After only two weeks of the new (old) presidential administration in the US, I feel bruised and exhausted. That’s the point, of course. The new cabal’s post-inauguration strategy has been literally described (gleefully) as “shock and awe.” The plan was to overwhelm all of his “enemies”—i.e., anyone not submissive to MAGA ideals—with so much outrageous, illegal, extreme, and chaotic behavior that we would be stunned into submission. It’s a form of violence. It’s abuse.
Of course, there is pushback and resistance and an avalanche of court cases to forestall the new administration’s actions. People will try to resist the illegal and cruel policies of this president. Sometimes they will succeed; sometimes they won’t. People will suffer, and so will the rest of creation. American leadership in the world, our national security, and our economic prosperity will suffer. And we will waste an obscene amount of time that we could be spending on productive ways forward into a more just, ecologically sustainable, and joyful society.
Whatever does or does not get broken in the next years, I’ve been reflecting on how the words themselves inflict damage—the flurry of outrageous executive orders, the “bow to Trump or you’re fired” emails to civil servants, the lies and lies and lies, including the disgustingly racist attempt to blame the DC plane crash on “DEI hires.” The news media reports on all this, of course, so our little brains are filled with the ugliest discourse-sludge. Here’s my point: the discourse itself is purposely traumatizing.
I would argue that as a nation we are experiencing loud, constant, verbal abuse. This is a classic strategy of domination; verbal abuse trains the abused person to cringe and cower, to feel weak and loathed and helpless. “Flood the zone with sh**” is literally how Steve Bannon describes it. And he’s right. Flood the zone with a constant stream of abusive rhetoric and you will keep everyone scrambling. This is essential to an overall strategy whose fundamental principle is domination.
So what is a faithful response to discourse trauma? I don’t know. I’m overwhelmed and scrambling, exactly as planned.
I guess step one is to name this rhetoric for what it is: violent abuse. Discourse can be violent, too, especially when it literally threatens vulnerable and/or innocent people. We are hardly responding as easily triggered snowflakes when we find this rhetoric abusive. People’s real bodies and lives and livelihoods are on the line.
And we are right to call it out. Another strategy of the abuser is to hold the abused to higher standards than he himself upholds: to say he can degrade and insult and torment, but no one can criticize him. I refuse to fall for that. Calling out abuse is not the same as committing abuse.
So whatever our thoughts about the role of government, immigration, sexual ethics, abortion, economics, whatever, we must reject lies and cruelty perpetrated in words as well as in deeds.
Step two might be to understand that our entire media ecosystem is built for discourse trauma. The “outrage industrial complex” breeds a “culture of contempt.” Angus Hervey and his team at the Australian nonprofit Fix the News are focused on countering this by lifting up good news from around the world. In their January 16 newsletter, Hervey reflected on the media ecosystem at length:
[W]e’re living through an unprecedented age of disinformation. Everyone is talking about “ensh[**]tification” — Cory Doctorow’s term for the way platforms degrade as they try to extract maximum value from users — and “slop,” an increasingly common, endless stream of low-quality, algorithm-optimised online content. But in focusing on the pollution of our information streams, we’re missing how the pipes themselves have been recalibrated to carry mostly sewage.
… News organisations have spent decades optimising for this kind of reporting. They’ve long known that it’s the negative, highly arousing stories that get the most traffic …The result is a kind of perpetual motion machine of pessimism, each component feeding off the energy of the other’s decline.
Hervey notes that things are going to get much worse with this new US administration—remember, Hervey is observing this from Australia—and we’re all going to have to figure out how to survive it. His recommendation, unsurprisingly, is to manage wisely the media sources one allows into one’s attention:
The solution isn’t complicated, though it requires some effort: Get rid of algorithmic media and switch as much as possible to chronological media. … The challenge is learning to see our information ecosystem for what it has become — a vast apparatus fine-tuned to amplify our darkest impulses — and then having the wisdom to step away from it. It may seem quaint to suggest that emails and books could save us. But in an age where our collective attention has become everyone else’s most valuable asset, the simple act of reclaiming when and how we consume information might be the most radical move we have left.
How to manage my sources and still know what’s going on is a skill I’m trying to figure out. New information pathways are emerging and it’s all happening very fast. I’m still flailing.
Step three, I believe, is to speak the gospel. Sometimes that means recognizing and courageously naming distortions of the faith. You have no doubt read about Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde’s sermon at the National Cathedral prayer service on the morning of the inauguration, a message that drew what I would describe as swift and abusive retribution from the president and his supporters, including death threats and gender-inflected insults about how Budde is a witch and a demon.
The ensuing kerfuffle prompted many Christian voices to defend the bishop. But her detractors also claim Christian reasons for their hatred. As Shane Claiborne wrote last week, what we have witnessed once again in this incident is a “collision of Christianities” in our country, a collision between Christian Nationalism and the way of Jesus. Claiborne does not mince words:
[B]etween the Christianity of Trump and the Christianity of Christ, we recognize the widest possible difference — so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure and holy is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt and wicked. I can see no reason to call this [i.e., Christian nationalism] Christianity — except the most deceitful one.
And using Jesus as a tool for political power is the most deceitful one.
Trump has turned the seven deadly sins into a way of life, made a mockery of the fruits of the Spirit and regularly betrayed the core tenets of the Sermon on the Mount. He needs Jesus, to be sure, but it’s time to stop pretending he is actually a follower of Jesus. There comes a point when, in the words of Jesus, “We cannot serve two masters.” Christians cannot follow Trump and Jesus.
This is not about who we like better or align with politically. It’s not about choosing Team Budde or Team Trump. It is about two competing versions of the Christian faith. It’s not about left and right, but what it really means to be faithful to Jesus.
This is not just about Trump, of course. In fact, Trump is simply deploying for his own purposes a Christian nationalism that has been brewing for many decades among extensive networks of power and influence, as Kristin DuMez and many others have demonstrated.
So calling out the distortions of Christian nationalism is one aspect of preaching the gospel. The other is to hold out the good news of the gospel as Jesus himself announces it in Luke 4. We can hold out the vision of a shalom where all creation flourishes in justice and peace. Budde’s sermon itself, based on Matthew 7:24-29, exemplifies this kind of vision work. She spoke about unity, dignity, honesty, humility, and mercy. She looked the new president in the eye and begged him to show mercy for the vulnerable.
This particularly outraged the president and his supporters. But let’s recall that Jesus called out religious leaders of his day not because they were too loosey-goosey on ethics and showed too much empathy. He called them out because they hypocritically demanded a legalistic perfection of others, gathered power for themselves, and did it all without mercy (Matthew 23, for example).
It seems to me that we can receive the national prayer service and its aftermath as a call to renewed courage. I am waiting to see if the church will find resolve in this moment. Are we willing to serve a prophetic role and calmly call out cruelty, lies, coercion, and domination as the sinful use of power that it is? Are people of good will who supported Trump for whatever reason now ready to say, “I still think we have to address the issue of [name your issue], but not like this”—and withdraw their support? Are all of us willing to preach Jesus as he is revealed in the scriptures—the one who welcomes the outcast, heals the sick, cares for the poor, refuses political power, and reconciles us to God by his own sacrificial love? Can we hold out a vision of shalom for all creation and pray that God will bring it about through our feeble and stumbling efforts?
There’s a difference between the ever-reviled “wokeness” and being spiritually awakened to God’s love. Can we wake up in this moment? As the late contemplation scholar Barbara Holmes wrote, “Domination cannot withstand the steady gaze of the inner eye of thousands of wakened people.”
Image credit: oceanblueproject.org
31 Responses
Excellent, unfortunately. Clarifying. Helpful. Thank you.
Thanks, Debra, for explaining and validating the emotional experience of the last eleven days. Kyrie eleison.
Deb,
This is a much-needed call to “renewed courage,” and I, for one, need to read and hear more such calls. You say you’re “flailing,” “overwhelmed,” “scrambling.” No doubt that’s how it feels to you, but in the process you are leading, quietly showing us the way, just as Bishop Budde did. Thank you!
Your courage and clarity is helpful for me in this moment. Please keep speaking – we need your voice. Grateful for you.
Our pastor (Alison Harrington at Southside Presbyterian in Tucson) had been reminding us each week that living under a brutal and repressive autocracy has been a very common situation for followers of the Lamb through the history of the church. What’s new for Americans (but not for Russians or Hungarians or, for 50 years til 1994, S Africans) is a tyrant’s ludicrous claim to be the best Christian ever. Our calling doesn’t change: to love justice, show mercy, and walk humbly with our God. Yesterday I thought, “every voter and legislator will surely turn in disgust from a man who sinks so low as to blame a tragic airline accident on his predecessor and on minority hires” (the FAA staff who were working under the supervision of a safety board whose members he had just fired en masse). What a way to launch Black History Month! But I haven’t seen any sign that this was a step too far for the Cult of Trump. So we will probably see worse. Thanks for helping us pull back from the brink of despair, Debra.
I’ve been thinking about your first point a lot lately. Imagine if the Babylonians or Egyptians in the OT went around saying to the Israelites, “Oh, no, WE are the real Jews around here!” That kind of gaslighting is what we are facing, and it has many people confused and many more despairing. As Sue says, kyrie eleison.
Debra, thank you for your excellent, timely words. I will re-read them many times this week. I only wish there were a good way to break through to the Nationalists’ silo.
Debra, I too like Shane Claiborne’s words. He is talking for many of us who try to follow the radical and compassionate Savior of our lives and actions.
Amen. As our friend Quentin Schultze says, words create reality. Thanks, Debra, for helping us understand what is happening to us.
“A collision of Christianities!” And I’d always thought Christianity was Christianity. Immutable, enduring, abiding. Sacrosanct even? How naive! I need to ramp up my imagination to fathom what’s happening today, that’s for sure.
Thank you for this commentary, Debra. The best I’ve read yet on our current sad situation.
Much appreciate your words. The days since January 20 have been hard to navigate, especially hearing from some Christian friends who hear such a different “spin” on Trump’s actions in their silo. Praying for wisdom and the ability to love justice, to walk humbly with our God, and to show his mercy.
“Christians cannot follow both Jesus and Trump.” Since he descended the golden escalator, I’ve called DJT “an anti-Christ.” Nothing he has done since then has persuaded me differently; in fact, his actions prove my claim. Everything is anti-Christ and his Kingdom of Heaven ways. With his global desires, perhaps he will morph into “the” anti-Christ. Lord, have mercy.
Wow! Thank you, Debra! So well said.
I’ve working on a book for pastors on PTSD, which includes a chapter on trauma. Let me suggest that trauma and abuse are not the same thing. Trauma requires three things: (1) danger, a danger that differs from everyday living. (2) powerlessness against an outside force, and (3) the possibility of death or serious injury. The new administration’s practices are dangerous, we are powerless, and the consequences are severe. You write, “People’s real bodies and livelihood are on the line,” and you are absolutely correct. I suspect we will eventually suffer from a national PTSD over this. But we have power over the media (which you correctly point out). We can turn it off. Thanks for an interesting and helpful article.
Really appreciate that clarification, Douglas. Thank you. And thank you for your work on behalf of pastors.
Could turning off the media be a bit like burying our heads in the sand? That would be something we cannot afford to do. Resistance and rejection require clear thinking and planning.
Thank you for using your voice to help widen our perspective on the situation. You encourage me to use my own voice when and where I can.
Thank you! You said so well what I needed to hear.
Debra, your reply to David’s Comment said: “Imagine if the Babylonians or Egyptians in the OT went around saying to the Israelites, “Oh, no, WE are the real Jews around here!” I wonder if you or someone else might connect that to another issue we face.
The “other issue” may seem to change the topic, but I so want to get this thought out here, and it does seem relevant.
In our big church meeting at EACRC last Sunday, we were told by Council that given Synod’s response to our congregation, “we must now either repent or disaffiliate”. And we our church took its first of two votes on that. But I began to wonder: what is the status of this “must”? Why must we take it at face value?
It is a “must”, after all, from a current CRC “majority” that thinks being affirming is heresy. But there is also a strong CRC Synod “minority” that rejects this–just as we reject what is odious in the discourse of Steve Bannon and co. And if the minority disagrees with them on “being affirming”, why must we passively accept a dictum that the current majority alone is “the real CRC” and that we must get out?
The real answer emerged, briefly, in the brief discussion. If we don’t get out, Synod will, in accord with CRC church polity, be able to do “distasteful” things to us. Such as, remove our Church council, and install their own Council over EACRC, with people from obedient non-affirming CRC churches
Okay, polity gives them the right to do that to us. . But mustn’t we try to thinking this through the way the MLK and the leaders of the Freedom Marches did? That minority was told “if you enter our city, we will do very distasteful things to you.” Following the non-violence way of MLK and Gandhi and Jesus, they minority leaders endured, and sought creative and sacrificial ways to absorb those distasteful things. (I here recall MLK’s “Letter from a Birmingham jail”) Churches like EACRC, I believe, are still deeply Reformed to the core. Might there not be creative and loving ways and even respectful for its members to respond to a puppet Council installed by the current Synod majority? (And so on for the other distasteful measures that CRC Polity gives the current majority authority to use.) Might not such ways be a way of resisting the Majority’s “We are only the real CRC: love it or leave it.”
I’m frustrated. I so want to see signs that the the “dissident: CRC churches are thinking about this possibility, as a way of creatively and loving absorbing and resisting the traumatizing rhetoric (and its traumatizing “must’) coming from within own denomination. So I have stuck in my flailing plea here, hoping it might be seen as having some relevance to your passionate and flailing blog.
Well said. Well Said. WELL SAID.
Thank you.
Sorry, I can’t be a yes man here. Watching from across your border to the north, I get that your president leaves lots to be desired. But the comments here also seem to be very polarizing, suggesting he is the anti-christ even. Can we remember that all rulers are ordained to office by God, even the bad ones. Maybe we need to stop looking at the man and start focusing on the Man on the Cross. We all need him, the president included. I’m not suggesting he’s beyond criticism. He isn’t. His mouth is much too big and quick to spout off. But certainly Biden and Obama were not perfect, far from perfect even and not beyond criticism. You can point the finger at Christian Nationalism in the USA but maybe the opposite “form” of Christianity is presented in the views here. Sure, Jesus calls us to care for the poor, etc., And we need to do our best. But just as looking to the president as an anti-christ is wrong, so it thinking that any president is going to set the world aright. That job has already been done by the One and Only Ruler of All. And our best efforts to follow him fall far short, whether our position on something like “Prolife” puts us behind Trump because he protects the unborn or behind another leader who protects refugees and immigrants. All fall short of what Jesus alone will do when he sets the world aright. At least that’s my humble opinion as I try to limp along in obedience to the King of Kings.
Rich, speaking as one Canadian to another (thus making me an “immigrant’ in the U.S.) I think you are vastly underestimating the situation here right now when you say that the new president “leaves lots to be desired.” The many executive orders he has been putting out are evil and vindictive and are doing massive harm to people all over the world. I just learned that PEPFAR has finally been given a waiver — thank God b/c that is a program that has saved millions of lives by providing antiretrovirals to people living with HIV/AIDS. That is just one example and there are dozens more. It is much worse than that “His mouth is much too big and quick to spout off.” Please take a deep look at all the damage he is doing much of it to get back people who have stood up to him. As Christians, I believe that we need to speak against that kind of evil.
If it is so that God ordains even bad rulers to office, it surely is also true that God never approves of rulers who dishonor Him by abusing that office.
Thank you, Debra. Sobering and spot on. The chaos and cruelty are the point. It’s so depressing that this new world order is in such close parallel with the current CRC discord/discourse.
Thanks Debra, well said,
Reply to Rich from Canada, I’ve lamented “proof texting” for my whole career, and need to respond. Surely Paul wrote to the Romans that we need to obey our government, that they were instituted by Christ, BUT John wrote in Revelation 13 that one of the devil’s best tools to destroy followers of Christ was the beast from the sea, and Daniel 7 tells us clearly the beast from the sea is a government/kingdom. And, who is riding this beast, the prostitute, the capitol city of the kingdom. I read that to say there are governments that were instituted by Christ and others that are put in place by the devil or Satan. Which is this one in Washington? Obviously I have tried to condense a point that needs many more paragraphs, but I hope the point is made.
In Lk 13:32 Jesus called Herod a fox, and that is what Trump is, a fox: dangerous, sneaky, cunning, & cruel. It was the little foxes that destroyed to vines in the vineyards of Israel (Song of Songs, 2:15).
Debra, thank you for your clear-eyed assessment of our political and ecclesiastical dynamics. Eight years ago, when Trump was elected, my primary feeling was one of embarrassment. Now eight years later, as Trump assumes his self-declared throne, with members of the executive, judicial, and legislative branches required to kiss his scepter, and the richest of the rich fawning over it, and vast numbers of Christians bowing to every egotistical and hurtful and destructive order he issues, we have cause for alarm. Lord, help us to follow Christ faithfully and love our neighbors boldly.
Venting may be therapeutic for the venter but there is little chance that the minds which stimulated the venting will adjust, much less change. It’s preaching to the choir. As I scroll through the 27 enthusiastically approving replies I feel as if I’m in an echo chamber on steroids. I’m not a Trumpee, but I get a little weary of clever tirades against a whole lot of fairly leveled-headed folks who have their own jeremiads against shoddy behavior and governance by the “other side.” It might be enlightening to hear from them on this forum.
I am leaving a comment on Sunday February 2, 2025. Please listen to Hidden Brain’s Wellness 2.0: The Art of the Unknown for some further help as we face the havoc Musk is wreaking on our country tonight. https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/wellness-2-0-the-art-of-the-unknown/
Sobering, sharply focused, and so timely. Thank you, Debra.
Thank you, Debra! This is sobering, timely, and so helpfully articulated.