The Trump Dilemma

Recently, the National Council of Churches (NCC) issued a condemnation of Donald Trump’s cabinet selections and policy agenda. In their condemnation, they sounded the alarm because they believe Trump will put America’s most vulnerable citizens at greater risk. They base this condemnation on their belief that his agenda goes against Christian beliefs.

The NCC represents a group of churches that hold a theologically liberal point of view. This includes such theological positions as neo-orthodoxy, postmodern theology, progressive theology, and liberation theology.

The Root of Liberal Christian Theology
While these various groups and denominations claim to be Christian, they are not biblical Christians. These liberal forms of theology are generally some form of Naturalism dressed in biblical vocabulary, and do not represent biblical teachings at all. They latch onto the idea of caring for the poor and most vulnerable, but snatch it completely out of its biblical context. Rather than recognizing that this admonition was given as guidance to individual Christians to help them know how to live a faithful Christian life, liberal theology takes it as a justification to promote their socialist ideology – that it is the government’s responsibility to develop ways to carry out this work. This makes the government the agent of Christian ministry rather than individual believers. It is simply a false theology.

Here, are the particular matters the NCC has identified that they don’t like. They believe that President Trump:
1. will hurt the poor by repealing the ACA (Obamacare),
2. will slash funding for food stamps,
3. has selected cabinet officials that epitomize extremist, racist, and fringe worldviews which are morally inconsistent with the Christian principle of loving one’s neighbor,
4. holds beliefs that are antithetical to the American values of “liberty and justice for all,”
5. has selected cabinet officials who hold racist, anti-Semitic, white supremacist, xenophobic, and anti-Muslim ideologies.

Evaluation of the Priorities of Liberal Christian Theology
In evaluating these fears, there are a couple of different issues that emerge. The first has to do with personal policy priorities, while the second relates to theology. Sadly, many who claim to be Christians and assert that the Trump agenda is anti-Christian, often conflate the two so that anyone who disagrees with them politically is seen to be anti-Christian. They don’t make a distinction between Christian theology and political policy. So, let’s take a moment to break this down.

The first two priorities above are purely political policy preferences. There is no direct biblical reason why anyone should be either for or against either of them. Number 3 makes an unspoken theological assumption, – that traditional values are unchristian – then judges a group of individuals based on those assumptions. Number 4 makes a judgment as to the meaning of “liberty and justice for all,” but does not define what is meant by the expression. At the same time, they judge people they disagree with politically based on their unspoken definition. Number 5 is also a judgmental statement based on unspecified criteria – they have their own definitions of what it means to be racist, anti-Semitic, white supremacist, xenophobic, and anti-Muslim, but do not share that definition; they simply make accusations. In order to understand the NCC’s criticism, we must bring out into the open that which has been left unsaid.

When it comes to defining the values these groups use to make their moral evaluations, it must first be understood that the teachings in the Bible are not their starting point. They will sometimes try to use certain scripture passages as proof texts to make their point, but the beliefs come from an entirely different place. Their bottom line is not building the Kingdom of God as it is expressed in the Bible, rather, it is in creating a utopia on earth. Interestingly, they do borrow from biblical values to define what the utopia should look like, but they redefine biblical concepts and give them temporal rather than eternal meanings.

Typically, the way they express their “moral imperative” is to say that “we must care for the poor and most vulnerable.” However, rather than apply this to the individual believer, as is taught in the Bible, they apply it to society, and assert that the government is responsible to make it happen. More often than not, beneath the Christian terminology that is used to promote their ideas, you will find a Marxist methodology.

Since they have redefined Christianity to mean utopia on earth, it is now easy to see why they believe that Trump is promoting a non-Christian set of beliefs. Let’s look again at the five issues and explore them through the NCC’s worldview lens.

1. Trump will hurt the poor by repealing the ACA.
The assumption that is made here is that the Christian point of view demands that the government provide universal healthcare. However, there is no biblical basis for this belief. Their bottom line is simply that “we must care for the poor and most vulnerable.” They take this value from the Bible, and without any contextual justification, turn it into the Bible’s prime directive. Then, they insert their political agenda into the mix by asserting that Socialist redistributive methodologies must be used to accomplish the goal.

2. Trump will slash funding for food stamps.
This assumption is based on the same ideas as #1 above. They believe that in order to accomplish the biblical directive to “care for the poor and most vulnerable,” the government must institute Socialist redistributive policies to make sure everyone has food. Again, the bottom line belief is that God’s ultimate purpose is utopia on earth managed by the government, rather than eternal individual salvation.

3. Trump’s cabinet picks epitomize extremist, racist, and fringe worldviews that are morally inconsistent with Christian principles of loving neighbor.
Since the real bottom line authority for the NCC’s theological approach is based on Marxist beliefs rather than biblical ones, their idea of salvation relates to what is best for the collective, not on what is necessary for an individual to receive eternal life. For them, an emphasis on personal responsibility is not believed to be Christian. Based on this assessment, they consider anyone who holds worldview beliefs which promote individual responsibility to be unchristian.

4. Trump’s beliefs are antithetical to the American values of “liberty and justice for all.”
The way the NCC gets at the idea that their opponents do not hold American values is that they redefine the word justice to mean “social justice,” rather than “equal justice under the law.” Social justice is a simply a creative way of expressing the idea of promoting a more equal distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. In other words, they consider justice is done when the “privileged” in society have their privilege taken away and given to the “less privileged.” With this redefinition of words, the traditional meaning of justice has been thrown aside, and the definition of “American values” changed to an entirely different set of values.

5. Trump’s cabinet picks consist of people who hold racist, anti-Semitic, white supremacist, xenophobic (fear or dislike of people from other countries), and anti-Muslim ideologies.
To make this charge, the NCC has had to redefine these words to mean something different from the actual meanings. With that accomplished, they must then play God by pretending to know the motives of the people they don’t like. There is actually no evidence that Trump’s cabinet picks fit into any of these categories.

Evaluation of the NCC’s Criticisms from a Biblical Christian Perspective
Perhaps the biggest mistake the NCC has made in their criticism of Trump is to equate political goals with Christian theology. The naturalistic theology which underlies the beliefs of most NCC member churches is not derived from the Bible, but from personal preferences. They have settled on a set of political preferences that inserts the government into the role of God, and maintains that the good they believe needs to be accomplished in the world should be done by government. This is simply not biblical theology.

Another mistake they have made is to fail to differentiate between Trump’s personal sins and his policy priorities. There is no doubt that Trump has hurt himself morally by some of his words and actions in the past, and it is hard for a Christian to defend him personally for these moral indiscretions.

But the big picture focuses less on him personally than on his worldview. Trump sees the world through a theistic worldview. This does not necessarily mean he is personally a Christian, or even that he behaves in a manner that is consistent with biblical teachings. What it does mean is that he operates from an understanding that morality is based on an objective foundation, rather than the subjective and relativistic one of the NCC – that is, there does exist an objective right and wrong. The NCC operates from a naturalistic worldview foundation, and in doing that, they find it acceptable to pronounce their socialistic approach as moral, and Trump’s approach to politics and economics as immoral based on his past personal indiscretions. This is simply a false equivalence. The fact that he has some bad elements to his personal life does not even speak to the principles that need to be followed in guiding the nation.

Repudiating Trump does not make the principles followed by the NCC better or right. Their approach is unchristian in whole. While the NCC touts itself as Christian, and uses Christian vocabulary in promoting its point of view, the worldview beliefs that inform its approach are anything but Christian – in fact, they are atheistic. God really does exist, and he has revealed himself and his ways propositionally (in language) to mankind. A part of this revelation relates to the foundation for morality.

It is not my intention in this article to defend Trump politically or morally as an individual. What is important are the worldview principles which guide the various leaders in their leadership. What we have now is an individual who is very flawed in some ways, but who operates from a worldview platform which is consistent with Christian Theism, versus a group which is also very flawed, but operates from a platform with is decidedly anti-Christian.

As we seek to live our Christian faith out in a fallen world, this is a tension we must live with. In resigning ourselves to live with it, this does not mean we must accept that which is wrong. In fact, we should call out wrong wherever we find it. But in doing so, we must be careful not to lose sight of the ultimate foundation of our faith.

© 2017 Freddy Davis