End of the Trump Era

by

Perspectives

After four long years of a White House marked by depravity, racism, cruelty, white supremacy, and incompetence, the tide has turned and numerous Trump supporters and officials are scurrying to depart from the wreckage. A few are resigning and some have denounced the riot that overran the Capitol this week.

I have worked across the street from the Capitol for 35 years and have attended many meetings and events there over the years. I will never forget the fear that gripped us on September 11, 2001, as thousands fled the scene. At the United Methodist Building, we invited Capitol Police to come inside for a glass of water, to call their loved ones, and to rest. On that day, the attack was from without. On January 6, it came from within. 

The area around the Capitol has become increasingly militarized over the past several decades. I have always found it disturbing. Armed guards have a tendency to swagger and glare and exclude. I have participated in numerous protests in and around the Capitol over the years and have always been in the presence of heavily armed police. I join with others in saying that were it a group of Black and Brown protestors who surged over the barricades and smashed the windows two days ago, dozens if not hundreds would have been shot dead and thousands would have been arrested.

Instead, a relative handful of White supremacists were arrested and the mob ran freely across the Capitol grounds. I am sickened by what I saw and I am even more disturbed by the fact this was orchestrated and encouraged by the president of the United States.

As calls for Trump’s immediate removal mount—and I support them—and as the examination of his horrible presidency takes on additional momentum, I hope we will not spare Trump’s so-called evangelical advisory board from scrutiny. This shadowy group enabled and encouraged Trump throughout this disastrous term in office.

They laid hands on him and described him as an instrument of God’s will. They arrogated to themselves the right to speak for Christians. They happily excluded other Christian voices, even less extreme evangelical forces, from having access to Trump. They never said a word against Trump’s racism, his hatred of immigrants, his destruction of the environment, and his favoritism of the rich. They were court prophets who sanctioned all he did.

In early 2010, I spoke to two evangelical leaders who candidly shared with me that they had been invited to the Obama White House more frequently in less than 18 months than they had in the entire 8 years of George W. Bush’s presidency even though the image they presented to the public was one of unrivalled access and influence. 

It was the practice of the Obama administration to invite the entire panoply of American religion to the White House. Not so under President Trump. His White House was sealed tight against any dissenting voices and this contributed to his paranoia and loss of contact with reality. His evangelical advisors never challenged that and they bear some measure of responsibility for what has unfolded even though many of them will now claim, I assure you, that they never really had any influence.

We will soon return to a more appropriate relationship between the faith community and the Biden-Harris administration. The state will not and should not seek to control people of faith nor should people of faith seek to control the state. But, people of faith must speak truth to power and those in power have a responsibility to listen. 

There will always be sycophants who will tell the president whatever he or she wants to hear—we’ve just witnessed that over the past four years from the evangelical advisory council—but at its best the faith community speaks on behalf of the last, the least, and the lost, on behalf of the voiceless and marginalized, and on behalf of the common good.

United Methodist layman Jim Winkler serves as top executive of the National Council of Churches USA. This post is republished from the Jan. 8, 2021 NCC newsletter.