Old ghosts in new garments

We have to go deeper to confront those tendencies of the human spirit exploited by corrupt and anti-Christian leaders

The daily media coverage focuses on the latest thing Donald Trump has said, which seems to get worse and worse: lies, lawlessness, threats of violence and doubling down on the language of racial hatred, quoting words, for example, from Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s. Such coverage is vital, so that Trump’s words and actions don’t become normalized and accepted.

All of this is a threat to democracy, the commentators say, as they try to correct the lies and remind us that no one – even a former president – should be held the law in America, despite Trump’s lawyer’s court arguments.   

But Trump supporters continue to buy his lies, even as they absurdly pile up. And as their candidate’s legal jeopardy continues to grow, they attack law enforcement. And when Trump  attacks and threatens prosecutors, judges and witnesses, his loyal MAGA movement joins in.  

German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer

While watching all of this, I have been reading the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who spoke of these things in the 1930s and called for a confessing church to stand up for the gospel and for the truth. In his book, Ethics Bonhoeffer says, 

The weaknesses of human nature appear more clearly in a storm than in the quiet flow of calmer times. Among the overwhelming majority of people, anxiety, greed, lack of independence, and brutality show themselves to be the mainspring of behavior in the face of unsuspected chance and threats.

Bonhoeffer is taking us deeper here, beyond politics. And we will have to also go deeper to confront those tendencies of the human spirit that Bonhoeffer describes in a reflection called The Face Of Evil:

At such a time the tyrannical despiser of humanity easily makes use of the meanness of the human heart by nourishing it and giving it other names. Anxiety is called responsibility; greed is called industriousness, brutality becomes masterfulness. By this ingratiating treatment of human weakness, what is base and mean is generated and increased every anew.

I read this in is A Year With Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Daily Meditations from His Letters, Writings, and Sermons, which I recommend it for 2024 devotional reading. In the above quotation from Ethics, a footnote explains that Bonhoeffer was referring to Adolf Hitler. 

In his speech last week near Valley Forge, marking the third anniversary of the January 6, 2021 violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, President Joe Biden asked a fundamental question, “Is democracy still America’s sacred cause?” 

That, he said, is the “most urgent question of our time,”and what the 2024 election is all about. Biden named some of the many Trump lies and illegalities, concluding with insurrectionary violence to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

This week, Biden also spoke at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where a white gunman murdered 9 Black church members  at a Bible Study in 2015. The President of the United States spoke in the pulpit and said of that horrible day at Mother Emanuel:

“The Word of God was pierced by bullets and hate and rage, propelled not just by gun powder but by a poison. What is that poison? White Supremacy. This has no place in America. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.” 

Biden added that the poison of white supremacy has “haunted the nation for too long” and called America's original sin of racism “an old ghost in new garments.”

As important as the truth and political organizing are in this critical election year, we have to go deeper to penetrate the heart of human nature, and the bad religion of white Christian nationalism.

I still believe that the deeper way to frame this upcoming election is the battle between our worst demons and better angels, rather than the flaws and faults of candidates and policies. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts in well in a reflection called The God of the Wicked:

In times that are out of joint, when lawlessness and wickedness arrogantly triumph. The gospel will instead demonstrate itself in the remaining figures who are just, truthful, and humane ... Our experience is that the good rediscover Christ while the wicked harden their hearts against him. ...Unless you have become a righteous person like those who struggle and suffer for justice, truth, and humanity, you cannot know and find Christ. 

Democracy is indeed at stake in this next presidential election, but so is faith, and it is time for Christians to return to Christ, and all our religious traditions to replace bad religion with good faith.

My new book, “False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy ,” is available for preorder.