Where I live... and What I Live for...

Good Dream... Bad Dream

For reason I probably don’t have lined up in the accurate order, I am surprised, no dismayed,…no, I don’t immediately grasp the exact word to express my response to the Donald Trump phenomenon in American politics. The phenomenon isn’t new.  We’ve been there before this cycle, but there was always at least a little bit of reason for the absurd result of the foolishness of the American electorate at a particular time.  I was a California public school teacher during the rise of Ronald Reagan from movie star to Governor of California… then ultimately to President of the United States of America. When he was elected governor, I tucked tail and ran… With my family I left the country and spent four years at the American School in Singapore. I came back to America, actually to Washington, D.C., when Richard Nixon was in that remarkable period just before his resignation, (the only resignation of a President in the country’s history) from the high office of President of the U.S.A.

If you have been a reader of my BLOG in the past year, you have surely been at least mildly surprised that I have not written anything about Donald Trump’s rise to a major place in American politics. I have never tried to hide or cover my political beliefs.  Today is different, and I am writing about Donald Trump.  Actually, I am not writing today just about Trump, but I am writing about something much more important in America:  the role of evangelical Christians in American life, which includes American politics.

I spent the first thirteen years of my life as a citizen of Arkansas.  Virtually every town and city in Arkansas spreads out beneath the shadows of steeples of evangelical churches.  I attended a Southern Baptist church where members in good standing didn’t dance or drink a glass of wine with supper.  Wine in the Eucharist (Lord’s Supper) was grape juice. Some people didn’t go to movies. I could provide a litany of behaviors good Southern Baptists didn’t approve, but that would not get to the issue which concerns me today.  Methodists and Presbyterians and the plethora of other evangelical churches are today and have been significant institutions since the beginnings of our Republic.  Don't misunderstand what I am saying here.  The Tea Party individuals in America may not all have connection to Evangelical churches... but their ideas about the responsibility of individual citizens has been and continues to be shaped by Evangelical Christianity.  The office at the very top of the American phenomenon in the world is the office of President.  We have had in that high office individuals who represent the very brightest, the most morally careful individuals in our country; but in those years since 1776 we have elected to the Oval Office s few men whose characters have been based on their self-interest and self-aggrandizement, and to use a “trumpism,” individuals who are smart and compelling in their presentations of themselves, but who are less bright, who are dumb, when it comes to understanding the requirements of the highest office in America…the highest office in the world.

Donald J. Trump has risen to the “top of the Republican Party’s presentation of itself” in a critical year, an election year.  I have been saying for months to myself and saying publicly that Trump will fail in his attempt to become President of the United States.  I have been wrong every time I have thought and/or said that Trump will NOT be successful in his efforts to become President. I have been wrong every time, and I will probably be wrong along with Mitt Romney and Republicans all across the country who hope Trump will disappear from the political scene in America. The present national crisis is serious. 

The reason Trump will probably continue to rise is that evangelicalism in America is as strong, perhaps even stronger, than it has been in the past.  Southern Baptist churches in some American cities have been political and primal political powers all across the country.  I remember clearly how leaders of evangelical religious groups became a serious threat to the political movement led by John Kennedy.  Kennedy was Catholic.  His being Catholic was the emotional reason many Americans voted against him. Evangelicals aimed at his being Catholic, but that reason failed to halt the Kennedy rise because the Catholic Church was in its own way as evangelical as its protestant cousin religious institutions. Evangelical institutions in America have become larger and more powerful than ever. In San Diego County where I live people have watched and said little or nothing as large evangelical groups have established “churches” that are the largest, most politically powerful collections of citizens in the area.  San Diego County, an important research center, clearly has many bright, well-educated liberal voters; but it is also a place where some of the most radical citizens are “evangelical” Christians who often express in their fear the belief that science’s concerns about the global environment, for example, should not be believed. My region in America supports several mega-church collections of people who doubt and openly deny every scientific concern expressed by political and educational leaders… and most of the traditional evangelical churches are alive and important. My region like most of America is basically evangelical in its practice and its expressions of what is right and wrong in the world… and drinking or not drinking wine and beer is not as important an expression of what  evangelical Christians consider “Biblical.”  Going to movies and dancing are not considered by these folks to be as important as providing health care, housing, and education to people who can’t or for whatever reasons don’t provide it for themselves. The majority of Evangelicals are kind people who somehow find a way to believe that if a person has no health care insurance or appropriate housing or advanced education the reason lies with the individual, not with government. 

I keep telling myself that Donald Trump can’t be ultimately successful in his effort to be President.  At times I’ve been wrong in my political goals before this crisis, BUT I’ve sometimes been right.  I continue to hope this is one of those times when I am right.  Donald Trump must not advance to the highest office in the world.