Jesus Comes To Washington - Setting Up The Trump Revival Tent

Mike Pence, the Vice President under Trump I was an evangelical Christian and did his best to bring Jesus to Washington. The capital has never been a congenial place for religion, especially during Democratic administrations.  Progressivism is based on secularism - Jesus and the Bible simply get in the way of social reform - so it is understandable that liberal advocates are anxious to avoid competition.  Along the way secularism became a religion unto itself - a creed, a set of foundational beliefs and ineradicable principles.  Utopia was indeed a reality and possible if we put our backs into it and avoid distractions and false promises. 

 

To progressive secularists the Bible is more than fairy tale, an innocuous story of angels and cherubim, sweetness and light, and the glory of God but a counter-revolutionary manifesto according to which the only Utopia was in God's celestial paradise; whereas conservatives avowed that progressivism is a false god and a defiance of the First Commandment. 

Mike Pence tried his best to circumvent the whole church-and-state issue, and insert God and Jesus wherever and whenever he could.  Americans have always closed their speeches with 'God bless America', and the American currency is stamped with 'In God We Trust', so Pence was not exactly a voice crying in the wilderness.  Besides, a goodly percentage of Republicans were believing Christians if not evangelicals, so his frequent references made good political sense. 

Then came Joe Biden and his secularists - a rabid crowd determined to put the Bible back on the shelf where it belonged, to focus the electorate on the here-and-now of diversity, inclusivity, and equity - notions that needed no divine approval or support, for they were a priori, given principles of right behavior.  The black man needed no divine sanction since he was a being of the forest, supremely endowed with native intelligence and environmental spirit.  Omni-sexuality was also a given, an evolution of humankind towards a more inclusive and relevant state of being, and so on and so forth. 

The progressive canon, so its supporters say, needs no introduction or justification - no Biblical references are required, no sacramental blessing, no higher authority's imprimatur.  

This will now all change as Donald Trump takes over the government.  Religion will be back - not in its most radical, fundamentalist version, but in a more traditional early American one.  Religion was at the heart of the new Republic.  Enlightenment principles on which the nation was founded were based on rationality and faith.  In fact reason was only celebrated as a means of better understanding God.  More practically, churches provided education, social services, and community and were the center of society.  It was only much later than government took over the role of guarantor and provider. 

It is this understanding which is at the heart of conservatism, a philosophy which includes both civil rights and justice and the essentiality of faith.  Religion is not considered an obstacle to progress, but the sine qua non of it. Duty, responsibility, ethics, and morality - all fundamental principles of advanced civilizations since Ancient Greece and embodied in the doctrines of all religions - must be returned to prominence, derogated and dismissed as they have been in favor of social selectivity and communitarian views of correct behavior. 

There will be no Bible readings from the White House lectern, no save-me-Jesus, Bible Belt sermonizing.  Religion will simply be let be - a natural expressive impulse, a recognition of human limitations, a brake on presumption, a grounding of overweening ambition. 

Schools will not be transformed into madrassas, hothouses for religious indoctrination but institutions of comprehensive education.  Religion has been a part of all civilizations, and it must be realized, studied, respected, and lessons learned from and about it.

 

Deeply held and respectfully practiced religious principles will not be denied in civil society.  Interpretation of the Bible will be as encouraged as much as Supreme Court exegesis of the Constitution.  Religious texts are the traditional codified arbiters of right behavior, and should not be dismissed as irrelevant. Groups, and businesses all have the right to apply religious principles to collective behavior, must be adjudicated according to Constitutional injunction, but never dismissed out of hand. 

'Church and State' - what political cooption, used to keep religion out of schools and public life! The Constitution is very clear. Religion belongs in schools, for without it, human history cannot be understood.  It has been at the heart of civil society, politics, art, and philosophy and science.  When Einstein said that God does not play dice with the universe he was matching religious belief with scientific principles.  Galileo was ostracized for what was considered his apostatic views.  It is just that no one religion can be proselytized, promoted, or evangelized. C'est tout. 

Progressives have used this misinterpretation as justification for removing religion from all aspects of civic life, as above, insistence on the radical secularism at the center of social reformism. 

Among the Left's many fears about the second coming of Donald Trump is the renewal of religion in America. What renewal? The United States of America, despite the persistent efforts of liberal cadres to deny it, is a profoundly religious country.  It is conservatives' desire not only to acknowledge this faith, but to celebrate it which upsets the Left - it is the spanner in their works which has always put a brake on social innovation.  Without the meddling of priests, the transgender revolution would be much farther ahead of its times than it is; and with the ascent of Trump conservatives, it will be junked altogether. 

These same naysayers fear the worst - revival tents on the South Lawn, Bible-thumping preachers at the lectern, hallelujahs and Praise Be The Lord heard in the West Wing, hymns sung at formal dinners, psalms recited for all occasions.  Yet it is just this febrile intellectual immodesty that did the Left in at the last election.  Populism includes religious belief, oftentimes the objectionably passionate born-again variety, and progressives have never understood that. 

Donald Trump will not be a political Billy Graham, but the President who resets the country's compass.  Not only will individualism, enterprise, private initiative, and personal responsibility be the new ethos, but religion will once again be recognized as one of the foundational pillars of American society.