Time for Anger, Time for Rage

A Time for Anger, A Time for Rage

November 14, 2016

It is finally starting to sink in. This country really made the American fascist Donald Trump President-elect. No, he didn’t win the popular vote, but that won’t stop him from becoming president. He won the electoral college, part of our constitutional system that disproportionately advantages small population states. He truly is an American fascist. See my post on this blog with the title “American Fascist” for an examination of why it is appropriate to call him that. He is a bigot. He is racist, misogynist, and xenophobic. He targets the vulnerable who are not responsible for the problems our country faces. He panders to those who struggle with today’s economic realities, promising them jobs he can never produce and a restored security he can never deliver. It is finally starting to sink in. The American fascist Donald Trump is going to be President of the United States.

In a gathering of some of my UCC clergy colleagues that I attended earlier today we were asked how we were dealing with that unexpected reality. I said I was depressed and angry. I said I didn’t know what the hell I was doing or what I’m going to do. Then a colleague who happens to be Black and Gay spoke. He said he’d been to a prayer service where the message was feel your anger, then let it drain out of your body. He said that message was just wrong, and he’s right about that. Anger is precisely the appropriate response to the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. Not to be angry is not to understand who he is, what he stands for, and what the election says about our country. To understand who he is, what he stands for, and what this election says about our country is to become angry. For anyone with a moral conscience or moral sensitivity it is to feel rage. A member of the church I serve said to me yesterday that Donald Trump is not a monster. She’s wrong about that. He is a monster, and to know that all we have to do is listen to his own words. Ban all Muslims from entering the country. Build a wall along the entire Mexican border. Grab women by the pussy. I’m sorry for using that crude word, but that’s what he said. A full collection of the deplorable, immoral, unconscionable things Trump has said would fill a sizable book. He is a monster, an American fascist monster whom we have made our President-elect. How can we not be angry? How can we not be filled with rage?

But you say: Wait! You’re a Christian, even an ordained Christian minister. Anger isn’t Christian. No Christian can feel rage. Christianity is about loving everyone. So get over your anger, give up your rage. And I say no. I say anger is precisely the proper Christian emotion today. I say true Christians must feel rage today. Perhaps we are called in some way to love Donald Trump as a child of God, hard as that is for me to do. Yet we are called to be angry at injustice. We are called to rage against racism, sexism, xenophobia, and every other sinful prejudice that Donald Trump represents. We are called to rage against every hatred, every injustice that diminishes any of God’s people—and Donald Trump even diminishes himself by his hatred and his bigotry. We are called to rage against egomania and megalomania. Our Christian rage must be nonviolent, but it must be rage nonetheless. To let go of our anger, to let go of our rage would be to forget how immoral Donald Trump’s positions, words, and actions have been. It would be to become complacent in the harm he intends to do to millions of God’s people.

So no, I will not give up my anger at Donald Trump and the country who made him president. I will not give up my rage at policies that destroy God’s world and harm God’s people. After all, Jesus felt anger. Jesus felt rage. He overturned the tables of the moneychangers in the temple at least in part because they were cheating God’s people. (There’s more to that story than that, but I won’t go into that matter here.) Jesus did things and told stories that condemned the authorities of his day, both secular and religious. I have no doubt whose side he would be on in the pending struggle between Donald Trump and justice, and it sure wouldn’t be Donald Trump’s. I have no doubt that Jesus would feel anger. I have no doubt that Jesus would feel rage. So no, this is not a time for calm. This is not a time for easy sentimental love. This is a time for anger. This is a time for rage.