But understand this, that in the last days terrible times will come. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit,ย lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.ย IIย Timothy 3:1-5
Hardly the description of a person one would expect to be giving the commencement address at the largest evangelical Christian university in the world. And yet there was Donald Trumpโwho could arguably use the Apostle Paulโs words on his resume as a self-descriptionโa bit over a week ago on ย Motherโ Day eve, speaking to the graduates at Liberty University, the Lynchburg, VA creation of Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, who established the school as Liberty Baptist College almost fifty years ago. The university now has over 15,000 residential undergraduate and more than 100,000 online students. The reaction of the more than 50,000 people in attendance at the commencement held in the universityโs football stadium when the President walked on stage sounded like the Beatles had just arrived. They cheered when, in his summary of Trumpโs accomplishments in his first four months as President, Chancellor Jerry Falwell, Jr. praised Trump for bombing โthose in the Middle East who were persecuting Christiansโ (even though the expressed reason for the bombing was Syrian president Assadโs use of chemical weapons on his own citizens). If anyone in the crowd disagreed with Falwell when he said that โI do not believe that any President in our lifetimes has done so much that has benefitted the Christian community in such a short time span than Donald Trump,โ they kept their mouths shut.
In some ways, the Presidentโs address was boilerplate Trumpโhe seldom went more than three sentences without mentioning himself, remained committed to a sixth-grade vocabulary (using his favorite adjectives โamazingโ seven times and โgreatโ twenty-seven times), spent the middle third of his talk praising Libertyโs beefed up football program, and more than once mispronounced the name of Fr. Theodore Hesburgh (calling him โHesperโ), who was the President of the University of Notre Dame for thirty-five years. His usual obsession with size was on display as he marveled at the size of the crowd, the number of graduating seniors seated on the field, that Liberty is bigger than Notre Dame, and the size of his upset victory last November. It was also a boilerplate commencement speech, complete with invitations for the graduates to applaud their thanks to their parents, appeals to patriotism, the perfunctory thanks to those in the military for their sacrifice and service, phrases such as โthe greatest adventure of your lifeโ and โdemand the best from yourself,โ stories of people overcoming obstacles to achieve success, and no warnings about the fact that the lives the graduates were undoubtedly imagining for themselves going forward almost certainly will not turn out as they expect. In many ways, the Presidentโs address was exactly like ninety-nine percent of all commencement addressesโcompletely forgettable.
But woven into Trumpโs rambling remarks were regular references to something that has been a conservative Christian theme for some timeโthe perception that Christians are under attack. This was not Trumpโs first visit to Liberty University. When speaking at the universityโs convocation in January 2016, then candidate Trump was clearly still searching for his sea legs trying to speak the language of the conservative Christian. He referred to his favorite Bible verse in โTwo Corinthians,โ for instance; critics suggested that someone might have wanted to tell him that the proper reference is โSecond Corinthiansโ in preparation for speaking before a crowd of Bible-toting evangelicals. Trumpโs commencement address showed that the President can learn a few new tricksโhis speech was filled with the code words and phrases that evangelical Christians recognize as marking one of their own. Predicting that the graduates would be โwarriors for truth . . . for our country, and for your family,โ Trump frequently challenged the graduates to be โtrue champions,โ suggesting that Liberty Universityโs creed is โto be, really, champions for Christโ (the banner behind the podium said โLiberty University: Training Champions for Christ since 1971โ). Over and over the President challenged the graduates to embrace the role of โOutsider,โ an odd role to assign to evangelical Christians, since the latest Pew Research data reveals that 25.4% of Americans are evangelical Protestant Christian, the single largest religious group in the nation. Trump promised the graduates that as long as he is president, โno one is ever going to stop you from practicing your faith or from preaching whatโs in your heart. We will always stand up for the right of all Americans to pray to God and to follow his teachingsโโas if the thousands of evangelical Christians in the audience were regularly being denied any of those things.
Evangelical Christians voted for Trump in November in massive numbers, as responsible for his electoral college victory as any other single demographic. There were undoubtedly many reasons why they voted for a man who has regularly and publicly said and done things that are a disgrace and affront to even the most basic Christian principles throughout his adult life; one of these reasons is that Trumpโs packaging of reality in an aggressively โUs vs. Them,โ โWinners and Losersโ framework fits the evangelicalโs natural disposition to imagine faith as something to be defended and protected against all manner of perceived threats. I am very familiar with this version of Christianityโit is the one in which I was raised. I learned at a very early age that Christians are involved in a cosmic war between the forces of good and those of darknessโwe talked a lot about โspiritual warfare.โ Many of the hymns of my childhood shared a common themeโwe Christian believers are at war and must be prepared to do battle at any moment. From โLead On, O King Eternalโ and โOnward Christian Soldiersโ through โSoldiers of Christ, Arise,โ to โWho is On the Lordโs Side?โ I learned a spiritual vocabulary of aggression, violence and warfare. I was never clear about exactly who we were supposed to be fighting or how to recognize the enemy, but I knew I had been drafted into an army, whether I liked it or not. Almost five centuries ago, as he observed his fellow French Catholic and Protestant citizens regularly kill each other in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, Michel de Montaigne wrote that โthere is no hostility so extreme as that of the Christian.โ To which a contemporary evangelical Christian might respond by asking โAnd whatโs your point? When one is at war, hostility is to be expected.โ
To be fair, there are enough New Testament textsโparticularly in Paulโs epistlesโusing such aggressive language to describe the life of following Jesus to perhaps justify framing the Christian life in a manner at the same time both combative and defensive. But in the words attributed to Jesus in the gospels, one finds something very different. The kingdom of heaven that Jesus describes is radically inclusiveโall are welcomeโand this kingdom is our business to establish now, not to hope for at some future post-apocalyptic date. Jesus regularly turns his closest followers away from defensiveness and aggression toward acceptance and welcome. In two of my classes this semester, I more than once had the opportunity to explore with my students how Jesus describes the kingdom of heaven in his parables and stories. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, like salt, like leavenโin other words, like things so tiny and apparently insignificant that one might entirely overlook them. Most importantly, these things do their slow and transformative work embedded in what they are working on, not by protecting themselves from it or aggressively attacking it. By becoming part of the mixture of flour, water, and other ingredients, yeast transforms them into something more than the sum of its parts. The kingdom of heaven, in other words, is not a zero sum game. It is a both/and kingdom.
I have no idea whether Donald Trump takes any of the religious-sounding rhetoric in his Liberty University commencement address seriouslyโI must say that if โby your deeds you shall know them,โ his deeds have not been very promising. For those who do take their Christian faith seriously and have convinced themselves that their faith led them both to vote for and continue to support Donald Trump, remember that no one can serve two masters. Will it be the kingdom of Trump or the kingdom of heaven?