Two weeks from Tuesday we will elect the next president of our country. Some of you have already voted; others like to wait until election day to cast their vote.s
As November 5th draws nearer I can feel my anxiety levels rising. From conversations with many of you, and with friends outside the congregation, I know that I am not alone. Tensions and anxieties are high everywhere.
That includes in some of the political rhetoric we are hearing. In the past weeks we have heard the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump, use increasingly repellent and violent rhetoric, often aimed at those who are here from other countries, legally or illegally.
In the past days Trump has referred to immigrants as “vermin.” They are “poisoning the blood of our country” with “bad genes.”
“I don’t know if you can call them people,” he said. “In some cases they are not people, in my opinion. They’re not human; they’re animals.”
To students of history this rhetoric is chillingly familiar. It belongs to a particular tradition — the language that fascists use to describe their political enemies.
Hitler used this language. So did Mussolini and Stalin and Pol Pot.
“What is so jarring to me is these are not just Nazi-like statements,” said Robert Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute. “These are actual Nazi sentiments. Hitler used the words vermin and rats multiple times in Mein Kampf to talk about Jews. These are not accidental or coincidental references. We have clear, 20th century historical precedent with this kind of political language, and we see where it leads.”
Anne Applebaum, in an article in The Atlantic magazine, tells us where it leads. “If you connect your opponents with disease, illness, and poisoned blood; if you dehumanize them as insects or animals; if you speak of squashing them or cleansing them, then you can much more easily arrest them, deprive them of rights, exclude them, or even kill them.
“If they are parasites, they aren’t human. If you squash them you won’t be held accountable.”
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor and scholar of fascism sat New York University, echoes Applebaum’s warning.
“Trump’s been taking his followers on a journey since really 2015, conditioning them step by step, instilling hatred in a group, and then escalating. So immigrants are crime. Immigrants are anarchy. They’re taking our jobs, but now they’re also animals who are going to kill us or eat our pets.
“That’s how you get people to feel that whatever is done to them, as in mass deportation, rounding them up, putting them in camps, is OK.”
So what does all this political talk have to do with us? Why is it a topic of a sermon?
There are several reasons. First and foremost, this kind of language, and the actions that it may lead to, are profoundly unchristian.
From the very first page of scripture our faith tells us that all people are created in the image of God. Time and time again the people of Israel are told that they must care for the resident aliens, or immigrants, among them. God judges nations by how well they carry out this command.
Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our minds. We do that, he says, by loving our neighbor as ourselves.
You can’t separate those two commands. If you call your neighbors vermin and parasites, if you say they are less than human, you are not loving God.
And yet, the toxic, fascist rhetoric we hear is embraced by many Christians. We see it in the rise of white Christian nationalism, a movement that is neither Christian nor patriotic.
Christian nationalism seeks to sanctify our hatreds and fears.
“White Christian nationalists clothe their hatred in the garments of their faith,” says Jim Wallis in his book The False White Gospel. “They sacralize power and worship at the altar of autocrats who all too often profane the name of Jesus.
“White Christian nationalism seeks to divide us, leading the country down a path that starts with fear, that turns to hate, and ultimately leads to violence. It defies what Jesus said about loving our neighbors, and even our enemies.”
So many times people have wondered where the Church was in Nazi Germany. How could Christians have allowed Hitler’s atrocities to happen?
There were churches that courageously stood up for the gospel, but they were outnumbered by so-called “German Christians,” a movement that saw no conflict between Christianity and Hitler’s ideals. Many Germans took the union of Christianity, nationalism, and militarism for granted. Patriotic sentiments were equated with Christian truth. Being a good Christian meant being a good Nazi.
The German Christians exalted the racially pure nation and the rule of Hitler as God’s will for the German people.
The parallels between German Christians and white Christian nationalism are eerily similar.
Wallis urges Christians to understand the parallels and to do something about it.
“Where is Christian resistance emerging now and where is the true Gospel being recovered and reclaimed in response to the false white gospel of Christian nationalism now on the rise?” he asks.
Earlier this month bishops in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America issued a statement acknowledging the danger of the rhetoric in our political discourse.
“We, the members of the Conference of Bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, speak with one voice to condemn the hateful, deceptive, violent speech that has too readily found a place in our national discourse. We lament the ways this language has led to hate-fueled action.
“We refuse to accept the ongoing normalization of lies and deceit.
“We recommit ourselves to speaking the truth and pointing to the one who is truth. We implore the members of the ELCA, as well as our partners and friends, to join us as we:
- Pledge to be vigilant guardians of truth, refusing to perpetuate lies or half-truths that further corrode the fabric of our society.
- Commit to rigorous fact-checking, honoring God’s command to “test everything; hold fast to what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
- Reject the use of humor that normalizes falsehood, remembering that our speech should “always be gracious” (Colossians 4:6).
- Boldly advocate for the marginalized and oppressed, emulating Christ’s love for the least of these.
- Courageously interrupt hate speech, standing firm in the knowledge that all are created in God’s image.
- Amplify voices of truth.
“Emboldened by the Holy Spirit, may we resist deception and lift up the truth that all members of humanity are created in the image of God.”
As a small way for us to, as the bishops say, “recommit ourselves to speaking the truth and pointing to the one who is truth,” we will be using different creeds in the coming weeks.
The one we will say in a few moments reminds us that God created a world without borders or nations.
It reminds us that the infant Jesus’ parents were forced to flee with him to Egypt for safety, becoming refugees, aliens in a strange land.
It reminds us that the Holy Spirit speaks all languages, lives in all countries, and reunites people of every race and creed.
And finally, it reminds us all to work for the coming of the Kingdom of God “where our passport is love, the image of God in all of us is honored, and all nations, tribes, creeds, and people are reconciled, a place where we will all be no longer strangers or guests, but lambs gathered safely home in the arms of the Good Shepherd.”
In the coming weeks the future of our democracy and the integrity of our faith will be tested as never before. May we have the courage to pass the test, so that future generations will not have to ask where the church was in this time of trial.
Amen