When we all – Native Americans, African Americans, Latino Americans, European Americans, Jewish Americans, Asian Americans etc – are in the bus on any of our Christian retreats, singing joyously about Christ salvation and our faith as a journey, can it really be said about us American Christians that “In God We Trust”? Depending on the answer, the open question will be Which God? Whose God? Who is the “we” in the American phrase, “In God We Trust”?
“No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us…” – (1 John 5:12)
“If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar, for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” – (1 John 4: 20)
The argument here is simple. It is that in a claim one cannot have it both ways. You cannot vote for racism, bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and sexism, as American Christians (88 percent evangelicals and 52 percent Catholics) did in the 2016 election and at the same time be a Christian and genuinely believe in a non-racialised, non-ethnic God of Christianity.
Second the necessary and sufficient account of God, at least the Christian God, is contained only in the biblical scriptures, and in the following scriptures viz: John 17:21, 1 John 5:12, 1 John 4:20, 1 John 4:8. And just as the scriptures say, because we have not seen God, no other account of God can be necessary and sufficient outside these cited scriptures.
Other accounts found in the Bible can be metaphorically and figuratively interesting, but they cannot give the necessary and sufficient accounts of God such that you deny them and do not run into contradiction. In other words, you do not run into any contradiction if you deny any metaphorically, linguistically and figuratively interesting account of God. But if you deny John 17:21, 1 John 5:12, 1 John 4:20, 1 John 4:8 and still claim there is a God and you call yourself a Christian, you run into a fatal and incurable contradiction in faith and thought. By that singular act of self-contradiction, you would have emptied Christianity and the Church of their spirituality – the Church then becomes a mere club to which we all go to in our best dress on Sundays, as it appear to be in the United States of America.
Third, racism, bigotry, homophobia, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and sexism fundamentally call these cited scriptures to question. Finally, if Christians hold racism, bigotry, homophobia, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, sexism to be true, valid, sound, justified, justifiable practices, then they call John 17:21, 1 John 5:12, 1 John 4:20, 1 John 4: 8 to question jointly and severally, and there is no God – at least a non-racialised, non-ethnic God of Christianity.
Any other account of God outside these cited scriptures may be interesting, however they are merely cultural, ethnic, racial, regional, and linguistically fascinating, as they do not tell us anything about God – at least the non-racialised, non-ethnic God of Christianity.
These preliminary notes are crucial to understanding how a section of American Christians betrayed the phrase on the American currency, “In God We Trust”.
A country’s currency is an expression of its character. The phrase “In God We Trust” on the American currency, the dollar, ordinarily ought to be a reminder of the ethical and religious foundations and experiences of the country, following Christopher Columbus’s colonial adventure into America – an invasion that left the Native Americans in colossal economic and cultural ruin; a deficit that set them back in history.
This is why historical landmarks and signifiers such as the “native” in “Native Americans”, Christopher Columbus, colonialism and the institution of slavery and racism engender mixed, dual and paradoxical feelings and responses among Americans in their relationship to the annual thanksgiving celebrated in America – a celebration which has a contradiction – between an over-belly and an under-belly. For some Americans it is “thanksgiving”; for other Americans it is not. Think about the “native” in Native Americans, and ask the Native Americans – the original owners of the land – what the “thanks” in “thanksgiving” means.
Nothing has made this history more poignant again than how American Christians voted for the enablement of division, racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, xenophobia and bigotry in the recent American election, and how the “alt right movement”, one of the covert backers of Donald Trump beside the Ku Klux Klan, responded to, explained and justified the outcome of the November 8 election.
So the question will always be an open-ended one with respect to the American story and the phrase on the American currency -Which God? Whose God? Who are the “We” in “In God We Trust”? As Christians with an abiding faith in the living and non-racialised God, we must never shy away from asking difficult questions and engaging them.
This is why if John 17:21 and 1 John 5:12 give necessary and sufficient account of God, and the experience of God (as I think they do based only on the scriptures and not on any nation, ethnic group, race, country, culture or tradition-political or otherwise), then American Christianity’s giving of the vote of Christians in the 2016 elections is a complete negation of the essence of God and human trust in him. This is because the American Christians who voted gave race and political party priority over trust and faith in God and have put the fate of the country in the hands of a racist, a bigot, a homophobe, a xenophobe, and a sexist – Donald Trump. Racism, bigotry, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism are fundamental repudiations of the essence and meaning of God.
However, some American Christians have pointed to the fact that the evangelicals and Catholics in the United states are not racially and culturally monolithic groups, as people outside the United States of America tend to wrongly think. And this observation explains why it was easy for those American Christians who voted for Donald Trump to betray the trust in the phrase “In God We Trust” by being in the same camp through the act of commission or omission with racists, white supremacists, anti-Semites, homophobes, xenophobes and bigots in the “Ku Klux Klan”, “the alt right movement” and their news media, who covertly and overtly enabled the campaign of Donald Trump. And this is how.
Some examples will suffice. The chief counselor to Donald Trump is Steve Bannon, an Irish-American catholic who grew up in Virginia. Bannon, who gave the alt-right movement the platform of Breitbart News to openly advocate their racist, sexist, anti-Semite, and race supremacist views through, and who may as well be strategically hiding his own membership of the “alt-right movement” (for example given all the things being known for, many Trump voters have never publicly owned up to being Trump voters) in order to be effective, has shown through his use of Breitbart News to be a link between Donald Trump and the racist and white supremacist movement. And possibly other extreme rightwing shadowy groups and donors to the Trump campaign.
The hypocrisy of American Christianity, its link with racism and race supremacist groups and hence how it was able to openly betray God by putting race and a political party over true religious values, experience and faith in God can be seen in many ways. One of these is the historic link between American Christianity, slavery and racism.
For example, it has been reported that the Bannons were a devout Catholic family who would normally take up a whole row at their local church where young Stephen was an altar boy! However, the same Steve Bannon made the untenable and unfounded claim that the Catholic Church supports immigration because there are few people in the pews, and the Catholic Church uses immigration to fill the pews in the Church.
In the obviously racist and race supremacist claim, Latino-American Catholics were Steve Bannon’s targets. But here is a person from a lineage of (European-Irish) immigrants, like everyone in the United States of America except the Native Americans, taking a swipe against a section of the American immigrant population – the Latinos!
No one should be surprised at this kind of “Christianity” and “Catholicism”, for both have been historically linked in American to racism, slavery and white supremacist groups. Hence, it is consistent with the Christianity of 88 percent evangelicals and 52 percent Catholics who voted for racism and bigotry in the 2016 American elections.
But this only echoed Donald Trump when he openly abused Pope Francis. Then, obviously relying on the scriptures of John 17:21 and 1 John 5:12, Pope Francis said that building racist walls both in our hearts and outside our hearts among individuals cannot be equivalent to living the Gospel of Christ! Donald Trump did not point to any part of the Christ Gospel to refute the Pope. Rather, Donald Trump the candidate of 52 percent Catholics and 88 percent evangelicals who voted in the election called Pope Francis’ comment on racist walls “disgraceful”! Pope Francis’ observation of the bigotry and racism in wall building has religious and spiritual content to it. Christ ministry supports it. Pope Francis was not talking for himself. The Pope is a servant of Christ – the servant of all servants of God. Pope Francis is carrying out the ministry of Christ and Christ’s Gospel and ministry support the Pope’s claim.
However, Donald Trump’s response to the Pope shows the religious and spiritual emptiness and poverty of his faith, and this is the same Trump who confessed on tape to being a woman groper and a happy and willing sexual harasser because he is a “star”, twice-divorced, with a third wife – Melania Trump, a fashion model from Slovenia in Eastern Europe – who violated America’s immigration law (yet Trump is presumably a law and order candidate!) Before she got her green card, Trump, a profane candidate who said he has never sought God’s forgiveness for his sins, gutted Biblical references, mistook a communion plate for a donation plate, and became the candidate of 88 percent evangelicals and 52 percent Catholics! Talk of American Christianity, hypocrisy and the betrayal of God!
I am a Catholic and I take my faith very seriously. I know what it means spiritually and religiously for anyone to go onto the altar of God to serve God as lector, eucharistic minister, deacon, priest etc. I know what it means spiritually and religiously for our children to serve Christ at the altar as altar servers – altar boys and altar girls.
But that Steve Bannon, the counselor to Donald Trump was once an altar server on the altar of Christ; that he, the bigot, an anti-Semite, a sexist, xenophobe, homophobe, racist, who used the N-word on African Americans, once stepped on the altar of God in a Catholic Church as an altar boy sends a cold shiver down my spine as I stand in the Church looking at the same altar of God. God have mercy.
To my fellow American Christians and Catholics, in view of a racist, white supremacist, anti-Semite, bigot, sexist, and xenophobe going right there on the altar as an altar server, I shudder to ask that when we bow before the body of Christ and take the Eucharist at mass every Sunday, is it about Christ Forsaken in the Eucharist, Christ Unity and Christ Love, or is it about our different races as “ranked” by the bigoted, racist and white supremacist ideology which Donald Trump your candidate espouses?
The so-called alt right movement, one of the key backers of Donald Trump is a modern day and digital face of the Ku Klux Klan, another major supporter of Donald Trump. It is shocking in modern times, though consistent with American history, that 88 percent evangelicals and 52 percent Catholics who voted for Donald Trump found it comfortable to be in the same voting column as the “alt right movement” and the “Ku Klux Klan” in their support for Trump.
In this regard, my fellow American Christians and Catholics, who may claim that they were not aware of all these before they voted, may wish to read about how their fellow Trump voters – members of the racist and race supremacist “alt right movement” – celebrated the outcome of their joint Trump votes on November 8. Many, some of who are “Christians”, met on November 19, 2016 in Washington DC to celebrate the outcome of the election. Richard Spencer, one of the leaders of the “alt right movement” gave this speech to a rousing ovation of members of the “alt right movement”.
“Hail Trump, Hail Our People, Hail Victory – (Classic Hitler Nazi salute)
…
The mainstream media
Or perhaps we should refer to them in the original German “lugen presse, (the word the Nazis, Hitler’s German socialist party used to attack their critics)
It is not just that they are leftists and cocks
It is not just that many are genuinely stupid,
Indeed one wonders if these people are people at all,
To be white is to be a striver, a crusader, an explorer, and a conqueror,
We build, we produce, and we go upward,
And we recognise the central lie of America’s race relations,
We don’t exploit other groups,
We don’t gain anything from their presence,
They need us and not the other way around,
We are not meant to live in shame and weakness, and disgrace,
We were not meant to beg for moral validation from some of the most despicable creatures that ever populate the planet,
We were meant to overcome, overcome all of them for that is normal and natural for us,
The press has decided to double down and wage war upon the legitimacy of Trump and the continued existence of white America
But they are really opening up the door for us
America was until this past generation a white country, designed for our posterity, and us
It (i.e. America) is our creation,
It (i.e. America) is our inheritance,
And it (i.e. America) belongs to us.
The 88 percent evangelicals and 52 percent Catholics who voted for racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, homophobia and bigotry in their vote for Donald Trump ought to think about these lines from a group their votes, either by acts of omission or commission, have enabled. The “alt right movement” is not different from the Ku Klux Klan of old. By their votes, American Christians have successfully re-enabled racism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, anti-Semitism and bigotry.
So, when the pews in American Churches continue to shrink and become empty, the onus is on fellow American Christians to look within, and ask a simple soul searching question:
When we all – Native Americans, African Americans, Latino Americans, European Americans, Jewish Americans, Asian Americans etc – are in the bus on any of our Christian retreats, singing joyously about Christ salvation and our faith as a journey, can it really be said about us American Christians that “In God We Trust”? Depending on the answer, the open question will be Which God? Whose God? Who is the “we” in the American phrase, “In God We Trust”?
May God continue to dispense his mercy, kindness and forgiveness on all of us.
Adeolu Ademoyo, aaa54@cornell.edu, Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
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