Already in the Trump era we have “Fake News” and “Alternative Facts,” both euphemisms for “lies.”
Now we have “Fake Christians,” but that phrase is one for which I am already grateful.
Pope Francis is the source. According to reports based on the Vatican Radio broadcast of his sermon this past Thursday, the Pope said that it would be better to be an atheist than a hypocritical Christian (although I suspect atheists didn’t appreciate the comparison).
It’s a scandal, he said, defining “scandal” as “saying one thing and doing another.” He believes that Catholics who do this are hurting the Christian faith.
Pope Francis speaks for all Christians when he describes hypocrisy as a “scandal” that does immense damage to the integrity of all Christians.
And I believe what he says applies to American Christians who think they can be Christian and also support who Donald Trump is and what he is doing.
It’s not possible.
Trump’s personal life, personal values, and the methods he is using to achieve his policy goals run counter to any informed and honest understanding of Jesus’ life and teachings.
All of us who are Christian fail to measure up in our personal lives to the example Jesus set so I am willing to cut Trump a measure of slack on that score, but not when it comes to his policy methods.
He has no excuse for what he is doing. The key to understanding why is the important distinction between goal and method.
The problem with Trump is not his policy goals because nearly all Americans want the same things he wants – secure borders, effective vetting of immigrants and refugees, healthcare for everyone, effective government protections in the marketplace, good jobs, good schools, and so forth.
Trump’s goals are not the problem. The ways he is going about them is.
His methods are wrong, ineffective, and in many instances, grossly immoral.
And that is what puts Christians on the line.
You cannot, for example, be a Christian and support a broad sweep “too bad if you’re caught regardless of your personal circumstances” round up of illegal immigrants in this country, some of whom have been here for 30 years.
These are not “bad dudes.” They are mothers and fathers who work every day to give their children a better life.
The tearing apart of families, leaving children born here without their parents, is an immoral act. They are here and the moral thing to do is to provide a path to citizenship for them that is tough, fair, just, and humane.
Yes, the people who came here illegally were wrong to do so, even if they had good reasons, but rounding them up like cattle and deporting them callously is worse.
No genuine Christian can support such an approach. Whatever justification given for supporting Trump’s approach to this very real problem does not change the fact that it is morally wrong to do what he is doing.
What makes it worse is that Trump’s words suggest that in reality he is simply playing politics with people’s lives to please his radical right constituency whose interests are being promoted by Steve Bannon, one of his primary policy advisors.
There are more just and right ways of dealing with illegal immigration than what Trump is doing, but he has chosen a “shock and awe” approach that makes it appear as if he is doing something dramatic to fulfill his campaign promises regardless of the consequences to people’s lives.
You cannot be Christian and support him doing that. You cannot.
Moreover, he makes matters worse with his name calling tweets of people who criticize him…his attacking the press and thereby attacking our democracy…his using doublespeak to hide nefarious intentions behind his methods…and his telling outright lies and then blaming someone else for them or attacking the news source that exposes him.
Only the most radical of Trump’s supporters can deny that in his first month of office he has managed to divide the nation more than it was and prompt non-partisan experts in every field to question why he is doing what he is doing.
Maybe, as he suggests, the fault lies with all the rest of us and not with Trump at all, but no one with any sense believes that.
What he is doing is predictable behavior because of his narcissism, which makes support of his methods by anyone, especially Christians, an enigma of all enigmas.
It is easy to lose sight of the fact that what happens here at home and the influence we have around the world matter to other nations. It should matter to us even more.
Yet we are acting as if it doesn’t.
How else can you explain the fact that as a nation we are a house divided against itself and it doesn’t seem to alarm us?
At the same time, being divided should not surprise anyone, not least Christians.
No government that pushes concern for social justice to the sidelines, enacts tax policies that perpetuate economic inequity, indirectly encourages radicalism and nationalism because of irresponsible political rhetoric, and has state governments passing laws that support discrimination and bigotry in the name of religious freedom, should ever expect to be united.
This makes support for unjust and immoral methods for enforcing government policies, and sometimes the policies themselves, by so many Christians all the more troubling.
They are adding to the divisions rather than doing anything to heal them.
What the words and wisdom of Pope Francis did for me this week is to serve as a sobering reminder that when it comes to applying the teachings of Jesus to everyday life, being Christian doesn’t simply mean anything anyone says it means.
Rather, the real truth is that when it comes to being Christian, there are moral lines Christians don’t cross, social and economic values we don’t embrace, government policies we don’t support, and methods of enforcement for those policies we find intolerable.
Thus far there is no indication of which I am aware that Christians who support Donald Trump believe that. They seem to believe, instead, that they won when Trump did.
They can believe that only if they have a warped understanding of what it means to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly before God, or they believe political loyalties equal putting God first.
But it doesn’t really matter what they think.
You can be a “fake Christian” whether you believe you are or not.
linnposts.com 
A stunning display of the absence of Jesus in American Christianity was made with the election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. An overwhelming majority of church-goers voted to elect a man who spent decades drawing attention to himself as a boastful, self-indulgent wealthy womanizer who scoffed at common decency and showed no interest in spiritual matters. Despite –or perhaps because of- his crude attacks on his political opponents, his blatant sexism, his racist tweets, his slanderous remarks about immigrants, his fear-mongering about Muslims, and a series of falsehoods and lies American, Christians lined up at the polls to vote for him.
To be fair, it must be noted that Christians of all demographics did not flock to support this man. A relatively small percent of African-American Christians, Asian-American Christian, Native-American Christians and Hispanic Christians voted for Trump. But he received exceptionally strong support from white Christians, over 80% of evangelicals and a clear majority of white mainline Protestants and white Catholics. A number of reasons can be offered for why white Christians didn’t largely oppose Trump, as did other American Christians. But one thing is for sure: it was not because of Jesus. It is a result of self-serving Jesus-less Christianiy.
Could not agree more with you, Craig. Thank you for this addition to the discussion.
AMEN!!! And thanks for speaking the truth clearly. I think this blog is one of your CLASSICS! Well done.
Thanks, Wally. I keep trying, if only to encourage non-Trump Christians to be candid with those who are.
Jobs, JOBS, J O B S !! All going overseas. Can’t live on government subsidies the rest of my life, nor my children. Democrats did NOTHING that improved my situation. Trump has “personal imperfections” that don’t mean anything in relationship to changing the culture in the USA to help our own people survive. Only with a bustling economy can we ever “help others”. Right now we can’t even help ourselves. I have not paid taxes for several years–with a meaningful job, I can support needs of our country for roads (employment for others). By the way, families are NOT being “torn apart” by deportations. That is a false statement. Criminals are leaving; DOCA are staying and will have repatriation of some kind later on.
To your last point. Families are being torn apart. There was a story of one such family here in MN in the newspaper this past week. The fact is, neither you nor I knows when a family is torn apart. And deportation after many years of living here, even when a crime that was once deemed non-threatening had been committed, makes no sense. That we are now getting rid of “bad dudes” when we were not doing so before is as credible as the seven countries on Trump’s bam list being the source of terrorists threatening us.
As to your second point, you are simply uniformed beyond reason to blame Democrats for your misery. Obama inherited a disaster and the economy is stronger now than it has been in fifteen years. Republicans have never helped people like you and they never will. Look at the Bush record and that tells the story. As for Trump, he has appointed his Wall Street buddies to most cabinet and advisor posts. If you think they are going to look out for you, you have been living on another planet the last few years. They are the ones who busted the economy and put you out of work. It will be a cold day in hell before Trump or his friends do anything to help you.
Given the Republican record on the economy since before the Great Depression of 1920s and 30s, it is stunning that middle and low income voters keep supporting them. The only thing that ever raised wages and protected workers were unions, and the Republicans managed to get rid of most of them with support from people like you.
I wish the news Trump and his Republican Congress are going to hand you was going to be good, but if history is any guide, it will be worse than you ever imagined. And you will then have no one to blame but yourself.
Read the story of Daniela Vargas and see if you stand by your uninformed comment about families NOT being torn apart by deportations. I suppose it is too much to expect you to spend a little time researching a subject before speaking about it in ignorance.
Read the story of Daniela Vargas and see if you stand by your uninformed comment about families NOT being torn apart by deportations. I suppose it is too much to expect you to spend a little time researching a subject before speaking about it in ignorance.
YOU make no sense. We have seen TOO many regulations started under Obama; these are being cut back now. No business can afford to hire 50 full-time workers because of Obamacare, so they my go to 49 OR to 60 part time to avoid cost of insurance. That does NOT help me. Wheels are turning to have jobs back in USA with changes in taxing businesses so there are incentives to stay here and not out-source. Wages earned here are re-cycled into the economy. . . . Never mind, you wouldn’t understand; you already have your mind made up and are not open to re-thinking your perspective on things.
It is easy to say things, but much harder to give examples that show what you say is true. Give me examples of companies legitimately cutting back because Obamacare costs them money they needed for employee salaries and I will take you seriously.
Tell me one company that is keeping jobs here that had not already planned to do so. Trump has twice taken credit for it and it has been proven twice that the companies such as Ford had announced plans to do so before he was even elected.
Yes, wages earned here go back into the economy, but here are facts you keep ignoring: Jobs created under Obama – over 13 and half million; jobs created under W. Bush – 5 and a half million. That is a pattern that has existed since Jimmy Carter was president.
Republicans have never been job creators because tax breaks don’t create jobs. Never have. Never will. Supply and demand creates jobs. You apparently believe Republicans will help with that. The facts say otherwise.
The sun comes up in the East; it sets in the West. The color of grass is green; the sun is yellow. Trees take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen.