Spiritual Warfare?

Ramblings on a Bleak Night

I come to you again without the right words to express what I am seeing, dear friends. It is dark outside as I write this, and cold. The darkness gives me courage to say things that may strike you as strange, things that my editor will not check because I will post this spontaneously before bedtime.

A view of First Church from the Cambridge Common, taken just past midnight in between drafts of this post. (Author photo)

You are not imagining things. This nightmare is real. Today we saw a sickening display of just how far our country has fallen into shadow. We are led by men who seek to demean and humiliate others, who side with criminals and war mongers against the victims of aggression. Their attempt at public diminishment of an ally also diminishes us, as we are compelled to watch the abuse and feel powerless. This one-two punch is likely no accident. They want to train us for submission to a new order.

Where does this spirit of darkness come from?

Recently, someone close to me called the callous and manipulative actions of this administration diabolical. Soon after that, one of my go-to podcasts focused on women in faith leadership, Lead Stories, hinted that there is a spiritual warfare element to this moment that is going unnoticed (Season 18, episode 5: Anxiety & Apathy). Today’s Oval Office wreck led me to share an excerpt (below) from a personal piece that I withdrew before publication.

Remember what goodness looks like. Believe in a better future. Stand strong in love. In whatever ways available to you, large or small, don’t let evil be our face to the world.

Here is an excerpt from my incomplete, un-proofed, and unpublished essay, “I Am Your Absolution,” drafted post-election, November 2024.

Donald Trump will soon be, once again, the most powerful person on earth. He has been convicted of multiple crimes. He has cheated contractors in his business dealings, ripped off students at his “university,” said vile and disrespectful things about women and immigrants, mocked people with disabilities, dined with antisemites, white supremacists and authoritarian world leaders, bragged about sexual assault, and repeatedly advocated violence against individuals. Yet people love him, especially (white) evangelical Christians. I desperately want to know why.

Evangelicals form the bedrock of Trump’s supporters. In this month’s presidential election, he garnered over 80% of their vote. I grew up in a Christian family where I was taught that a core tenet of the faith is to love your neighbor as yourself. (Leviticus 19: 9-18) Trump tramples over his neighbor, demeans his neighbor, and abuses his neighbor. His behavior often represents the basest of our human inclinations, the instincts of our lizard brains that family, religion, culture, and society all evolved to regulate. But this quality has won him favor among the faithful. How can they so easily dismiss his personal violation of “family values,” his casual cruelty, and his constant lying – qualities that their exemplar, Jesus Christ, and their template, The Ten Commandments, discourage or outright prohibit?

Some seem to believe that Donald Trump is a divine instrument of God sent to save them, and they apparently see support for this idea in the biblical account of Cyrus, a Persian King in the Old Testament who defended the Jews by defeating their Babylonian captors. For people who view Trump as a fulfillment of prophecy, impeachments, indictments, and assassination attempts only amplify the sense that he was chosen.

Bridgetown, Barbados as night falls. (Author photo)

Last winter, I traveled to the Caribbean for the first time on a study cruise in the Lesser Antilles. An introvert by nature, I had an unexpectedly frank dinner conversation with a white feminist theologian from the West Coast and a black male historian from Barbados. The dining room on the deck of the cruise ship emptied as the three of us talked late into the night, lulled into conversational depths and personal disclosures by the gentle rocking of the vessel and the soft sea spray on our faces. As midnight approached, we turned to a topic that was worrying all three of us: the upcoming US presidential election, which, as the historian stressed, would have ramifications for the Caribbean and the world. We discussed and debated the resentment theory. This is the idea that a subset of the US population historically used to cultural primacy felt demoted and disrespected as the culture changed, blamed groups they felt had benefitted at their expense, and resented a prohibition against expressing these views, and more. Donald Trump could say things they were thinking and act in ways that were socially and politically unacceptable. Against his image, their thoughts and desires could no longer be judged as bad. He redeemed them, so to speak, restoring their moral standing (in their own minds) while renewing their standing in the culture. At the table, I struggled to articulate my frustration with the contradiction inherent in what seemed to be a dangerous parasocial relationship.

A political natural, and maybe a political genius, Trump has exploited this psychological opening. “For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” Trump proclaimed to supporters at the 2023 CPAC conference. At the time, this language struck me as eerily Old Testament-ish, almost as if Trump was performatively ventriloquizing the voice of God. After the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, Trump seemed to instinctively seize on the chance to enhance this god-like impression, presenting it as a messianic moment when he took a bullet for the people, sacrificing himself to save America. The day after the shooting, Trump posted on Truth Social: “it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening. We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our faith and defiant in the face of wickedness." During his first rally after the attack, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump exclaimed that he: “took a bullet for democracy.”

In this configuration of Trump as god-like, acceptance of his egregious behavior begins to make alarming sense. His violations are assets, not detriments, because it is as though his “sins” are simultaneously evidence of his ability to absorb and dissolve the “sins” of the country. Anyone, everyone, can project their dark thoughts, wishes, desires, and resentments onto him, because he has thought worse and done worse, with the Almighty’s apparent blessing.

Rather than recoiling from this configuration as from a golden calf, evangelical Christians, and many others, seem to crave it. This reaction, I think, stems from a buried Christian substrate in American culture writ large. We are primed to seek psychic relief through narratives of violation, salvation, and redemption. When Trump said: “I am your retribution,” he could have said: “I am your absolution,” because this, along with gold sneakers, gold watches, and branded Bibles, is what he is selling us.

I hardly slept during that Caribbean cruise last winter. The war in Ukraine was raging. Political animus in the States was rising. The rough and constant rocking of the ship made me feel uneasy, as if it echoed the current condition of humanity. I wanted the solace of solid ground, perhaps even of common ground, and perhaps not so unlike the Christian Trump voters my dinner companions and I were struggling to understand. As I looked out on dark water reflecting the lights of the lone ship, I felt subsumed by an otherworldiness that scared me. Who were these people? What if their candidate wins? Desperately, I turned to my conversation partners, the historian and the theologian, for solace.

“It’s as if they think he’s a Christ-like figure who can absolve them of their sins. But he’s not Christ. The things he says. The way he acts . . . He’s the opposite of Christ,” I stammered.

The theologian looked at me, then replied calmly. “You know there’s a word for that, right?”