Situational awareness

I turned 51 yesterday and mostly forsook my Substack, but I kept thinking about posting this image. It was a pleasant birthday involving a nap and a long walk and cake and some Swamp Thing and some Philip Roth and a new sweater. I was also pleased to see this:

Beth Moore @BethMooreLPM

I do not believe these are days for mincing words. I’m 63 1/2 years old & I have never seen anything in these United States of America I found more astonishingly seductive & dangerous to the saints of God than Trumpism. This Christian nationalism is not of God. Move back from it.

This is baseline moral seriousness stuff, but someone with Beth Moore’s following even saying this much garnered a lot of attention and, from those who are prone to mistake a vote for Republicans for a vote for God, a degree of remote heat. I’m grateful for her words here, because I imagine it gives lots of us permission to think a little harder about what we’ve enabled and why. That said, what I long for from Beth and any number of high profile people with predominantly white audiences is a public amplification of, and an ongoing deferral to, folks like Larycia Hawkins, Lisa Sharon Harper, Jemar Tisby, and Bree Newsome Bass.

Do y’all remember Bree Newsome?

Bree Newsome’s prophetic act of conscience preceded the installation of “Trumpism” in the United States government. It was June of 2015. She was very specific as she ascended the pole: "In the name of Jesus, this flag has to come down. You come against me with hatred and oppression and violence. I come against you in the name of God. This flag comes down today.” She was assisted by a man at the base of the pole named James Ian Tyson who overheard a policeman muse aloud that he might tase her. Seeing the lethal threat, Mr. Tyson hugged the pole and told the officer that doing so would likely electrocute both of them. The policeman backed off. They were both arrested. Ms. Newsome recited a psalm. The white supremacist terror idol was up again in 45 minutes.

Ms. Newsome comes to mind as I contemplate the alive and signaling prophetic witness of Beloved Community we each remain free to engage, amplify, celebrate, and acknowledge as we think through what the coddling of white supremacist thinking has cost us. One more big one is this from January of 2017:

We ask that every member of this denomination, & people who are committed to justice & righteousness, equality & truth will join with us to thwart what are clearly demonic acts. Indeed, the words of the Apostle Paul to the believers at Ephesus apply today, “for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against…the rulers of the darkness of this present age, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”...President Trump has demonstrated that his word is not to be trusted or believed.

This is an Episcopal Statement from the Council of Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. It’s been sitting on the Internet for almost four years. Needless to say, the prophetic leadership for addressing spiritual wickedness a-foot in America is all around us, but I sometimes worry that there’s a prevailing evasiveness among people like me when it comes to placing it before one another and following it. Are America’s “faith leaders” afraid that deferring to others will diminish their brands?

So, I offer all of the above as an alternative to public hand-wringing among white people over what we too easily refer to as “Trumpism.” Trump didn’t start the fire. Eric Metaxas didn’t either. We have a longer history of the present with which to contend. Let’s analyse our situation and think it through repentantly. And, most of all, let’s consider and receive the witness of the prophets already among us.

We live in hope.