Dear Friends in the Church of Ireland – IT HAS been quite a few years now since my two stints of living in Ireland, first as a seminary intern in the Summer of 1991, in Northern Ireland, then in Cork and Limerick, and finally in Dublin. It was an incredible formation experience that made me want to return, which I did. I moved to Ireland in 2000 to spend five years as Chaplain/Tutor and Lecturer in Liturgy at the Church of Ireland Theological College, years in which I also wrote my PhD thesis on the C of I’s 2004 Prayer Book and worked for a period as chaplain at St. John’s, Sandymount. I will forever be thankful to John Bartlett and John Paterson for their mentorship at this time. One of the things I learned through those experiences was how to see my own country from the outside looking in. Ireland, of course, has a complicated relationship with the United States; relying on a steady stream of tourist income and benefiting greatly from the arrival of American based multi-national companies in the 1990s. But Ireland tends to be less enamoured with American military expeditions, which are sometimes grounded in a sense that “our might makes whatever we do right”. I have learned that Ireland tends to identify with the more vulnerable in the world, stemming from your own history of political and economic turbulence. I witnessed both sides of the love/hate relationship with America while living in Dublin in the aftermath of 9/11. On the day itself I arrived home from lunch just in time to turn on my TV and see the second plane go into the tower, with the commentators suddenly realising that the first plane had been no accident. As the day progressed, I somehow became a contact person for parents back in New York who were trying to contact their children studying in Dublin to let them know that they were safe. In the days and weeks that followed, I witnessed an outpouring of love and support like I had never seen before. But the next month, when the invasion of Afghanistan began, there was more caution coming from my Irish friends and colleagues. And by the time we got to the Iraq war in early 2003 protests erupted in Ireland, telling America to stop! From the outside it was easy to see America’s overreach and, as we all know, no weapons of mass destruction were ever found and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. I began to take a more nuanced view of my nation. My approach to what followsI was asked to write this letter because I am an American with some awareness of the Irish context – asked specifically to address how the Churches in America are responding to Trump and Trumpism. Let me say at the outset that I cannot hope to cover all the complexities of what has transpired over the past decade in the USA, so what follows will be no more than a personal reflection. Inevitably there will be generalisations, but I hope they will be hovering somewhere around the truth. I should also admit that I am not neutral regarding the massive changes going on in my country. The point of no return occurred for me on January 6th 2021 as I sat watching the television with my children as a violent mob stormed the Capitol Building. I never thought such a thing was possible, and I just kept repeating, “I’m glad my parents aren’t alive to see this.” They were both WWII veterans; navy and nurses’ corps, and I can’t imagine how they could have taken that in. Donald Trump, in my view, is a warful person. He is conducting simultaneous wars on global trade, global partners, North American neighbours, immigrants, government institutions, science, political liberals, social liberals, the poor, and everyone he believes has ever crossed him, be they conservative or liberal. And now, of course, he’s got himself in over his head with a war in Iran. I am sure that by the time you read this any number of other conflicts will have been instigated. Fighting is one thing he really likes. Three groups of ChurchesAs I have considered how the Churches have responded to all this, three distinguishable groups have emerged in my mind. The first are those Churches which support Donald Trump. They are mostly conservative evangelicals coming either from denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest denomination, or independent and non-denominational churches. They have all been engaged in what we call the “culture wars” for decades, praying for a time when they will be able to overturn all the social changes associated with the 1960s. In 2016, when Donald Trump first ran for President, he held a meeting with Evangelical leaders and pledged that if he they supported him they would always have a place at the table in a Trump administration; and he has kept that promise. They view Trump as being like Cyrus in the Hebrew Bible. Though Cyrus was not Jewish, he let the Jewish people go home to end the Exile and to rebuild their homes and their Temple. Donald Trump is no evangelical Christian, but he has given them power such as they have never had before; and they love him for it. Within conservative evangelicalism, however, there are different wings. Much attention has been given to Christian nationalists, with their blurred lines between what makes a Christian and what makes an American, and their desire to return to an America with a white majority, Christian, straight and male led. While they have received most of the attention for how churches have contributed to the rise and power of Donald Trump, I am less concerned with them because I have never experienced them as being physically violent. The group within Trumpism that concerns me much more is what I call “Apocalyptic Christians”. I have experienced their theology and world view through Pentecostalism,...
