At Least One Famous Christian Author Doesn’t Understand Trump’s Evangelical Following
Politicians will support, and denounce other politicians based purely off of how useful it is to do so at the time. You can hardly ever count on principles to actually come first when it comes to legislators, nor should you be surprised when they suddenly ditch them for political expedience.
But we do expect our religious leaders to be stalwart pillars of principle at all times, in every facet of life. This is why people take it especially hard when religious leaders that they look up to suddenly ditch the principles they’ve espoused in order to actively endorse a candidate who doesn’t share these same principles.
But I can safely say that at least one Christian leader isn’t jumping on board the Trump train. In fact, he’s rather confused as to why any evangelical would.
Phillip Yancey is a best selling Christian Author, who wrote such books as Vanishing Grace, and The Jesus I Never Knew. And unlike other Christian authors, he doesn’t understand how evangelicals, especially their leaders, can jump on board with him.
“I am staggered that so many conservative or evangelical Christians would see a man who is a bully, who made his money by casinos, who has had several wives and several affairs, that they would somehow paint him as a hero, as someone that we could stand behind,” said Yancey.
“To choose a person who stands against everything that Christianity believes as the hero, the representative, one that we get behind enthusiastically is not something that I understand at all,” he went on to say.
Sometimes, it feels as is if the church itself is lowering itself into the muck of politics far too often. When religious leaders endorse the state it feels dirty, and it absolutely should. Especially when the person being endorsed is a statist with no appreciation for religious liberty. Yancey is a breath of fresh air as he explains that churches become tarnished, and set back for decades because they “sold their soul for power.”
In other words, it pushes the church into a more secular line that answers to a lower power instead of a higher one. It’s something that many don’t see happening as we all get caught up in the heat of an election.
Of course – and thankfully – Yancey isn’t the only Christian leader who is refusing to get in line with the state. Famed author Max Lucado is not taking the bait either, as he wrote in his blog.
Could concerns not be raised about other Christian candidates? Absolutely. But the concern of this article is not policy, but tone and decorum. When it comes to language, Mr. Trump is in a league of his own. “It is out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks,” Jesus said.3 Let speech befit the call. We, as Christians, would do well to summon any Christian leader to a higher standard. This includes pastors (especially this one), teachers, coaches and, by all means, presidential candidates.
All of them.
The stock explanation for Mr. Trump’s success is this: he has tapped into the anger of the American people. As one man said, “We are voting with our middle finger.” Sounds more like a comment for a gang-fight than a presidential election. Anger-fueled reactions have caused trouble ever since Cain was angry at Abel.
This kind of brutal wisdom is needed during times when political fervors are at their height. It’s very easy to fall into a place where God takes a backseat due to the fear that a candidate you severely dislike will take power, and thus take from you, be it freedom, money, or religious liberty.
But it doesn’t always work out well for you when you’re relying on the unreliable to protect your freedoms, and Trump has proven himself to be more than unreliable to everyone, including his own base. If evangelicals are looking for someone who will protect their faith, a man who has borderline mocked it in the past is no person to rely on.
As C.S. Lewis said, “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
At Least One Famous Christian Author Doesn’t Understand Trump’s Evangelical Following
Politicians will support, and denounce other politicians based purely off of how useful it is to do so at the time. You can hardly ever count on principles to actually come first when it comes to legislators, nor should you be surprised when they suddenly ditch them for political expedience.
But we do expect our religious leaders to be stalwart pillars of principle at all times, in every facet of life. This is why people take it especially hard when religious leaders that they look up to suddenly ditch the principles they’ve espoused in order to actively endorse a candidate who doesn’t share these same principles.
But I can safely say that at least one Christian leader isn’t jumping on board the Trump train. In fact, he’s rather confused as to why any evangelical would.
Phillip Yancey is a best selling Christian Author, who wrote such books as Vanishing Grace, and The Jesus I Never Knew. And unlike other Christian authors, he doesn’t understand how evangelicals, especially their leaders, can jump on board with him.
“I am staggered that so many conservative or evangelical Christians would see a man who is a bully, who made his money by casinos, who has had several wives and several affairs, that they would somehow paint him as a hero, as someone that we could stand behind,” said Yancey.
“To choose a person who stands against everything that Christianity believes as the hero, the representative, one that we get behind enthusiastically is not something that I understand at all,” he went on to say.
Sometimes, it feels as is if the church itself is lowering itself into the muck of politics far too often. When religious leaders endorse the state it feels dirty, and it absolutely should. Especially when the person being endorsed is a statist with no appreciation for religious liberty. Yancey is a breath of fresh air as he explains that churches become tarnished, and set back for decades because they “sold their soul for power.”
In other words, it pushes the church into a more secular line that answers to a lower power instead of a higher one. It’s something that many don’t see happening as we all get caught up in the heat of an election.
Of course – and thankfully – Yancey isn’t the only Christian leader who is refusing to get in line with the state. Famed author Max Lucado is not taking the bait either, as he wrote in his blog.
Could concerns not be raised about other Christian candidates? Absolutely. But the concern of this article is not policy, but tone and decorum. When it comes to language, Mr. Trump is in a league of his own. “It is out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks,” Jesus said.3 Let speech befit the call. We, as Christians, would do well to summon any Christian leader to a higher standard. This includes pastors (especially this one), teachers, coaches and, by all means, presidential candidates.
All of them.
The stock explanation for Mr. Trump’s success is this: he has tapped into the anger of the American people. As one man said, “We are voting with our middle finger.” Sounds more like a comment for a gang-fight than a presidential election. Anger-fueled reactions have caused trouble ever since Cain was angry at Abel.
This kind of brutal wisdom is needed during times when political fervors are at their height. It’s very easy to fall into a place where God takes a backseat due to the fear that a candidate you severely dislike will take power, and thus take from you, be it freedom, money, or religious liberty.
But it doesn’t always work out well for you when you’re relying on the unreliable to protect your freedoms, and Trump has proven himself to be more than unreliable to everyone, including his own base. If evangelicals are looking for someone who will protect their faith, a man who has borderline mocked it in the past is no person to rely on.
As C.S. Lewis said, “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
Be careful what you read—it may change you, for better or worse.
In the case of Joseph Pearce, his early reading made him a violent white supremacist. It also landed him in jail. While there, he continued to read; only this time, he read the works of G.K. Chesterton. It was not so much that Chesterton’s words suddenly changed his politics or his propensity to violence, but they did initiate a change, one much more profound than his earlier one into a neo-Nazi and this change would, in due course, prove wholly reforming. A remarkable transformation followed: the angry young atheist became a devout Catholic; and, his anger turned to zeal as he set about popularizing Catholic writers and their works.
The fact that, post-conversion, Pearce managed, in 1996, to publish a biography of Chesterton is miraculous in itself given his background. That he did so via a mainstream publisher and went on to publish many more biographies and books on Catholic literary figures, was equally miraculous. His subsequent work on Tolkien proved equally timely, as did those on Shakespeare. His biography of Oscar Wilde, published in 2000, was the first to present the spiritual life of the Irishman, and it was a brave exposition for the times in which it appeared. To say the least, Pearce’s entry into the world of Catholic Letters was felicitous.
Joseph Pearce has just published Merrie England: A Journey Through the Shire (Tan Books). It is a travelogue of sorts. In it, he recounts a walk the length and breadth of the country, with a solitary incursion into Wales. The walk dates from the eve of the Millennium, and tells of a time just prior to when he made America his home. It is, therefore, a “farewell” to a land he loved dearly, and, no doubt, still loves. Inevitably, this book is as much about Pearce as it is about England.
The England he describes is a curious one though. He walks from one sacred historic site to another, thinking, delighting, philosophizing, and lamenting. The reader, to whom he addresses these thoughts, becomes a companion of sorts. We hear potted histories of places that have particular significance for Catholic England. He talks of long forgotten saints, of ruined monasteries, hidden histories of recusancy, in short, of the long, and at times bitter, betrayal of the faith inscribed in the battered monuments of this scepter’d isle.
Merrie England does not record the England that was, at the time of the walk, straining towards the fast approaching new Millennium. Then England was giving hardly a backwards glance to its history. Instead what is presented is Pearce’s idea of England, a lost Albion, one now gone, never to be retrieved. Like many a departing immigrant before, it is as if he is trying to remember what remains dear in his homeland so as to take its memory with him on his journey into exile.
As recorded in these pages, his trek is, therefore, an altogether personal one. All pubs are alehouses; all fields are shires. This is an England of rural simplicity, in tune with an ancient past that informs the present. A self-proclaimed pilgrim, it is as if he ventures forth with a walking stick in hand like a character from Middle Earth. There is not a motorway in sight, nor a petrol filling station, no littered inner city streets, no rubbish dumped in countryside lanes, or—the tribute to mindless vandalism and civic indifference—spray painted graffiti on desolate urban walls. Pearce’s England may have something unreal about it but, needless to say, it has a charm, and is infinitely preferable to many of the realities with which citizens of this country battle each day.
It is interesting to read Merrie England, his latest published work, alongside his 2013 autobiographical Race with the Devil: My Journey From Racial Hatred to Rational Love (St. Benedict Press). That book tells of his growing up in England and ends with his departure to America. The land described in those pages is as far removed from Merrie England as possible: one of poverty, far-right politics, racism and violence. That memoir’s pages are filled with the haze of alcohol-fueled fights, of bitterness and frustration, of odd, half-baked political philosophy, and even odder foot soldiers in the race war Pearce was then trying to ferment. Race with the Devil is as good as any at depicting that period of British social history. It feels more real, in one sense, than his latest work, but this may be to miss an altogether different reality present in Merrie England.
Race with the Devil is a conversion story as unique as it is compelling. It is made all the more remarkable by the fact that Pearce’s former political beliefs at the time also incorporated the anti-Catholic prejudices of Protestant Ulster. He was not only interested in fermenting a race-based conflict in Britain but also in attacking the Catholic communities then besieged in Belfast, Derry, Armagh and other cities across Ulster. At one point, he almost became an international gunrunner, sending weapons that would be pointed at and used on those entering Catholic churches or leaving Catholic schools. As I say, his conversion from the bigoted thug he had become to a first-rate documenter of all things literary and Catholic is altogether unique—or is it more correct simply to say miraculous?
What Race with the Devil is also good at revealing is that conversion is a process. His intellectual conversion to Catholicism proved quicker than the reformation of his morals and lifestyle. He had to deal with the emotional debris left from a former life lived far from God. Sometimes, in meeting those interested in becoming Catholic, it is easy to forget how hard that journey of faith can be, not for doctrinal reasons, but for all too human ones. In Pearce’s case, in becoming a Catholic, he was giving up a cause for which, throughout his adult life, he had lived, fought, and almost died. Some of the friendships he had made during that period were genuine. Baffled former comrades wondered what had become of their “storm-trooper.” The separation from his former life would take years. Nevertheless, Joseph Pearce was heading from the darkness he had inhabited for almost all his life towards the light of a bright new morning, if one that was still slowly dawning.
Read through this prism, Merrie England is, therefore, not so much the recounting of a journey as marking the end of one. It is wholly appropriate that much that “scars the shire” is removed from sight. It is right that there are no voices recorded here but the pilgrim’s on his very personal journey. It is a journey that is as much an inner one as one undertaken over hill and dale. In seeking out the lost beauty of an England older and truer than the one conceived by the boorish chauvinism of his earlier days, Pearce was finding a deeper reality. A reality that was, by then, beginning to shape him, and henceforth was to shape him even more. Now he was slowly being initiated into a secret. One that all believers sense, and that some glimpse daily as they make their way down the litter-strewn streets of modern England while their eyes are upon a transcendence beyond.
Pearce is joining an ongoing pilgrimage that has continued for centuries, and that will continue, despite persecution and contrary dictate. At last, freed from political dead ends, Pearce has become a lively pilgrim, one on his way, with his brothers and sisters not just of England but of every race and nation from across the Catholic world, accompanied, too, by those now departed from this earthly realm who journey with us still.
England today is less merry than it was. Its “merriness” came from being the Dowry of Mary; and until her ancient shrines are rebuilt, that attribute is unlikely to return. Nevertheless, there may well come a time when, in the distance, there shall appear a flickering light, perhaps from one of those re-established centers of Marian devotion, and, with it, hope will be given once more to many. In some ways, mysteriously, that was what happened to Joseph Pearce while in a prison cell reading the work of one of the greatest Englishmen that ever lived and prayed, and who understood what “merry” really meant.
Editor’s note: The image above is a picture of Whitby Abbey, Yorkshire, taken circa 1890’s.
On my way to work at Providence College, I pass by two notable murals painted on concrete retaining walls to edify motorists passing by. One of them is executed in the brightly colored style of a cartoon, with exaggerated circles and curlicues for eyes and hair and ears and noses. It cries out in big puffy letters, “Celebrate Diversity.” The other is a three-tone series of medallion portraits in amber and gray and black, honoring the patriarchs of the Italian families who first settled in the Federal Hill neighborhood, which now boasts as fine an avenue of Italian restaurants and groceries as is to be found anywhere in the country. Between the medallions, the artist has, as if he were a stark and straightforward Currier and Ives, painted “tunnels,” from one of which emerges an old horse-drawn carriage.
The latter painting is by far the superior, artistically, and I have always noted that gangland graffiti, which is to be found everywhere along walls and abandoned buildings near that particular tangle of highways, has never marred the faces of those Italians and the scene that surrounds them. There are perhaps two reasons for their immunity. One is that punks tend to leave genuine art alone. The other is that the Italians might find out who the vandals were, and that would not be a pleasant prospect for the vandals.
I understand what it is to have a Greek festival or an Italian festival, or a parish festival where fellow Catholics come out to enjoy good high-calorie food, play some innocent games of chance, and try to get the priest to sit in the dunking machine. For man is always united from above, not from below, and that includes even the make-believe transcendence of the local baseball team, which is harmless enough if not taken too seriously. When Catholics come to Mass to pray, they do so as members of one Church, not ten, not fifty, praying the same prayers all over the world, because they give thanks to the one Lord and Savior who died for them on one cross, on the one hill of the Skull, on that one Friday long ago. This was the same Lord who prayed that we would be not ten, not fifty, but one, even as he and the Father are one.
But the watchword at Providence College right now is not unity, but “diversity,” as is made evident by the four-page Diversity Program featured prominently on our website. When I see the word “diversity” in its current use as a political slogan, I ask myself the following questions:
What is diversity, as opposed to divergence? What is diversity, as opposed to mere variety? What goods, precisely, is diversity supposed to deliver? Why is intellectual diversity not served by the study of a dozen cultures of the past, with their vast array of customs, poetry, art, and worship of the gods?
Is not diversity as it is now preached a solvent for any culture? That is, supposing that the people of a tribe in the interior of Brazil are compelled to accept cultural diversity for its own sake, rather than merely adopting and adapting this or that beneficent feature of another culture (something that people have always done), will that not mean that their own culture must eventually vanish, or be reduced to the superficialities of food and dress?
Is not diversity, as currently promoted, at odds with the foundational diversity built into the nature of the human race, the diversity of male and female, to be resolved most dynamically and creatively in the union of man and woman in marriage?
Is not that same call for diversity, when Catholics are doing the calling, a surrender of the Church to a political movement which is, for all its talk, a push for homogeneity, so that all the world will look not like the many-cultured Church, but rather like the monotone non-culture of western cities that have lost their faith in the transcendent and unifying God?
How is it possible for people ever to be truly at one with each other, unless they behold the same object of wonder, and lose themselves in that wonder? Is not that experience of God, whose ways are not our ways nor are his thoughts our thoughts, the single most powerful experience of difference, yet an experience that is also made intimate for us, one with us, by the incarnation of the Son of God?
Granted that God redeems not only individuals but peoples, so that, for example, China in the arms of the Church will be more truly China than she was before, does not this diversity presuppose the distinction of cultures one from another? If so, does not the press for “diversity” then belie a new colonialism, not a Church-inspired elevation and purification of a human culture, but its suppression and its infection with peculiarly western obsessions, particularly those concerning sex, marriage, and family life?
What happens to the other foundational diversity in the order of grace, that between the Church and the world? Must not the Church both meet cultures where they are, and stand forth as boldly as the Cross upon that barren rock, opposing the world, because the ways of the world, when they are not baptized, lead to death?
Why should a Catholic institution not then be itself, precisely to offer to that increasingly homogeneous and nothing-adoring world a different word, the word of Christ and his Church? Have not the secular preachers of diversity instead worked their hardest to efface that difference, to muffle all those who speak with the voice of the Church against the vision that those preachers have to offer—a vision that pretends to be “multicultural,” but that is actually anti-cultural, and is characterized by all the totalitarian impulses to use the massive power of government to bring to heel those who decline to go along?
These aren’t idle questions. I notice, on our Diversity page, that incidents of “bias” will be forwarded to a “Bias Response Team,” which is, if I may adopt the phraseology of one of my shrewdest colleagues, a Star Chamber whose constitution and laws and executive power no one will know. “Fear not,” says the angel, “for the great Unwritten Law will come upon you, and the power of Correct Thinking will overshadow you.” How precisely the fear of being hauled before the Star Chamber can possibly bring people together in friendship, is never revealed.
I notice also, on that same Diversity page, that we are supposed to commit ourselves to welcoming the alphabet soup of cheered-on sexual proclivities. For some reason that does not include F, for Fornicators, or S, for swingers, or P, for pornographers, or W, for sex-workers, formerly called harlots, or A, for adulterers. No political lobby for those? Now, we either affirm, as an institution, that the Church has a real and powerful and urgent message she must bring to the world, a message of harsh truth and genuine healing, or we do not. If we do believe it, then we cannot believe that a disordered inclination towards any sin, sexual or otherwise, can be constitutive of any human being. We may say that John is a liar, because John tells lies all the time, but the true John who is half-smothered by his sins is not a liar; as the true Mary Magdalene was not a whore, and the true David was not an adulterer and murderer. We might then welcome Steven who is deeply disturbed about sexuality and who has, unfortunately, put his disturbance into the form of tentacle-rooting action, but we welcome him as Steven the sinner, hoping to see from him Steven the repentant. Steven as the sinner has nothing to bring to us; we as the Church have the truth to bring to him, to set him free from that sin, whatever it may be.
But there is no evidence on our Diversity page that we wish to be what God has called us to be, a committedly and forthrightly Catholic school with life-changing truths to bring to the world. It is as if, deep down, we did not really believe it. So let us suppose that a professor should affirm some aspect of the Church’s teaching as regards the neuralgia of our time, sex. Will his right to do so be confirmed by those who say they are committed to diversity? Put it this way. Suppose someone were to ask, “Is it permitted for a secular liberal, at a secular and liberal college, to affirm in the classroom a secular view of sex and the family?” The question would strike everyone as absurd. It would be like asking whether we were permitted to walk on two feet or to look up at the sky. Then why should it not also be absurd to ask, “Is it permitted for a Catholic, at a college that advertises itself as Catholic, to affirm a Catholic view of sex and the family?” And I am not talking merely about professors whose specific job it is to teach moral philosophy or moral theology. I am talking about all professors.
In my now extensive experience, Catholic professors in Catholic colleges have been notably tolerant of the limitations of their secular colleagues. We make allowances all the time. We understand, though, that some of them—not all, but then it only takes a few—would silence us for good, if they had the power. They have made life hell for more than one of my friends. All, now, in the name of an undefined and perhaps undefinable diversity, to which you had damned well better give honor and glory. If you don’t—and you may not even be aware of the lese majeste as you commit it—you’d better have eyes in the back of your head. I think it would be safer to vandalize the old Italians on that wall.
On my way to work at Providence College, I pass by two notable murals painted on concrete retaining walls to edify motorists passing by. One of them is executed in the brightly colored style of a cartoon, with exaggerated circles and curlicues for eyes and hair and ears and noses. It cries out in big puffy letters, “Celebrate Diversity.” The other is a three-tone series of medallion portraits in amber and gray and black, honoring the patriarchs of the Italian families who first settled in the Federal Hill neighborhood, which now boasts as fine an avenue of Italian restaurants and groceries as is to be found anywhere in the country. Between the medallions, the artist has, as if he were a stark and straightforward Currier and Ives, painted “tunnels,” from one of which emerges an old horse-drawn carriage.
The latter painting is by far the superior, artistically, and I have always noted that gangland graffiti, which is to be found everywhere along walls and abandoned buildings near that particular tangle of highways, has never marred the faces of those Italians and the scene that surrounds them. There are perhaps two reasons for their immunity. One is that punks tend to leave genuine art alone. The other is that the Italians might find out who the vandals were, and that would not be a pleasant prospect for the vandals.
I understand what it is to have a Greek festival or an Italian festival, or a parish festival where fellow Catholics come out to enjoy good high-calorie food, play some innocent games of chance, and try to get the priest to sit in the dunking machine. For man is always united from above, not from below, and that includes even the make-believe transcendence of the local baseball team, which is harmless enough if not taken too seriously. When Catholics come to Mass to pray, they do so as members of one Church, not ten, not fifty, praying the same prayers all over the world, because they give thanks to the one Lord and Savior who died for them on one cross, on the one hill of the Skull, on that one Friday long ago. This was the same Lord who prayed that we would be not ten, not fifty, but one, even as he and the Father are one.
But the watchword at Providence College right now is not unity, but “diversity,” as is made evident by the four-page Diversity Program featured prominently on our website. When I see the word “diversity” in its current use as a political slogan, I ask myself the following questions:
What is diversity, as opposed to divergence? What is diversity, as opposed to mere variety? What goods, precisely, is diversity supposed to deliver? Why is intellectual diversity not served by the study of a dozen cultures of the past, with their vast array of customs, poetry, art, and worship of the gods?
Is not diversity as it is now preached a solvent for any culture? That is, supposing that the people of a tribe in the interior of Brazil are compelled to accept cultural diversity for its own sake, rather than merely adopting and adapting this or that beneficent feature of another culture (something that people have always done), will that not mean that their own culture must eventually vanish, or be reduced to the superficialities of food and dress?
Is not diversity, as currently promoted, at odds with the foundational diversity built into the nature of the human race, the diversity of male and female, to be resolved most dynamically and creatively in the union of man and woman in marriage?
Is not that same call for diversity, when Catholics are doing the calling, a surrender of the Church to a political movement which is, for all its talk, a push for homogeneity, so that all the world will look not like the many-cultured Church, but rather like the monotone non-culture of western cities that have lost their faith in the transcendent and unifying God?
How is it possible for people ever to be truly at one with each other, unless they behold the same object of wonder, and lose themselves in that wonder? Is not that experience of God, whose ways are not our ways nor are his thoughts our thoughts, the single most powerful experience of difference, yet an experience that is also made intimate for us, one with us, by the incarnation of the Son of God?
Granted that God redeems not only individuals but peoples, so that, for example, China in the arms of the Church will be more truly China than she was before, does not this diversity presuppose the distinction of cultures one from another? If so, does not the press for “diversity” then belie a new colonialism, not a Church-inspired elevation and purification of a human culture, but its suppression and its infection with peculiarly western obsessions, particularly those concerning sex, marriage, and family life?
What happens to the other foundational diversity in the order of grace, that between the Church and the world? Must not the Church both meet cultures where they are, and stand forth as boldly as the Cross upon that barren rock, opposing the world, because the ways of the world, when they are not baptized, lead to death?
Why should a Catholic institution not then be itself, precisely to offer to that increasingly homogeneous and nothing-adoring world a different word, the word of Christ and his Church? Have not the secular preachers of diversity instead worked their hardest to efface that difference, to muffle all those who speak with the voice of the Church against the vision that those preachers have to offer—a vision that pretends to be “multicultural,” but that is actually anti-cultural, and is characterized by all the totalitarian impulses to use the massive power of government to bring to heel those who decline to go along?
These aren’t idle questions. I notice, on our Diversity page, that incidents of “bias” will be forwarded to a “Bias Response Team,” which is, if I may adopt the phraseology of one of my shrewdest colleagues, a Star Chamber whose constitution and laws and executive power no one will know. “Fear not,” says the angel, “for the great Unwritten Law will come upon you, and the power of Correct Thinking will overshadow you.” How precisely the fear of being hauled before the Star Chamber can possibly bring people together in friendship, is never revealed.
I notice also, on that same Diversity page, that we are supposed to commit ourselves to welcoming the alphabet soup of cheered-on sexual proclivities. For some reason that does not include F, for Fornicators, or S, for swingers, or P, for pornographers, or W, for sex-workers, formerly called harlots, or A, for adulterers. No political lobby for those? Now, we either affirm, as an institution, that the Church has a real and powerful and urgent message she must bring to the world, a message of harsh truth and genuine healing, or we do not. If we do believe it, then we cannot believe that a disordered inclination towards any sin, sexual or otherwise, can be constitutive of any human being. We may say that John is a liar, because John tells lies all the time, but the true John who is half-smothered by his sins is not a liar; as the true Mary Magdalene was not a whore, and the true David was not an adulterer and murderer. We might then welcome Steven who is deeply disturbed about sexuality and who has, unfortunately, put his disturbance into the form of tentacle-rooting action, but we welcome him as Steven the sinner, hoping to see from him Steven the repentant. Steven as the sinner has nothing to bring to us; we as the Church have the truth to bring to him, to set him free from that sin, whatever it may be.
But there is no evidence on our Diversity page that we wish to be what God has called us to be, a committedly and forthrightly Catholic school with life-changing truths to bring to the world. It is as if, deep down, we did not really believe it. So let us suppose that a professor should affirm some aspect of the Church’s teaching as regards the neuralgia of our time, sex. Will his right to do so be confirmed by those who say they are committed to diversity? Put it this way. Suppose someone were to ask, “Is it permitted for a secular liberal, at a secular and liberal college, to affirm in the classroom a secular view of sex and the family?” The question would strike everyone as absurd. It would be like asking whether we were permitted to walk on two feet or to look up at the sky. Then why should it not also be absurd to ask, “Is it permitted for a Catholic, at a college that advertises itself as Catholic, to affirm a Catholic view of sex and the family?” And I am not talking merely about professors whose specific job it is to teach moral philosophy or moral theology. I am talking about all professors.
In my now extensive experience, Catholic professors in Catholic colleges have been notably tolerant of the limitations of their secular colleagues. We make allowances all the time. We understand, though, that some of them—not all, but then it only takes a few—would silence us for good, if they had the power. They have made life hell for more than one of my friends. All, now, in the name of an undefined and perhaps undefinable diversity, to which you had damned well better give honor and glory. If you don’t—and you may not even be aware of the lese majeste as you commit it—you’d better have eyes in the back of your head. I think it would be safer to vandalize the old Italians on that wall.
Their words almost knocked me over. They hit me like a horse hoof to the gut.
When I was a young boy, I helped my father train quarter horses. And we always felt the danger of being the recipient of a wayward hoof. One day, not paying close attention, I was kicked, leaving a well-defined hoof print in the center of my stomach. Every ounce of breath left my body.
Decades later, challenging words delivered by believers from an Islamic background left me just as breathless.
Listening to Persecuted Believers
This event took place after we had visited over 45 countries, interviewing believers in persecution from backgrounds including communism, atheism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. We were learning from believers in persecution how to make Christ known and how to give birth to house churches that then would reproduce on their own.
After experiencing the devastation of Somalia, broken over the martyrdom of over 90% of Somali believers, our learning curve was acute. Believers in persecution were generous with their wisdom; they instinctively understood that investing in us gave deeper meaning to their own suffering.
Now we were returning to the world of Islam. It was in the world of Islam where most of the believers we knew and loved were killed. It was in the world of Islam where our middle son died on Easter Sunday morning of an asthma attack. Islamic environments at that time felt like the graveyard of faith.
Islamic Persecution Is Unique
We had already learned how important it was to listen. So we set aside time to listen to the believing culture inside a Muslim country, in rural and urban locations, among both young and old, both men and women, and those literate as well as oral communicators. They told us how they had heard of Jesus and his Bible for the first time. We were startled to discover that their experience was quite different from the experiences of most of the rest of the believing world.
In our earlier travels, we had learned that much persecution originates within governments and institutions of power. In the U.S.S.R. and China persecution was institutionalized. Persecutors were typically somewhere “out there,” and they employed means to find, punish, incarcerate, and kill believers.
In the world of Islam, we discovered that persecutors are typically not “out there,” but “in here.” In Islam, the persecutor often eats at your breakfast table, watches movies with you, and sleeps in your bedroom.
In earlier interviews, we had been told of parents and grandparents who would hide a believing son or daughter from the government. Within Islamic settings, however, it was the parents and grandparents who would often have incarcerated, banished, or even killed their own believing children and grandchildren.
What Makes a Good Missionary?
As we talked with persecuted believers, we discovered that they often wanted to talk not just about their own persecution, but also about us, workers from the West. As darkness settled in, after a full day of stories and interviews, I asked these believers about Western missionaries.
“What do we do well? What things do we not do well? What should we start doing? What should we stop doing? What should we pick up? What should we lay down? What makes a good missionary?”
These believers looked at each other in horror. For hours, they had related their most personal stories.
They had shared accounts of rejection by parents and siblings. They had unpacked events where they had been shamed and beaten. They had told of other believers who were forced to marry nonbelievers. They had even recalled brothers and sisters who had been brutalized before being killed for their faith. They had not held back the most intimate stories surrounding their families, faith, and persecution.
But when I ask this final question about Western missionaries, they froze.
I pushed harder. I sincerely needed to hear what they would say.
Finally, with great hesitation, one of the believers looked at me and said, “I don’t know what makes a good missionary, but I can tell you the name of the man we love.”
When he told me that man’s name, I asked him the next obvious question, “Why do you love him?”
They said, “We don’t know. We just love him.”
The Man They All Loved
I journeyed to five different places in that country. For ten long days, I interviewed believers. Each time, as I reached the end of the interview, I asked the same question: “What makes a good missionary?”
The response was identical each time: “We don’t know what makes a good missionary, but we can tell you the name of the man we love.”
Amazingly, I heard the same name in every place!
When I asked why they loved him, the answer was always the same: “We don’t know. We just love him.”
At this point, I began to feel jealous. I wondered why people hadn’t loved me this much. I found myself developing a grudge against a man I didn’t even know!
The final interview in that country ended in the same way. After another long day of interviews I asked again, “What makes a good worker from the West? What makes a good missionary?”
While I silently prayed not to hear the same answer, they said to me, “We don’t know what makes a good missionary, but we can tell you the man we love.” By now, the next sentence was predictable and expected; they mentioned that same name that I had heard over and over again.
The Missing Ingredient in Missions
By this point, I was so frustrated that I told them firmly that I was not going to leave until they told me why this worker from the West was such a wonderful man. I insisted on an answer.
Finally, one of the men leaned across the table toward me and said forcefully, “You want to know why we love him? We love him because he borrows money from us!”
I was stunned. I thought to myself, Well, I can do that, if that’s what it takes to be loved by believers in persecution.
His statement, however, hinted at something much deeper, and I pleaded with him to explain. What I heard felt like that horse-kick to the stomach. The words knocked the breath out of my body.
The man said, “When this missionary’s father died, he came to us and asked for our help. We didn’t have much, but we gathered an offering of love. We bought him a plane ticket so that he could go home to America and bury his father. This man and his family give everything they have to the poor. They struggle to pay rent and school fees, and put meat on the table. And when he has a great need, what does he do? He doesn’t go to the other Westerners for money. He comes to us. He comes to the scattered and the poor, he comes to local believers, and he asks for, and gets, our help.”
“Do you want to know why we love him? He needs us. The rest of you have never needed us.”
We Need to Need the People We Serve
I was tearfully overwhelmed. And I confessed the arrogance of Western missionaries — and my own arrogance. So much of what we do is about us and about what we can provide. We travel around the world to meet needs, not to be honest about our own, nor to become part of their body of Christ. We are the “haves,” and they are the “have-nots.”
Though our motives are not always suspect, we generally come and tell other people to “sit down and listen” while we stand and speak. We are aggressive, and we expect local people to remain passive. We bring the gospel, Bibles, and hymnbooks. We provide baptisms, discipleship, and places to meet. We choose the leaders. We care for orphans, build orphanages, rescue the broken, and care for the crippled.
And those are all wonderful things.
But here’s the challenge: What’s left for local people to do? What’s left for the Holy Spirit to provide? Where do we model how to trust God and his provision through the local body of believers? Where do local believers find their worth, their sanctified sense of signficance? What gifts and sacrifice can they bring to this enterprise of taking the gospel to the ends of the earth?
Rarely did the apostle Paul create dependency upon himself. Often in his letters, Paul expressed how desperately he needed his brothers and sisters in Christ. He called those friends by name years later. He never forgot them. When possible, he returned to be with them. When he could not go, he sent them someone else. And he faithfully wrote to them, expressing his love, encouragement, and correction. In a word, he needed them.
If I Were to Start Over
If I were to start my missionary life over, I would bury my pride and unpack some humility. I would become a brother, a friend, and a peer. I would care more about the names of my brothers and sisters on the “mission field” and less about the numbers of baptisms, people discipled, churches planted, and orphanages built.
I would take to heart the lesson of John the Baptist, saying about a local believer what John said about Jesus: I must decrease so that he can increase (John 3:30). I would invite local believers to lead in the light while I served in the shadows. I would have pressed into what it meant to really need them.
During most of my ministry in Africa, I felt that I was the apostle Paul. I now know that I often need to be a Timothy.
For those of us in the West, this image should seize our hearts: Jesus taking the cloth from around his waist and washing the feet of the disciples, saying, “The last will be first, and the first last” (Matthew 20:16).
Trump is headed for a win, says professor who has predicted 30 years of presidential outcomes correctly
Who will win the 2016 presidential election? This professor has predicted correctly for 32 years
Play Video4:11
Allan Lichtman created his "13 Keys to the White House" more than 30 years ago – and he's ready to predict who will win in 2016 (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)
Nobody knows for certain who will win on Nov. 8 — but one man is pretty sure: Professor Allan Lichtman, who has correctly predicted every presidential election since 1984.
When we sat down in May, he explained how he comes to a decision. Lichtman's prediction isn't based on horse-race polls, shifting demographics or his own political opinions. Rather, he uses a system of true/false statements he calls the "Keys to the White House" to determine his predicted winner.
And this year, he says, Donald Trump is the favorite to win.
Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
Long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
Lichtman, a distinguished professor of history at American University, sat down with The Fix this week to reveal who he thinks will win in November and why 2016 was the most difficult election to predict yet. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
THE FIX: Can you tell me about the keys, and how you use them to evaluate the election from the point where — I assume it's very murky a year or two out, and they start to crystallize over the course of the election.
LICHTMAN: "The Keys to the White House" is a historically based prediction system. I derived the system by looking at every American presidential election from 1860 to 1980, and have since used the system to correctly predict the outcomes of all eight American presidential elections from 1984 to 2012.
The keys are 13 true/false questions, where an answer of "true" always favors the reelection of the party holding the White House, in this case the Democrats. And the keys are phrased to reflect the basic theory that elections are primarily judgments on the performance of the party holding the White House. And if six or more of the 13 keys are false — that is, they go against the party in power — they lose. If fewer than six are false, the party in power gets four more years.
So people who hear just the surface-level argument there might say, well, President Obama has a 58 percent approval rating, doesn't that mean the Democrats are a shoo-in? Why is that wrong?
It absolutely does not mean the Democrats are a shoo-in. First of all, one of my keys is whether or not the sitting president is running for reelection, and right away, they are down that key. Another one of my keys is whether or not the candidate of the White House party is, like Obama was in 2008, charismatic. Hillary Clinton doesn't fit the bill.
The keys have nothing to do with presidential approval polls or horse-race polls, with one exception, and that is to assess the possibility of a significant third-party campaign.
What about Donald Trump on the other side? He's not affiliated with the sitting party, but has his campaign been an enigma in terms of your ability to assess this election?
Donald Trump has made this the most difficult election to assess since 1984. We have never before seen a candidate like Donald Trump, and Donald Trump may well break patterns of history that have held since 1860.
We've never before seen a candidate who's spent his life enriching himself at the expense of others. He's the first candidate in our history to be a serial fabricator, making up things as he goes along. Even when he tells the truth, such as, "Barack Obama really was born in the U.S.," he adds two lines, that Hillary Clinton started the birther movement, and that he finished it, even though when Barack Obama put out his birth certificate, he didn't believe it. We've never had a candidate before who not just once, but twice in a thinly disguised way, has incited violence against an opponent. We've never had a candidate before who's invited a hostile foreign power to meddle in American elections. We've never had a candidate before who's threatened to start a war by blowing ships out of the water in the Persian Gulf if they come too close to us. We've never had a candidate before who has embraced as a role model a murderous, hostile foreign dictator. Given all of these exceptions that Donald Trump represents, he may well shatter patterns of history that have held for more than 150 years, lose this election even if the historical circumstances favor it.
We're a little bit less than seven weeks out from the election today. Who do you predict will win in November?
Based on the 13 keys, it would predict a Donald Trump victory. Remember, six keys and you're out, and right now the Democrats are out — for sure — five keys.
Key 1 is the party mandate — how well they did in the midterms. They got crushed.
Key number 3 is, the sitting president is not running.
Key number 7, no major policy change in Obama's second term like the Affordable Care Act.
Key number 11, no major smashing foreign policy success.
And Key number 12, Hillary Clinton is not a Franklin Roosevelt.
One more key and the Democrats are down, and we have the Gary Johnson Key. One of my keys would be that the party in power gets a "false" if a third-party candidate is anticipated to get 5 percent of the vote or more. In his highest polling, Gary Johnson is at about 12 to 14 percent. My rule is that you cut it in half. That would mean that he gets six to seven, and that would be the sixth and final key against the Democrats.
So very, very narrowly, the keys point to a Trump victory. But I would say, more to the point, they point to a generic Republican victory, because I believe that given the unprecedented nature of the Trump candidacy and Trump himself, he could defy all odds and lose even though the verdict of history is in his favor. So this would also suggest, you know, the possibility this election could go either way. Nobody should be complacent, no matter who you're for, you gotta get out and vote.
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Do you think the fact that Trump is not a traditional Republican — certainly not an establishment Republican, from a rhetorical or policy perspective — contributes to that uncertainty over where he fits in with the standard methodology for evaluating the Keys?
I think the fact that he's a bit of a maverick, and nobody knows where he stands on policy, because he's constantly shifting. I defy anyone to say what his immigration policy is, what his policy is on banning Muslims, or whoever, from entering the United States, that's certainly a factor. But it's more his history in Trump University, the Trump Institute, his bankruptcies, the charitable foundation, of enriching himself at the expense of others, and all of the lies and dangerous things he's said in this campaign, that could make him a precedent-shattering candidate.
It's interesting, I don't use the polls, as I've just explained, but the polls have very recently tightened. Clinton is less ahead than she was before, but it's not because Trump is rising, it's because Clinton is falling. He's still around 39 percent in the polls. You can't win if you can't crack 40 percent.
As people realize the choice is not Gary Johnson, the only choice is between Trump and Clinton, those Gary Johnson supporters may move away from Johnson and toward Clinton, particularly those millennials. And, you know, I've seen this movie before. My first vote was in 1968, when I was the equivalent of a millennial, and lots of my friends, very liberal, wouldn't vote for Hubert Humphrey because he was part of the Democratic establishment, and guess what? They elected Richard Nixon.
And, of course, as I have said for over 30 years, predictions are not endorsements. My prediction is based off a scientific system. It does not necessarily represent, in any way, shape or form, an Allan Lichtman or American University endorsement of any candidate. And of course, as a successful forecaster, I've predicted in almost equal measure both Republican and Democratic victories.
