The imminent revival, part 15 — “Black Lives Matter”

I’ve believed and said for quite some time that spiritual revival was coming. And with the recent outpouring of support for the “Black Lives Matter” movement, seven years old but renewed with the death of George Floyd last month in Minneapolis, that time may be at hand.

If that sounds crazy, consider that revival never happens in isolation or among the powerful — it often comes from the streets. And the choking death of Floyd at the hands — or more accurately, under the knee — of now-former officer Derek Chauvin, has galvanized the nation like nothing in a half-century.

Why do I say we’re ripe for revival? Well, the Christian Gospel is designed to speak to “the least of these,” not the high-and-mighty who have no need of things to change.

And this is where the “religious right” and its sympathizers and sycophants have always missed the boat. They believe that once they established themselves as the authority in this country things would turn around morally; the ideology Independent Network Charismatic teaches that it could happen should Christians climb and take over “seven mountains of culture.”

Now, some folks have denounced BLM not simply due to its support for black lives but also those in the LGBTQ community. I’m not feeling that, for the simple reason that they too have been marginalized for similar reasons — and if you really want to go there, most gays have already understood the pain of rejection and, as Philip Yancey wrote in “What’s So Amazing About Grace?”, judgment.

Even the cliché “Hate the sin but love the sinner” comes out as judgment, in large part because such folks haven’t completely dealt with their own sins, which they consider “lesser than.” Of course, in the final analysis it doesn’t work quite like that.

On top of that, Scripture calls Christians to “mourn with those who mourn.” Many of us have refused to do so, saying that we can only when the demonstrators behave properly. That misses the point because, really, in effect we’re telling people not to express their rage and, even more arrogantly, not even to feel it. The irony is that, were such victims known Christians being persecuted for their faith, we would complain that no one is supporting us. (Perhaps our refusal to stand with those who aren’t like us is the reason.)

Anyway, the folks demonstrating in the streets I now see as an invitation from the Holy Spirit to join in and pray, contend and work for justice for all of God’s creation, to “seek the welfare of the city.” If that happens, we’ll have more revival than we know what to do with.

Losing control

I first became aware of the “religious right” in 1980 while attending a megachurch in suburban Atlanta, and from the start it seemed to be focusing on defeating enemies rather than acting positively to promote religious values in public life. If you subscribe to its media, and I did for a while, you would have heard the latest outrage against “Christians,” specifically why we needed to stand up for our rights by electing folks to office so that they could send friendly judges to the various benches, the bottom line marginalizing perceived enemies. That’s probably the primary reason many evangelical Christians supported Donald Trump for president four years ago.

The religious right hasn’t been very successful on stemming what it might consider moral decay despite all the money its groups have raised over the past four decades as it is. But several things that have taken place just this year have caused me to suspect that they’ve lost control completely and thus run the risk of being marginalized in their own right.

We witnessed the worldwide spread of COVID-19 — the “coronavirus” — coupled with denial that Trump’s mismanagement of the crisis caused many more deaths in the United States than it should have; right now, a number of Trump-supporting state governors are trying to lift quarantines in their respective states to get the economy going again — and seeing a spike in positive cases as a result. That was followed with the exploding “Black Lives Matter” protests that some are even now convinced represent a media/left-wing conspiracy to divide the country (as if such division didn’t already exist). Then you had Trump’s stunt of clearing peaceful protesters in order to hold a Bible in front of a church, likely cheered by some but condemned, rightfully, by most.

But perhaps even most devastating was yesterday’s Supreme Court decision, authored by Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch, that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act did indeed protect LGBTQ individuals from employment discrimination. After all, one reason religious right groups supported Trump in the first place was in the hope that such folks would be driven into the closet to stay. (To that, evangelist Franklin Graham made an angry remark about “religious freedom.” It was more likely that he was thinking, We didn’t get what we thought we had paid for.)

The first mistake, of course, was in believing that secular conservatives were friends of the Gospel in the first place — they do what they do because they want votes, not because they share those values. But ultimately and more importantly, disappointment will be your reward when you seek power at the expense of your soul, not least because you end up losing both.

A prophecy against Donald J. Trump

Mr. President, from the time you campaigned for the White House you have acted shamefully and maliciously. You have used the powers of the presidency to bolster your “brand.” You exploited the longstanding divisions in this country for the sake of power, supported blatant racism, used derogatory names for people in both major parties who opposed you, denounced allies and consorted with foreign dictators.  All these were bad in their own right. 

But with your stunt of forcibly moving peaceful demonstrators away from the rectory of a boarded-up Episcopal church and taking a photo in front of it holding up a Bible, perhaps to signal to your “evangelical” supporters that God was on, shall we say, “your side,” you crossed a line. And because of that action, He Himself is going to take you out.

For if you ever read that book that you were holding up, you’d understand that He demands more than lip service to an ideological agenda and won’t countenance the nationalism to which you and others subscribe as congruent with Christian faith and practice. Basically, you violated the Third Commandment.

The real issue is that you refuse to humble yourself, deflecting blame for bad things even when you caused them and accepting credit for good even when you had nothing to do with them. You have always demanded to be worshiped instead of directing your heart to the only One Who is worthy of such — in essence, you’re trying to usurp His throne.

You yourself must know that we’re going through unprecedented times, what with major changes in the environment, the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic — which you originally referred to as a “Democratic hoax” — and now demands for justice and riots in the streets of major cities due to the asphyxiation death of an African-American man courtesy of a white policeman in Minneapolis.

But in the cases of the latter two, you responded by insulting state governors, insisting that those who have put their states on lockdown should open them up even though it isn’t clear that the crisis has passed, largely because you fear the electoral consequences of the stalled economy, and those that haven’t put down the unrest in their cities by calling them “weak.” That isn’t leadership; that’s arrogant bullying.

You haven’t even shown much compassion, if any at all, toward the over 100,000 Americans who have lost their lives to the coronavirus or George Floyd, the name of the man who died at the hands of that cop (who, as I write, is facing second-degree murder charges).

And that context makes your photo-op even more egregious.

Because I am not God, I will not offer a timeline as to when He will remove you from the pedestal on which you have placed yourself — quoting former president Barack Obama, that’s “above my pay grade.” But you have mocked, blasphemed and vexed Him, and He would not be true to Himself or His Word if He didn’t do so. 

One of my favorite passages in that book you held up is Micah 6:8, the New International Version of which reads: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” 

Hear this word, Mr. President: Absent true repentance, you are doomed.