Now Is Not the Time for Silence

 

Now Is Not the Time for Silence

January 8, 2021

 

Our country is facing an existential crisis, a crisis that goes to our very existence as a democratic nation. On January 6, 2021, President of the United States Donald J. Trump incited a mob to storm and occupy the Capitol building in Washington, DC, in an effort to stop Congress from performing its legal obligation to certify the results of the electoral college vote, part of the process for assuring that the person who received the most electoral votes is inaugurated as president on January 20. The president committed an act of sedition aimed against the Constitution of the United States that he took an oath to protect and defend. For as long as he is in office, presumably only twelve more days, he will be a threat to the rule of law and the American system of constitutional government. He is delusional. He seems actually to believe that somehow he won reelection in a landslide and that somehow someone has stolen his victory from him. Never mind that for that to be true every state election official in the country and every court where he has sued to overturn the results of the election has said no, there is no evidence of voter fraud. The certified election results are valid. Nonetheless he insists that his victory was stolen from him, and he has an army of rabid supporters who believe that lie and are perfectly willing to use violence to keep him in office. He will remain a threat to our country even after he is out of office, but at least he won’t have his hands on the levers of governmental power and the nuclear codes. President Donald Trump is a bigger threat to the survival of the government he heads than any American president has ever been. I won’t call him the Anti-Christ because I don’t believe in the Anti-Christ. He is nonetheless demonic. He is evil, and he is an enormous threat to our nation.

The threat that Donald Trump poses to the United States and to the world raises a crucial question for those of us who have accepted a call to the ministry of Jesus Christ. How are we to respond to the crisis in which our nation finds itself? It is or should be obvious that no true Christian can support Donald Trump. The question we face is rather whether we speak prophetic truth against him or remain silent because we know that there are those who will turn on us if we speak God’s truth to our nation, wracked as it is with division and violence. This issue is particularly stark for ordained people serving in ministerial capacities in a local church or denominational structure, for even in a progressive denomination like my United Church of Christ there are still people who support Trump, hard as that is to believe. History tells us that pastors can get fired for speaking prophetic truth against violence and injustice. It happened when pastors protested the Vietnam war. It happened when they joined the civil rights movement. It happened when they spoke up for the equal rights and dignity of LGBTQ+ people. It could happen again if they proclaim God’s truth against our demonic president.

So the question remains: To what is God calling us in this difficult hour? As always God is calling us to follow Jesus, but what more specifically does that mean today? We live in a time of crisis, but so did Jesus. He lived among people horribly oppressed by the Roman Empire. The Jewish people of Jesus’ time responded to Roman oppression in various ways. Most just tried to go on with their lives as best they could. A few collaborated with the Romans. The officials of the Jerusalem temple are prime examples of that response. Some resorted to violence. There had been armed uprisings against Rome before Jesus was born. There would be others after his death, always with disastrous consequences for the Jewish people. Jesus adopted none of these strategies. He didn’t accept Roman oppression, but he didn’t use violence to resist it. Instead he advocated creative, nonviolent acts of resistance. He wanted to change the world not through violent revolution but through the spiritual transformation of individual people.

As important as Jesus’ program of nonviolence and personal transformation are for us, however, one other aspect of his response to Roman occupation and oppression is particularly significant today. Jesus never kept silent in the face of injustice, exploitation, or oppression. Rather he spoke out powerfully for the human rights and dignity of every single person. Through words and prophetic acts he condemned the Jerusalem temple for the way it collaborated with Rome, exploited people for its own power and prestige, and substituted sacrificial worship for the lives of justice and peace that God really wants from us. He spoke out against every evil he encountered be it priestly abuse of power or economic exploitation of the poor. Both the religious and the secular authorities of his time and place tried to silence him. He would not be silenced. That’s why they killed him.

Our call today is what it always is, to be like Jesus. The phrase “speak truth to power” isn’t biblical in its origins, but it expresses beautifully what Jesus did and what he calls us to do. The one thing we must not do is remain silent. Most German pastors in the 1930s remained silent or even signed the Hitler oath. Something like forty million deaths, half of them Soviet, ensued. I don’t expect Donald Trump to set up death camps or invade France and Russia, but he is an enormous threat nonetheless. Given time he would destroy American democracy and establish a kind of authoritarian American fascist regime.

In the face of such a threat we can’t remain silent. Yes, as I write he has only a few more days in office, but the threat he presents will not disappear when he leaves the White House. His millions of angry, deluded, violent followers will continue to raise hell after he’s out of office. The racist, white supremacist, violent, and anti-intellectual strains of American culture they represent aren’t going to disappear any time soon. Most especially they won’t disappear if we who know better remain silent. Jesus didn’t remain silent. Neither must we.

Speaking out cost Jesus his life. It is unlikely to cost us our lives, although we cannot rule out the possibility that some of Trump’s American fascists might use violence against us. Speaking out can however have other undesirable consequences. Those of us ordained folk who serve churches could lose our jobs, especially in the more conservative parts of the country. Even if we don’t lose our jobs our churches could lose members and financial offerings. God’s truth is rarely universally popular even among people who call themselves Christians. Tens of millions of people voted for Trump in the recent presidential election even though how bad and dangerous a president he has been was on full display by that time. Tragically, many of them call themselves Christians. Many of them won’t take kindly to us speaking God’s truth against him.

Yet whatever the consequences may be we must not remain silent. The stakes are too high. The threat Trump and his followers present is too great. The Christian’s call is always to speak God’s truth to power regardless of the circumstances. Today in particular God calls us to that prophetic task. Yes, we are also pastors, and our call is to speak the truth in love. Ephesians 4:15. We must not hate those who disagree with us, for God loves them as much as God loves us. Neither must we let them silence us. Jesus didn’t stay silent. Neither must we. The call is clear. Let’s get on with answering it.