On 2nd June 2020 news sources in the USA reported
that a peaceful protest outside the White House was dispersed with tear gas, flash
grenades and rubber bullets. The President walked across Lafayette park to
stand outside St. John’s Episcopal church where he held aloft a Bible. “It’s a
Bible” he can be heard telling one journalist.
People are responding with various shades of bafflement but
church leaders in the US seem united in denouncing the action. The Bishop responsible
for the diocese “was not given even a courtesy call, that they would be
clearing [the area] with tear gas so they could use one of our churches as a
prop.” She said: “We align ourselves with those seeking justice for the death
of George Floyd and countless others. And I just can’t believe what my eyes
have seen.”
The USA has always had a complicated relationship with Christian
religion. While many of the earliest settlers understood themselves as inhabiting
the “new Jerusalem” of scripture, the founding fathers saw
themselves as the architects of a “new Rome”. You don’t have to flick too far
in the New Testament to find out why this dual inheritance might be a recipe
for confusion. The political subversion of scripture, from Genesis to
Revelation, is that those in power are not there because they are favoured by
the gods. The God of Scripture hears the cry of the oppressed. God rescues a
slave race from under the boot of supremacy. Empires, be it Rome or Babylon,
are presented as hideous mutant beasts - human societies created by God for
good, but twisted beyond recognition. Jerusalem and Babylon become symbols for
two ways of being – God’s way or our way. But the grand drama that unfolds is
not as a simple as a battle between goodies and baddies - God’s people and
other people. In the middle of the story of Jerusalem’s glory days comes this
statement of cold fact: This is the account
of the forced labour which King Solomon levied to build the house of the
Lord. (1 Kings 9:15). It’s a nauseating indicator of how far God’s
people have come. From being set free from slavery to live as a radical new
human society, to begging for a king to be “like the other nations”, to now
being slave owners themselves – indeed, using slave labour to build a temple to
God. It’s a reminder that any nation, any system, no matter its founding
principles, no matter its outward religious piety, can become a beast.
So what are we to
make of the President’s Bible-toting photo-op? Just like in Northern
Ireland a hopeful political candidate in the US can garner huge support by even
hinting at a personal faith or church connection. Is the president simply
reminding an electoral base that he belongs to their tribe? The tribe who like
both the Bible and guns? Is he aiming to paint those protesting the death of
George Floyd, an unarmed black man, as the enemies of the foundational values of
the USA? Or is it a deliberately ambiguous act of propaganda – a sort of visual
word salad? Whatever it was and whatever it was meant to achieve, church
leaders of all colours were quick to condemn it. Father James Martin, a Jesuit
Priest, tweeted: “This is revolting. The Bible is not a prop. A church is not a
photo op. Religion is not a political tool. God is not your plaything.” No one
is particularly too surprised that this president would use the symbols of
Christian Religion so callously, so perhaps we shouldn’t be too angry either. As I was
once reminded at a night of blasphemy-based comedy from Stewart Lee – “If a symbol goes out into the world, into
places where it’s perhaps not understood or wanted or valued, you shouldn’t be
too upset if it then takes on a shape you don’t recognise as your own.”
Though Church leaders should definitely be speaking out a corrective message about
what Christianity stands for the fact is our symbols are free to be used and
abused. You can decide which of those has happened here.
“Nobody reads the
Bible more than me” this president once claimed. Just as, within moments of the
rubber bullets, he described himself as “an ally of all peaceful protesters”. We can hope and pray that
both these things become true.
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