Christianity and Trump

I read the article reprinted below, that discusses the pseudo-Christian flag waving over this current administration. While I would never hold myself out to be a devout religious person, I am at least familiar after years of indoctrination with many of its principal tenets. I think that anyone with even a modicum of religious understanding from any of the major religions, can see where the actions of this administration fail to meet even the basics of the good most try to convey. When Trump went out of his way to push others aside to stand with a Bible held high in front of a church, not many understood he would be taking direction from the Old Testament and adding his own interpretations to its commandments.

He would keep certain aspects of the Old Testament like animal sacrifice where Venezuelan animals in boats (humans in this case), would be sacrificed for the sin of that country not giving up its oil to the U.S. He would rest on the Sabbath but he would now define “Sabbath” to mean any time and any place he is tired. Capital punishment in the form of stoning for the sin of adultery would now be out, except in the case of the woman if the man didn’t have a good prenup with his own wife.

All kidding aside, the specter of Christian nationalism and its overlapping ideology, white nationalism, provide cover and excuse for his administration’s sins of greed and corruption. The word “Christian” is merely the sweet icing that hides the foul deeds within. The real emphasis is on nationalism which tries to use love of country to justify an aggressive superiority. It provides a sense of camaraderie and purpose with a shared identity. It confuses patriotism with something that uses pride to become aggressive and exclusionary.

Within the guise of Christian nationalism is an ideology of ethnic and cultural ultranationalism where ethnicity, language, common ancestry, and cultural heritage become the key to accepting authoritarianism, militarism, and a fascist opposition of minority populations. Donald Trump and his father have a history of racism that provided the basis for his current attitude under the cover of religious identity. While Mr. Magoo, Helen Keller, and Stevie Wonder could clearly see what is happening now, many are still blinded by some irrational belief that this "Chosen One" can do no wrong. Their faith is misplaced. His deeds speak with a clarity that exceed his current oratory skill set.

The article below was under the title: Why Is Christianity So Hard to Find in the Trump Administration. I found many of the ideas expressed to be of interest.

Article by opinion columnist Ross Douthat in the NYT

As soon as he was nominated to be secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, with his Crusader cross tattoo and his attendance at a hard-edge Calvinist church, became a natural vessel for liberal fears about that dread concept, “Christian nationalism.”

This is a term that can be understood in two ways. The first understanding emphasizes the “Christian” part and imagines nationalism as the vehicle through which conservative believers impose their doctrines on a pluralist society. This is the vision that inspires the strongest liberal paranoia, with images of inquisitions, witch trials, the Republic of Gilead.

But there’s a second understanding, in which “nationalism” is the controlling word and the religious modifier is the pinch of incense that makes believers comfortable with worldly deeds and choices.

With this kind of Christian nationalism, the core fault might not be too much religious moralism in politics, but too little. And this second understanding often seems closer to the realities of the second Trump administration.

Start with the current controversies surrounding Hegseth — his orders to rain down death on Venezuelan boats believed to be carrying drugs, and the alleged decision, in at least one instance, to ruthlessly finish off survivors.

I don’t want to say that a policy of direct attacks on drug cartels is inherently inconsistent with Christian ideas about just war; perhaps a case could be made and a strategy constructed that clarifies when exactly a drug mule becomes a combatant.

But I do not hear such a case from Hegseth or the administration. The argument instead is mostly a bloody-minded utilitarianism: Bad guys being killed saves American lives; you can trust us that these are all bad guys; no, you can’t see the legal justification; and anyway, Obama killed more people with his drone strikes. Traditional Christian just-war considerations don’t seem to enter in at all.

This particular lacuna is hardly unique to the Trump era: From Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the post-9/11 era, American hawks have never felt especially constrained by religious attempts to put limits on the use of force.

What’s notable about this administration, though, is how widely the religious deficit extends. When the Trump administration slashed foreign aid programs that often reflected an explicitly Christian humanitarianism, some religious conservatives welcomed or made their peace with the cuts. But with the exception of the transgender issue, more “right-wing”-coded religious priorities have also received little attention from this administration.

It has conspicuously kept the pro-life movement at arm’s length. It has offered at best symbolic moves toward the regulation of spreading vices (pornography, drugs, gambling) that evangelical Christianity especially once vigorously opposed. Nor has it yet offered serious responses to the newer religious concern over falling birthrates.

And it has done little to address growing Christian anxieties about the dehumanizing effects of an artificial intelligence future. If the right’s coalition is divided between an A.I.-boosting donor class and a potentially A.I.-skeptical base (which has Steve Bannon as its would-be spokesman), the Trump administration has strongly favored the side that wants to build the Machine God.

The administration has offered a lot of general rhetoric about the value of Christianity to American civilization, along with presidential complaints about Christian persecution overseas and pious social media posts on Catholic holidays. But in the absence of religious-informed policymaking, this sometimes feels more like a performance of a Christian politics than a full reality.

In offering this analysis, I should stress that sincerely Christian policymaking can go badly astray (where the Middle East is concerned, I prefer Trump’s pagan transactionalism to George W. Bush’s evangelical idealism) or simply prove unpopular (I don’t imagine that a war on porn would dramatically improve Trump’s approval ratings).

And sometimes the Trump administration’s not especially religious priorities simply reflect what its supporters want. The right’s coalition is more secular than in the past, and even many churchgoing conservatives seem more concerned about immigration than abortion. Many very-online converts are more invested in meme wars than morals legislation. And religious fears about A.I. are inchoate: There isn’t some clear “trad” alternative to outracing the Chinese.

Nonetheless, I think a more Christian politics could serve the White House on three fronts. In policymaking, a Christian social vision would help the administration come to grips with the central social problem of our time, the substitution of transient hedonic vices for permanent commitments. In politics, a public rhetoric infused with more Christian charity might win an increasingly unpopular administration some badly needed friends.

And morally, in certain concrete cases — from the treatment of the detainees we shipped to a Salvadoran prison to the fate of alleged drug runners our missiles might have left helpless in the sea — a little more Christianity in its nationalism might simply prevent this administration from doing wicked things.