History & Hope

Historians Against Trump

An Open Letter to the American People

Today, we are faced with a moral test. As historians, we recognize both the ominous precedents for Donald J. Trump’s candidacy and the exceptional challenge it poses to civil society. Historians of different specialties, eras and regions understand the enduring appeal of demagogues, the promise and peril of populism, and the political uses of bigotry and scapegoating. Historians understand the impact these phenomena have upon society’s most vulnerable and upon a nation’s conscience. The lessons of history compel us to speak out against a movement rooted in fear and authoritarianism. The lessons of history compel us to speak out against Trump.... read more and sign at Historians Against Trump

Trump's Celebrity Bishops

Fred Clark's commentary on Trump's recently-named Evangelical Advisory Board illuminates the workings of American evangelicalism. Excerpts:

Lists of names like this are a fixture of the white evangelical subculture. This is what we have instead of ecclesiology or church polity. Some would say this is because evangelicals don’t have bishops or popes, but really it’s the opposite problem — we have more bishops and popes than we know what to do with. But these unofficial officials aren’t ordained by elders or elected by congregations. Their investiture as bishops and archbishops is based on book sales, income, radio outlets and — above all — the size and ROI of their direct-mail fundraising lists. It’s a hell of a way to run a church....

Because the history of dictatorship is the history of manipulation and division, demagoguery and lies

Writers speak out against Donald Trump

Can love shatter secularism's self-assuredness?

Professor Peter Caladza puts evangelism at the center of a compelling plea for improved relations between the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (Uniates) and the Ukrainian Orthodox, separated by schism since Vatican recognition of the Uniates in 1596. It suggests a question for all the world’s Christian bodies – individual and corporate: how might commitment at least to a path toward following Christ’s teachings in our treatment of each other affect our gospel witness?

With reference to the draft document  “Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World”, the Very Rev. Dr. Caladza, acting director of the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, Canada, writes:

...The rapid rejection of Christ’s truth in the West, and the equally widespread secularization of the educated classes in the East, demand a new commitment to “modeling the new man in Christ” (cf. par. 23). This “new man in Christ” blesses those who curse him and does good to those who hate him (cf. Mathew 5:44). This kind of love shatters secularism’s self-assuredness.

In 1987, the Primate of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church, Cardinal Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky, publicly asked forgiveness of the Russian Orthodox Church in the following words: “Following the Spirit of Christ, we extend our hand of forgiveness, reconciliation and love to the Russian nation and the Moscow Patriarchate. We repeat the words of Christ that we spoke during our act of reconciliation with the Polish nation: ‘Forgive us, as we forgive’ (Matthew 6:12).” Unfortunately, this gesture has remained unanswered to the present day. Can Orthodox and “Uniates” not begin a new era of relations by having their Protohierarchs send – and respond to – such letters on a regular basis?

Read the full essay at Public Orthodoxy

Resisting Trump called "a public test of Christian truth and discipleship"

"Inflammatory messages of racial, religious, and nationalist bigotry compel confessional resistance from faithful Christians who believe that the image of God is equally within every human being. We hold up the call to love Christ in the encounter with one another, and we believe social justice is an integral component of the way of Jesus, leading inevitably to speaking up for our neighbor against political attacks, especially by oppressive leaders and governments...."

From Called to Resist Bigotry -- A Statement of Faithful Obedience, issued April 28 by several dozen Christian leaders. Apparently they are not calling for signatures but are urging wide dissemination of the statement.

Southern Historian Re-thinks Confederate Monuments, and Affirms Black Lives Matter

John Wilsey, who claims "unimpeachable" Confederate heritage credentials and identifies as conservative, has changed his thinking about Confederate monuments over the past five years. "Two things have changed my mind," writes Wilsey in explaining "Why this Southern conservative Supports Black Lives Matter:"

"First, I’ve spent time reading Frederick Douglass, W E B Du Bois, Carter Woodson and other African-American writers; and I’ve built relationships with scholars of African-American history such as Phillip Luke Sinitiere, Edward Carson, Keisha Blain and others in the African American Intellectual History Society. Second, I began to see the issue as a matter of Christian freedom and neighbour-love."

Wilsey, who is an assistant professor of history and Christian apologetics at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, makes this telling historical argument: "Advocates for keeping Lee’s statue often say that taking it down would be ‘removing history’ or ‘re-writing history’. But the statue is not history, nor does it teach history. To think historically, it is necessary to think about the country and Charlottesville in 1924, when the statue was erected. Back then, Lee and the Civil War signified very different things to most Americans than they do today. In the 1920s, Lost Cause and Dunning School historiography advanced the idea that secession was noble, that slavery was benevolent, and that Reconstruction demonstrated the inferiority of black people. Those attitudes are no longer acceptable."

Fritz Stern on "a new religiosity that has very little to do with real religiosity"

Columbia University historian Fritz Stern, whose family fled Hitler’s Germany in 1938, comments on the arrival of "a new, illiberal age" in an interview at Europe Online Magazine. Excerpts:

dpa: The right wing is on the rise in other countries: Poland, Denmark and the Netherlands. Is Europe moving too far to the right?

Stern: I‘m afraid so. I think we are facing an age of anxiety, of widely disseminated anxiety, of anxiety that is exploited by the right politically. And you can tell already from the example of Poland just how fragile freedom is. The speed with which an authoritarian system in Poland is being built is shocking.

dpa: How do you view this shift to the right with regard to your personal history and the long way from the Nazi dictatorship?

Stern: I have sometimes complained that I grew up during the end of a democracy and now, at the end of my life, I experience the struggles for democracy once again. Actually, it‘s a sad result....

Cruz, Barton, and Seven Mountains Dominionism

Above: Ted Cruz, Rev. Raphael Cruz, and David Barton pray for the candidate's success. CBN photo

From Religious News Service commentary by historian John Fea:

Now that Ted Cruz has an Iowa victory under his belt, it is time to take a deeper look at his Christian approach to politics. What is his real vision for America? Cruz likes to talk about “taking back” or “reclaiming” the United States. What does he mean by this?...

But before he can bring the country back to its Christian roots, Cruz needs to prove that Christian ideals were indeed important to the American founding. That is why he has David Barton on his side.

For several decades Barton has been a GOP activist with a political mission to make the United States a Christian nation again. He runs “Keep the Promise,” a multimillion-dollar Cruz super-PAC. He’s one of Cruz’s most trusted advisers.

What is the Good News that Evangelicals Proclaim?

That's another way of putting the issue that Adam Ericksen crystallizes in "The Evangelical Identity Crisis," commentary at Sojourners prompted by the victory of Ted Cruz in the Iowa Republican primary, attributed to his success in garnering the "evangelical" vote:

...[A] good Bible-believing evangelical will instantly recognize the politically subversive language of the New Testament. In the face of Roman military that brought the good news of “peace” by the sword, the early Christians delivered an alternative message of good news that claimed “those who live by the sword die by the sword.” Make no mistake, their evangelical message was political. They sought to reorder the world, not through Caesar’s military strength, but through Christ’s nonviolent love....

Jump ahead about 2,000 years to Monday night in Iowa and we discover that the “evangelical vote” has an identity crisis. They claim that Jesus is their Lord with words, but not in action. Cruz promises to “carpet bomb” his enemies. He promises to beef up the American military, a military that spends roughly the same amount as “the next nine largest military budgets around the world, combined.” The U.S. military is already the strongest military that the world has ever seen.

René Girard wrote in his apocalyptic book Battling to the End that Christians must make a decision about violence because Christ has left us with a choice, “either believe in violence, or not; Christianity is non-belief.” read more

Nat Turner at Sundance

A hundred years after D.W. Griffiths' infamous film "The Birth of a Nation" skillfully twisted history to justify racism, Nate Parker hopes his new film of the same name will promote "healing and systemic change" for the pain and injustice that bedevils the racial divide in contemporary America. The enthusiastic reception that Parker's film about the slave preacher and revolutionary Nat Turner has received at the Sundance Film Festival is a hopeful sign toward achievement of that goal.

Kimberly Winston writes the following for the Religious News Service feature, The Faithful Viewer:

“The Birth of a Nation” tells the story of a historical figure, Nat Turner. Turner was a slave and a preacher who organized an uprising against white plantation owners in Southampton County, Va., in 1831 — three decades before the Civil War. The movie reportedly focuses in part on how he reconciles his faith with the violence he must do to free himself and others.

The real Turner reported he had “visions” that told him to rise up against slave owners. During his trial, he wrote he “heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent, for the time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first.”...

Parker — who grew up in Virginia — told Filmmaker Magazine he named his film after the Griffith classic to make a point. “Not only did this film motivate the massive resurgence of the terror group the Ku Klux Klan and the carnage exacted against people of African descent, it served as the foundation of the film industry we know today.”...read more