Hauerwas Writes . . . Christians, don’t be fooled: Trump has deep religious convictions

Read  Christians, don’t be fooled: Trump has deep religious convictions, The Washington Post, January 27, 2017

My brief remark posted in the comments of the above piece.

If I recall, the early "believers" were called Christian as a pejorative of sorts and were considered atheist since they would not worship the Roman gods or the emperor. Perhaps this is a lens toward a better understanding of what a “Christian” genuinely looks like today? 

Per illustrationem, let’s see, I don’t ascribe nor entertain the notion of a God who fills my bank account with affluence, but I do ascribe to a God who is found among the suffering (you know, the marginalized, immigrants--strangers, the poor, and maybe—who knows—sinners like Donald Trump—never mind!). And, ah, I am ennobled in such a way to not place much hope in an office nor a person as if he/she is some kind of high priest over all.

Yes, in the world of Donald Trump’s “Christianity” (and perhaps many of his followers) I am an atheist and a fool—so be it [translated, “Amen”].

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Now the death of God combined with the perfection of the image brought us to a whole new state of expectation. We are the image. We are the viewer and the viewed. There is no other distracting presence.  And that image has all the Godly powers. It kills at will. Kills effortlessly. Kills beautifully. It dispenses morality. Judges endlessly. The electronic image is man as God and the ritual involved leads us not to a mysterious Holy Trinity but back to ourselves. In the absence of a clear understanding that we are now the only source, these images cannot help but return to the expression of magic and fear proper to idolatrous societies. This in turn facilitates the use of the electronic image as propaganda by whoever can control some part of it.    

- John Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards: A Dictatorship of Reason in the West (NY: Vintage, 1992), 460.

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One of the early Christian responses to the evil empire of its day was to "resist the evil one" non-violently, creatively, i.e., in a manner to that gets him to think about what he is doing (not the Billy Graham weak kind of response, please!)