On April 22, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi hosted the first meeting for an anti-Christian bias task force, convened to “eradicate anti-Christian biases” from the federal government. To celebrate the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s reign, faith leaders gathered to worship near the president, gushing on social media posts about the White House becoming a “house of prayer.” The New York Times recently published an article about crosses becoming a “hot accessory” among Trump’s staff, “the jewelry of choice most associated with President Trump’s second term.”
I read these stories about the presumed faith of Trump’s White House with a sense of dismay. Deep sadness, bordering on despair. With a pit in my stomach, if I’m honest. And also, I feel a significant amount of rage that some folks are claiming to serve Jesus with hot accessories and worship songs that clearly serve money and empire instead.
Or maybe not so clearly, given how many Christian leaders (or, rather, Christian nationalist leaders) praised Trump for presumably restoring God in our land.
History provides a compelling warning for what happens when the state and the church become bedfellows. This year, Anabaptists will celebrate 500 years since they took a radical stance, renouncing the dictates of a state church and asserting that following Jesus required adult, rather than infant, baptism. Their subversion of state-sponsored religion led to the torture and killing of many, but also a vibrant movement that has persisted for centuries.
My forebears escaped violence across Europe, desiring to worship free of the state’s demands. They immigrated to the Americas seeking that same freedom. Although some Anabaptists have seemingly lost this thread tying them to the past, voting for President Trump in the last election, a number of others are providing courageous resistance to the violence of this administration: protesting Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians, for example; and providing sanctuary for immigrants, terrorized by ICE; and rebuilding homes in North Carolina, standing in a gap created when federal disaster money dried up.
As a people called to simplicity, I imagine my Anabaptist kin would be bemused by cross jewelry being called a “hot accessory” that, according to Bondi (who wears a diamond-encrusted one), expresses her “strong Christian upbringing.” As a people called to serve others, I imagine they would be aghast at the White House’s attempts to cut funding to feeding children and the elderly. As a people with a history of their own immigration, I hope they would empathize with the plight of those the White House is deporting, often cruelly and without due process. As a people who long for peace, I know my Anabaptist forebears would reject this administration’s support of violent dictators like Russia’s Putin, and its outright violence in Yemen and in Gaza, where U.S.-made bombs are killing innocent children.
I started writing this Patheos blog last year because my faith informs how I exist and act in public spaces, and because my Anabaptist upbringing has helped define what that faith should look like. My faith should try to truly be centered on Jesus, and how I exist and act in public spaces needs to reflect Jesus: his ministry, his care for those on society’s margins, his resistance to empire. A faith centered on Jesus cultivates love of neighbor as its highest calling, rather than turning on neighbors who don’t practice faith in the same way I do.
On April 28, days after Bondi’s anti-Christian task force convened, Pastor William Barber was arrested in the Capitol Rotunda for leading a prayer protest. Barber is a Black pastor and long-time progressive activist whose organization, Repairers of the Breach, issued this statement: “The arrests occurred after an interfaith gathering of leaders from across the nation delivered a moral message to the nation this morning at the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to sound the alarm on the immoral budget cuts and proposed budget cuts being pursued in Washington D.C. at the expense of the poor, working people, children, women, and families.”
If Bondi and the White House were truly interested in anti-Christian biases, Barber’s arrest might be one place to start their investigation. He was also wearing a crucifix, after all, though I’m guessing it wasn’t the right kind.
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