Darkness and Lies Need Light and Truth

I wonder if Rep. Liz Cheney, Vice Chair of the Jan 6 committee, had been reading John 8:32 when she concluded Thursday night, “We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.”

“He is in a very dark place,” Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s last Chief of Staff, told General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the morning of January 7th. We heard that sentence Thursday night, but I haven’t seen much media commentary on it since the eighth hearing of the January 6 Select Committee that we just witnessed. It may have been the most important statement heard so far about Donald Trump and what he did and is doing to America.

Donald Trump seems to live in a very dark place, and apparently always has; and many people in power who have ardently supported him seem to ignore his darkness for their own interests and agendas. We have seen that kind of history before. From the beginning of his political career, Trump has awoken America’s darkest places and unleashed our worst demons, which have always been there. And despite the great light that these extraordinary committee hearings have shed, those dark demons are stronger now than they were on January 6th. 

Thursday night, there was more devastating proof of Trump's behavior in those three hours on that infamous day, when an angry and violent mob stormed the Capitol at his summoning. The passionate and eloquent final words from committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger said that the former president’s behavior constituted the  “supreme violation of his oath of office” and his “complete dereliction of duty,” which left a “stain” on the oath that veterans have taken to defend the country. But the problem and the danger are deeper than that. 

Many very dangerous facts have been proven by the evidence, from last night and the other seven hearings – at least for anyone who cares about facts or the truth. But many Americans simply do not anymore. Lies can win, and they especially do when totalitarian political aspirations are on the rise. The big lies in America, and the bigger ones underneath them are still winning and growing. 

Perhaps those deeper moral realities we need to confront came in the final statement of Rep. Elaine Luria, who joined Congressman Kinzinger in asking the questions last night. She testified that as a 27-year Naval officer she took an oath to defend the Constitution and the nation from all enemies “foreign or domestic,” but never imagined that our greatest “enemies could come from within.” Indeed, the most important lesson from these hearings going forward, is that those enemies to democracy in America from within are stronger now than they were on January 6. 

It was clear from the eighth hearing that the problem of Donald Trump’s response to his supporters violently taking the Capital on January 6 was not inaction – in making no calls to the military, National Guard, or other law enforcement reinforcements to protect the Capitol, preserve the rule of law, and defend the lives of Capitol police officers. What was revealed in hearings was that Jan 6 was Trump's last attempted strategic action to overturn the results of the 2020 election, refuse the peaceful transfer of power, which is the cornerstone of democracy, and remain in power himself despite the overwhelming evidence of a free and fair election that he lost.

We have learned how Trump – even before the election and every day afterwards –  took a series of premeditated actions, leveraging both legal and illegal means: trying to intimidate local election officials in key states, promoting the false certification of state electors, attempting to take over of the Department of Justice, threatening poll workers with violence, and intensely pressuring the Vice President to disregard the Constitution and then targeting Mike Pence with violence on Jan 6 when he refused to comply. When Trump’s last-ditch idea, suggested by his personal and “crazy” outside lawyers and advisors, to seize voting machines and establish martial law failed to prevent the certification of a new President on Jan. 6, he called in the mob. 

Trump’s last resort was to invoke and inspire political violence, calling on an armed crowd of tens of thousands of his people to take the Capitol, moving from democratic protest to an insurrectionary coup. The violent obstruction (which we learned Thursday had the Vice President’s terrified security detail calling their families to say goodbye) was Trump’s final effort to delay and block the electoral process and send the election back to state legislatures, which he planned to turn to his advantage with Republican allies in those state houses and in the Congress. We heard testimony after testimony from virtually all of Trump’s staff, including his own family and media celebrity supporters pleading with him to stop the violence at the Capitol, which only he could do. But he refused, and escalated the violence with his tweets at critical moments to “add fuel to the fire,” language some of his White House aides used.

Trump didn’t attempt to stop the violence and send his supporters home until his efforts to lead a successful coup and government takeover had failed, as law enforcement had turned the tide at the Capitol with reinforcements that other government officials had called (including Vice President Mike Pence). Only then did Trump relent and agree to tell his people to go home for now, but not before saying how much he “loved” them and how “special” they were to him after they desecrated the Capitol in a failed insurrection. This was a coup attempt that tried every avenue for success, and is still trying. Whether accountability comes to Donald Trump is now up to the Department of Justice and Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Trump knows, as some of his former supporters testified, that millions of Americans are ready to believe anything he says and do anything he asks them to do, as they did on January 6; he has bragged that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue in New York City in broad daylight and still wouldn’t lose votes. 

The big lies of Trump are stronger now and go beyond him. Those strong statements that we saw played again last night from Republican leaders in the Senate and the House about Trump’s moral and political responsibility for “indefensible” behavior on Jan 6 have all gone silent and all but disappeared. The New York Times Magazine just published a piece on the anti-democracy movement within the GOP. It alarmingly shows how Trump’s stolen election lie has taken over the majority of the Republican Party and  become a litmus test of office in the GOP. 

That lie threatens the future of free and fair elections and the transfer of political power in elections going forward.

Trump and Trumpism remain the dominant force in the Republican Party that is recruiting an army of poll workers and candidates who are election deniers. And the As Politico has reported, the GOP is promising to train a hundred thousand voter challengers in future elections. Those voter challenges will be focused, according to the plan, in especially Black and brown precincts in the urban areas of key states. The same people who lied and continue to lie about the last election being stolen, are openly planning on stealing the next two elections. And that is the strategy of a whole political party – the Republican Party.

When Donald Trump began his political career with the accusation of Barack Obama’s false birth certificate and therefore was an illegitimate Black President, then came down the escalator at Trump Tower to attack immigrants and Mexicans, I predicted Trump would win the Presidency because of his appeal to our deepest racial demons. So let’s start telling the truth ourselves – especially in the faith community. Donald Trump has always been all about race, to use racism for his own power, which is the fundamental basis of his appeal to his followers who are desperately afraid of a multicultural nation. 

The strategy of using every method to gain power then resorting to political violence as is necessary to win is a clear practice of fascism, seeking political control by any means necessary. It is a longstanding strategy of promoting fear, leading to hate, which leads to violence. The truth must be told that Donald Trump is both a racist and a fascist and his movement will clearly resort to political violence to gain power. 

History doesn’t repeat but it does rhyme. The brown shirts of the 1930’s are the armed White supremacy groups of today. And a dark madman wanting absolute power, with other men of power supporting him for their own agendas, is also not new. Our own Constitution and system of government tried to prevent the takeover by such demagogues through resilient branches of government with checks and balances. That will be the test of our democracy going forward.

The rising heresy of  White Christian nationalism – alarmingly being promoted by more and more right wing churches – has become the chief threat to genuine democracy in America. It is grounded in the racism and White supremacy of America’s original sin, which is the bigger lie underneath Trump’s big lie. A German church that supported the rise of Nazism to power is also a historically relevant phenomenon, as is the Confessing Church of resistance to Hitler led by theologians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemoller, and Karl Barth. And that will be the spiritual test of faith communities in America going forward.

I wonder if Jan 6 committee Vice Chair, Liz Cheney, had been reading John 8:32 when she concluded Thursday night, “We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.” Jesus said in that gospel passage, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” This is what is at stake, with all the stunning evidence the Jan 6 committee keeps making public week after week.

The opposite of the truth that makes us free are the lies that make us captive. And the opposite of light is darkness. Both lies and darkness have become stronger in America since Jan 6. And, perhaps most painfully for me is how more and more churches, especially from my own evangelical tradition, are descending into the lies and the darkness. 

Accountability for dark lies and the assertion of truth and light are the only hope we have for our nation and our churches. That is the promise of the forthcoming work of the Jan 6 committee, which announced Thursday night will continue in the fall. And it must be our promise to confront the sin of White Christian nationalism in our churches and beyond as anti-Christ; and to reclaim Jesus for our personal lives and public discipleship.