaders to “counter and conquer” the “poison” of “those who rule today.” SACR uses a cross-like insignia, described on the website as symbolizing “sword and shield” and the rejection of “Modernist philosophies and heresies.” SACR membership is by invitation only, and excludes women, LGBTQ+ people, and Mormons.  It is closely associated with the Claremont Institute, a far-right conservative think tank based in Upland, California.

The institute has been a strong defender of Donald Trump, ever since Joseph Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election. And, as Michael Bender wrote in the New York Times this year on April 1^st, “Mr. Trump’s political creed stands as one of the starkest examples of his effort to transform the Republican Party into a kind of Church of Trump.” And on the Saturday before Easter 2024, Trump shared an article on social media with the headline “The Crucifixion of Donald Trump.” Christian nationalism in DJT style.

A friend asked recently what is wrong with Christian nationalism. Certainly, between now and the next U.S. presidential election on Tuesday November 5, 2024, we will be reading and hearing a lot about it.

I am a U.S. citizen and a committed Christian but I strongly object to Christian nationalism. It is anchored in an anti-democratic notion that the United States is a nation by and for Christians alone; and it threatens the principle of the separation of church and state. Separation of church and state, I would emphasize, is good for the church and good for the state.

Christian nationalism leads to discrimination and violence, circumventing laws and regulations aimed at protecting a pluralistic democracy, with protections for all people.

There is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism is about power not belief.

Christian nationalism is hardly just a USA phenomenon. I have doubts that he is really a Christian, but another big contemporary Christian nationalist is Vladimir Putin. He has greatly increased the power of the Russian Orthodox Church and maintains close contact with Moscow’s Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill. Kirill has blessed the war in Ukraine as a “holy war” and claims that God is on Russia’s side. Hundreds of Orthodox priests in Ukraine and elsewhere, however, have accused Patriarch Kirill of “heresy” for his warmongering. Nevertheless, on March 27, 2024, the World Russian People’s Council (WRPC), an organization chaired by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, published a new document that further aligns the Russian Orthodox Church with Vladimir Putin’s political regime.

And a final example of contemporary Christian nationalism is Victor Orbán, the autocratic leader of Hungary, who has urged Christian nationalists in Europe and the USA to “unite our forces.” Orbán met with Donald Trump in mid March 2024 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Trump heaped praise on Viktor Orbán while hosting the Hungarian prime minister at Mar-a-Lago. “There’s nobody that’s better, smarter, or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic,” the former president told a crowd gathered at his Florida resort. Trump added that the European autocrat is “a noncontroversial figure because he said, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it, right? He’s the boss and … he’s a great leader, fantastic leader. In Europe and around the world, they respect him.”

Donald Trump’s comment reminded me of the observation by Desiderius Erasmus (c.1466 – 1536): “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

Jack

______

Dr. John A. Dick – Historical Theologian