The best of our past and the hope for our future are the anchors of faith and reason.
Not just reason because that’s a recipe for abuse. Reason alone can quickly take us to self-interest.
Not just faith alone because that’s a ticket to fundamentalism. Faith alone can quickly trap us in magical thinking.
We need science, philosophy, and the arts to build things both material and social. We need faith to empower us to embrace the mystery of being. It’s this mystery that has continued to call humanity to transformational morality.
While reason and faith are not at odds with each other, there is tension. That tension creates work. It demands community. They are not contradictions, but can and do often pull us in different directions.
Liberal democracy comes out of this tension. Our nation was born out of this tension.
The political movement that Trump took over and branded as MAGA turns the tension into contradictions. He amplifies the contradictions to advance a cynical and dangerous consolidation of power that undermines both reason and faith. Trump, as the leader of the Republican party, has bullied and bought complete alignment with a fundamentalism that keeps him and the elites he serves in power.
Is fundamentalism going to hold? Are those that keep him in power going to continue to compromise their own values, character, and place in history to allow MAGA to keep tearing down the work that Americans have been doing for 250 years?
The war with Iran, the attack on science, the idolatry of Trump’s messiah complex, and J.D. Vance’s armchair theologizing appear to have brought some of the Christian part of White Christian Nationalism to a sort of reckoning.
We know where Trump has been and will continue to go. Anyone waiting for the moment that he’s finally gone too far will be disappointed. It’s not about Trump. It’s about the rest of us. He’s already gone too far.
A philosophical concept to help us make sense of Trump’s presidency is the slippery slope. It might feel OK to let something slide because it doesn’t align with your situation. But the idea of the slippery slope is that once you compromise your values, it becomes harder to hold on to the values when you’ve decided it’s important. Once you’ve made excuses for your values, it gets easier to keep making those excuses.
The idea of the slippery slope isn’t, however, about fundamentalism. At least not if you want to live in the tension, trying to live a life of meaning and purpose. To recognize the idea of the slippery slope is to continue to wrestle. To fight the slope by reflecting on your values. To try and neutralize the grease by thinking beyond yourself and opening your heart and mind to other perspectives. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of humility.
Trump gives us a global and historic example of what it looks like when the response to the tension is manipulated into the certainty of fundamentalism and a willingness to use violence to advance power.
The conservative right takes a hard-line approach with guns and abortion. No nuance. Just great certainty.
Most of us see that there is tension with reproductive rights and gun rights. To ignore the tension and elevate confidence and hubris, is to fall into fundamentalism. And fundamentalism by its nature requires selectivity of values.
When MAGA started to tear down equality under the law, they we’re demanding their followers ignore human dignity. The slope got steeper and slipperier. The Christian part of White Christian Nationalism didn’t seem to mind.
Catholic, evangelical, and conservative mainline protestants have aligned around Old Testament values seemingly without paying as much attention to the further developments offered by Christ and the New Testament. Fundamentalist contingents from every brand of Christianity have embraced attacking “the other” as a means of defending their fundamentalist vision of their faith.
In this certainty it might seem like they are actually using the concept of avoiding the slippery slope. But in fact, by rejecting the dignity of certain people that aren’t part of their tribe, they have categorically abandoned the philosophical ideal that when you selectively apply the values you claim to embrace, you’ve succumbed to the slippery slope.
The willingness to justify violence around fundamentalist beliefs is a categorical retreat from the American Experiment.
Many faith leaders have embraced the radical agenda of the extreme conservative right because it’s given them greater power grounded in important issues of their religious identity.
The alignment between Christianity and White Nationalism is wealth and power. More wealth and power for religious identity and more wealth and power for political leaders. Fundamentalism has served both well at the expense of both faith and reason.
When Trump, MAGA, and the Republican Party attacked members of the LGBTQ community they didn’t start with everyone. They focus-grouped a way to find an acceptable starting place. Protecting kids from transgender predators. Totally made up, but it worked.
They created a boogeyman of an illegal alien raping and killing. They built a narrative of the drug addicted woman using abortion as birth control.
They developed the myth that guns save lives. They also teased that someday the government controlled by liberals would come for God fearing Americans. They argued that they’ll need their guns to protect themselves and their families. It has seemed to be lost on many of them that it isn’t government led by liberals, which is abandoning due process.
Trump has mocked the disabled. He freely uses the R word.
Under Trump, the slope got steeper and slipperier. And once that happens, standing up becomes harder. It’s harder to find your footing. It’s harder to say no. And so, the Christian part of White Christian Nationalism kept silent at best and in many cases cheered on the attacks.
Back to the tension between faith and reason. That tension is the whole enchilada. Living in compromise, mystery, debate, grace, humility, and reconciliation has always served humanity well.
Embracing certainty, uncompromising tribal identity, hubris, and violence to secure power has always ended poorly. The farther it goes before the correction, the more horrifying the outcome.
Confidence in faith alone is no antidote. As long as we have records of humanity, the ebb and flow of justice and tyranny is present. We aren’t dealing with something new. We’re dealing with first principles of what it means to be human.
Christians have started to question Trump because he’s now attacking some of them. His team is mocking the faith. Team MAGA is attacking the Pope. They are re-writing theology. It’s becoming a bridge too far.
Trump hasn’t changed. What he’s now doing to Christians he’s been doing to others all along.
Mexicans with calves like melons acting as mules hauling drugs. The differently-abled reporter. The women journalists. The sexual assault that he bragged about. The violence he directed from the podium at his rallies.
Federal agents have kidnapped people off the street and put them in inhumane concentration camps. In our name, federal agents have murdered people in the street. The federal government is attacking people of color and ignoring constitutional due process.
The violence continues to escalate until there is some kind of push back. Then the violence is dialed back slightly but continues in quieter ways.
Trump hasn’t changed. He hasn’t even gotten more extreme in his rhetoric. The rhetoric has always been there. The escalation has come in action because none in his party and movement have successfully constrained him. He’s now put the full force of the US Military (our military), the FBI, and Homeland Security to executing his extremism.
When he seemed to be coming for everybody but the White Christian Nationalists, his base hung with him. But now it appears he may be coming for them as well. Many are surprised. Many are starting to protest.
Thank God. Accountability is welcome.
But we don’t just need guardrails right now. Trump and MAGA and Republicans have already gone way too far. We can’t just stop them where they are.
Now that many are starting to see that he’s coming for them, the antidote is to build a bridge for them to the kinds of people who have already been disappeared and killed. Those who have been scapegoated.
Republicans have been going after DEIA for decades. Their attacks were mostly ignored. That is until Trumpism and MAGA found ways to weaponize DEIA. Trump has unleashed scorched earth tactics against the efforts of the American Experiment that worked to build bridges across demographics. The idea of justice got turned into personal grievance.
There is a lot of tension in trying to get a basic level of justice—equality under the law. It’s really hard work. When we’ve moved forward, we’ve grounded that work in science (reason) and embraced the moral challenges (faith).
For years, Republicans have worked to leverage that tension into division. To create outrage and tribalism.
It is not enough to stop MAGA where we’re at. We’ve got to rebuild the institutions they’ve torn down. We’ve got to reclaim and re-imagine the government meant to work for all of us that has been forced to serve Trump himself.
To be fair, Democrats need to do better. Trump never happens if Democrats had done a better job in the tension, if Democrats had made more investment in new leaders. Where Republicans exploited the tension to create radical political identity around grievance, the Democrats too often used the tension as a means of gate keeping to protect an aging group of leaders.
But there is also no equivalency here. In 2015, while I wouldn’t agree, you might be able to make the case that both parties needed to reform by a similar magnitude. That’s no longer the case. Republicans, ignoring foundational values of equality under the law, radically cranked up the slope and added toxic grease.
The attacks on DEIA created the political runway to tear down every aspect of the global movement for liberal democracy.
Americans, claiming the mantle of Christianity, have allowed Trump to contradict and tear down millennia of faith and reason. MAGA is attacking the very foundation of human dignity on which the Christian Church is built.
This is not an “I told you so moment.” I’m not suggesting we punish Christians who supported Trump. I do believe we must hold public figures accountable who have used violence to build and advance their own power and wealth. That means prosecutions.
But for Christians who voted for Trump, this is a come to Jesus moment. This is a moment of realization. This is a time for potential humility. A time for grace.
Speaking truth and pursuing accountability for those who broke laws and abused power does not require humiliation of those who bought what they were selling. For those who paid more attention to the appeal of fundamentalism than realizing they were sliding into complicity, I’m about holding out a hand to help them off that slippery slope and back on firmer ground.
Many in the MAGA movement are starting to realize that Trump is attacking their core beliefs. We need to help them see that what they are experiencing as Trump attacks their identity isn’t entirely different from how he’s been treating so many scapegoats.
It’s very uncomfortable for people to see themselves now as under attack like the people Trump infamously said were eating the dogs and eating the cats.
We need to help them walk across the bridge of humanity. Trump has drawn them onto the slippery slope. We must help them get off of it.
Like the sign the woman is holding in the photo, Diversity is our strength. Equity is our duty. Inclusion is our promise. And I’ll add Accessibility is our standard.
As a Christian, I know we can’t simply stop the excess. We have to go forward by rebuilding on the foundation of Christian principles even as that is hard and messy. Especially when it’s hard and messy.
Collectively, we need an off ramp for Christians from White Christian Nationalism and Trumpism. And we need an on ramp back to the tension and the work of liberal democracy.
There is a growing movement for investing in ordinary Americans. We have to figure out how to build that coalition. It must be diverse. It must be equitable. It must be inclusive. And it must be accessible.
The reason Republicans spent years undermining these principles is because their radical leaders knew that political power built around the power and shared interests of ordinary Americans would stop their consolidation of power and wealth.
In this come to Jesus moment of reckoning with the excesses of Trump, we have an opportunity. The violence that the extraordinary extremes Trump has taken to consolidate power and wealth around himself and his cronies also creates a historic opportunity to re-imagine and recommit to the extraordinary human values we claim our nation is built on.
That many Christians have been shocked into an awareness of how Trumpism is and always has been greasing the slope, we need to double down on DEIA because we need to reclaim and re-imagine liberal democracy. Anything short of that won’t even provide a correction let alone the rebirth that is needed.
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Well said, Matt. Thank you for reminding us that there is a road map and it's possible for each of us to play a part. We can find a way toward regaining a sense of shared vision rooted in the strength of our diversity.
Thanks for name dropping me with Talarico and Buttigieg. Yes, we all have to lean in for greater strength and resolve.