Joel Knight, writes for Evangelicals Now about President Trump and UK Evangelical response that:
“Much of the response to Donald Trump’s presidency from Christians in the UK has centred on ethical assessment. Christians rightly recognise that character matters and have a concern for the disadvantaged and disenfranchised.
Moral clarity is indeed a gift Christians can offer society. And yet, discussions like this risk reducing conversations to comments from one group saying, “We need to morally condemn this thing Trump’s done,” whilst others respond, “This thing he’s done is good.”
I found his article overall engaging and a helpful move towards deeper, thoughtful discussion. So, my aim in writing and responding is partly in the hope that it can foster more conversation. To that end, I’ve sent Joel a copy of this article in advance and offered him space here for a guest post to respond and engage further.
The strengths of Joel’s article is that they seek to keep our focus on questions that matter about how we engage with the world around us and particularly with people in many of our the communities that we need to reach and serve. I think he rightly highlights the way in which there has been a reaction against what is perceived as the established, liberal order.
I do have some questions and challenges though. I think first of all that I would want to tease out what we mean by “ethical assessment.” Yes, that does relate to character but is the response merely to do with a perception that Trump is an immoral person. Further, do the conversations simply end up with one side demanding condemnation of Trumps actions, I would also add “his words”?
I would suggest that ethical assessment should be broader than this and indeed much of what I’ve seen has been. It does go to the heart of the values, principles and policies that seem to be at work within the current administration. Indeed, much of the focus for his previous presidency was in the attitude he encouraged towards immigrants and asylum seekers. Then in this term, we are particularly seeing engagement with his rhetoric on Canada, Greenland and Panama combined with his words and actions towards Ukraine. The question about whether or not his words and actions are wrong is important.
There are two reasons for this. First, that if people are being wronged, then we need to think about what it might mean to stand with them. Secondly that by talking about ethical issues and having a view should hopefully be about encouraging one another to see the World as God sees it and to love and desire what he does. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, this requires care. However I view Donald Trump, I still need to be careful about being quick to assume and condemn his motives. I need to recognise that I’m not in his or Keir Starmer’s position and so it is easy to presume how I would respond to the pressures they face including from their voter base, outside powers, economic factors and their own heart if I were in their position/. By the grace of God, I am not. However, whilst not on that scale, I do face those kinds of pressures in my own sphere of family, work, church and neighbourhood. Hopefully I am learning to love the things God loves in my context. Furthermore, even my emotions are exposed and so my affections by my response. I need to recognise where my response to what is happening in the world around me reflects anger and anxiety.
When it comes to the church’s response here in the UK, I’ve got a couple of question marks about what Joel suggests. However, it is perhaps helpful to pick up on one here where I believe it would be helpful for Joel to enlarge further. Joel talks about the church needing to develop a robust political theology. What I think would be helpful here would be for him to define further what he means by “the church” and what he means by “political theology.” I think there are risks and challenges with what looks a little vague there, not least because I think that status could be interpreted a number of ways I’m going to write a little bit more shortly on political theology but I also wanted to give Joel opportunity as well to flesh out his views. His guest post will appear tomorrow.
*You can read Joel’s article at https://www.e-n.org.uk/comment/donald-trump-and-future-challenges-for-christians/
Faithroots 