RNS: On Trump's Photo Op at St. John's Church
There's probably nothing from the four disastrous years of the Trump presidency that characterizes his contempt for Christians and disrespect for Christianity more than his walk across Lafayette Park after having it cleared of Black Lives Matter protesters following the George Floyd murder, then posing in front of St. John's Church with someone else's Bible for a photo op. This story in Religion News Service, with excerpts from Mark Meadow's memoirs indicating the thought process behind the photo, and that it was Ivanka's idea, not only shows that the Trumps know absolutely nothing at all about the Christian faith, but that they have relegated it to a tool that they can use when they want for their own political benefit.
Everything about the entire incident, from the tear-gassing and violent clearing of legitimate protesters exercising their first amendment rights to freedom of speech out of Lafayette Park between the church and the White House, to chasing Episcopal clergy, whose church was being used, off the property is insulting and disrespectful, denigrating the church's mission and purpose and using it, without the congregation's approval, as a secular political symbol. Aside from the disparagement of the Christian faith, the move was also an affront to American history. James Madison was the first President to attend services there, and every President who has served since, regardless of political affiliation, has attended at least one service there, to worship, not to campaign or use it to promote bigotry and racism.
An Unwelcome Visitor
Guard your steps when you go to the house of God; to draw near to listen is better than the sacrifice offered by fools; for they do not know how to keep from doing evil. Never be rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be quick to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven, and you upon earth; therefore let your words be few. For dreams come with many cares, and a fool's voice with many words. Ecclesiastes 5:1-3, NRSV.
I just love the wisdom of Solomon. This passage is actually inside the Bible that Ivanka pulled out of her purse and handed to Trump before the photo was taken. It fits this particular situation so well, though there are nit-pickers who will take me to task for applying it here. It's wisdom from a past time, written by a political leader too, a monarch who inherited his crown with God's blessing, according to the Biblical account. I'll let the reader decide how and to whom to apply the word "fool." It seems rather obvious to me.
According to Meadow's account in the Religion News Service article, the intention was a stunt, aimed at rallying the Evangelical base of Trump supporters. However, it did not go over well at all with the Christians who serve and worship in this particular church. They were not asked if the President could use their church building as a backdrop for a political photo op. When he crossed the street, the clergy that were on the property were removed, just like the protesters were removed from the park, against their will and their rights (sounds like tyranny to me).
"The symbolism of (Trump) holding a Bible as a prop and standing in front of our church as a backdrop when everything he has said is antithetical to the teachings of our traditions and what we stand for as a church--I was horrified," said the Right Reverend Mariann Budde, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. Rev. Budde had been organizing volunteers to give out water in support of the protesters, many of whom were Christians themselves, following their pastors and ministers to the protests.
The Right Reverend Michael Curry, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, accused Trump of "using a church building and a Bible for partisan political purposes."
More Than Just a Little Ironic
At some point during the protests, a fire was set in St. John's Church when someone broke a basement window and shoved a torch into the ceiling, setting a basement classroom on fire. The fire was put out before doing major damage to the church. The protesters were mostly peaceful, though as always, there are those who work their way in among a peaceful protest to take advantage of the situation to commit vandalism and looting. But there are also those who infiltrate and do things to undermine the purpose of the protests. There were multiple arrests of right wingers during the Washington protests. It's perfectly reasonable to think that the fire at St. John's, which did get a lot of attention simply because the building itself is so historic, was set by right wing extremists.
Episcopalians are not evangelicals, and while I haven't seen any specific information about how they fall politically, I know enough about them to know that only a small minority of them would likely be Trump supporters. Clearly, the clergy who were involved directly with St. John's Church were distressed about this incident, not just because Trump didn't ask, and because he had their own clergy, who were giving refreshments to protesters, forced off the property, but because they wanted nothing to do with him or his politics and certainly did not want their church associated with him.
And most white Evangelicals, the type that tend to be Trumpies, consider the Episcopal church to be apostate, liberal and un-Christian. Episcopalians do things that Evangelicals can't tolerate, like ordaining women, gays and lesbians to the clergy, being pro-active when it comes to social and racial justice--in other words, being "woke,"--and they believe climate change is real. Of course, neither Trump nor Ivanka know enough about Evangelicals or about Christianity to know the difference between a liberal Episcopalian congregation in the heart of liberal Washington, DC or a conservative, Southern Baptist congregation in Mississippi.
Nor did anyone apparently brief Trump about the translation of the Bible he decided to hold. According to Meadows, his choice was more about "how it felt" than what it looked like. But there, on the spine, below the gold "Holy Bible" are the words "Revised Standard Version." For those of you not well versed in the nuances of Christianity's divisiveness, the intricacies of doctrinal and theological disagreements and the murky paths of heresy among the faithful, the Revised Standard Version is the most commonly used translation by liberal Protestants. The RSV departs from the biases of the King James Version translators and renders the Greek and Aramaic text more literally, leaving the door open to more "liberal"--to use an overused term--interpretations.
The fact that Trump did not have a Bible of his own to use speaks volumes to how he feels about the actual faith and practice of the Evangelicals he claims to "love" so much. They believe the Bible is inerrant and infallible, and it is the sole foundation of their doctrine and theology. For Trump not to even have a desk copy he could use for a photo op says an awful lot about what he doesn't read. If it had come out that President Obama didn't have a Bible in his oval office desk, there are Evangelical leaders and right wing extremists in the media who would have claimed that to be evidence of his "secret Muslim faith." For me, it's just another example of their blatant hypocrisy and it's good for a laugh.
So there's Trump, in a photo op with both racial and religious overtones, standing in front of a liberal, Protestant Episcopalian church, holding a liberal Protestant Bible translation. Apparently, no one in his entourage noticed these things, or if they did, they were afraid to say anything about it.
An Insider Knows
When I brought this up in casual conversation to a friend of mine who is both an Evangelical and a Trumpie (or MAGAts as they are now called) the reaction I got was stunned silence. I could tell he was fishing for some kind of explanation. The initial reaction of dismissal as "liberal media" maneuvering gave way to genuine shock when I pointed out that St. John's Church is liberal, and falls on the left side of the very liberal Episcopalian denomination. The silence came when we zoomed in on the photo of the Bible and he saw the name of the translation stamped on the spine. I didn't have the heart to tell him, at that point, that George H.W. and Barbara Bush, and George W. and Laura Bush, regularly attended St. John's during their White House tenure, the latter specifically to hear, and congratulate the Rev. Gene Robinson, the first ordained gay Episcopalian bishop, who was a guest in the pulpit.
So this is sort of a mental speed-bump that probably won't change someone's mind, and it happened long enough in the past to be fading from memory. I was convinced, long before then, that Trump's only interest in white, Evangelical Christians was how to get them to vote for him in spite of having a reputation and living a lifestyle that they would consider to be "debauchery", and in anyone else, a sign of personal, moral and spiritual depravity. That they are willing to do what they would criticize anyone else for doing, simply to gain worldly, political power is a sign that, in spite of their rhetoric claiming their beliefs are superior to others who don't share them, they are prone to the same kind of hypocrisy and spiritual failure. Trump treats them like he thinks they are mindless idiots, and that all he needs to do to tickle their ears is hold a rally and bash the libs.
For the time is coming when when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. 2 Timothy 4:3-4, NRSV
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