Trump & Making a Prisoner of Love

'Go back to where you came from!' - Its hard to credit that a sitting US President would speak such hateful words, not just once but repeatedly to four female politicians, all American citizens and all but one born on US soil. It is reasonable to say that anyone who denies the explicit racism in this statement is either deluded or dishonest. It is hateful language and sadly hate appears to have become the default mode of communication for this extraordinary US presidency.

Regrettably Trump's America is not the only place in the World today where hate is all too visible. Look at the tragedy that is the Middle East and the ongoing calamitous wars and the consistent and routine ill-treatment of the vulnerable and again hate is in the driving seat.

Closer to home and while thankfully the recent marching season in Northern Ireland has not been as violent or as disruptive as recent years the mutual hatred manifest in sectarianism is alive and well and there are still some on both sides of this divided community who would rejoice at the painful death of one of the other tribe.

And lest we get complacent here in the Republic, according to a report issued by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties last year, 'Ireland has one of the highest rates of hate crime against people of African background and transgender people in the EU'. That is surely cause for shame.

Hate is thriving and somehow we have to find a way to defeat it. Martin Luther King had a lot to say about engaging with hate but it always came down to Love. These are among his famous remarks on Love and he did walk the talk.  'We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.',  'Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that' & 'Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.'

These are familiar words and will resonate especially with those who have grown up in various faith traditions (not alone Christianity) which speak of the power and centrality of Love. Indeed they are not unfamiliar to secular humanists either - Love is almost universally recognised as a necessary part of that which makes us whole and truly human. Without Love we are as St Paul so famously observed 'a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal'.

We can all, no matter what faith or tradition, contribute to the displacement of hate in this world. Speaking as I do from the Anglican Christian tradition I follow one in Jesus whose whole earthly life was a demonstration of pure Love, and the broadest possible understanding of that Love whereby he defined it in terms of the equivalence of love of neighbour for love of self.

When he was asked to clarify 'who is my neighbour' Jesus responded with the Parable of the Good Samaritan which declared a love without limits! This Samaritan, a traditional enemy of the Jews demonstrates love of the stranger and love of the enemy, an indiscriminate love which doesn't look for qualification or justification. This man who he saved was half dead, stripped naked, and there is no mention of him speaking so there was no way for the Samaritan to know who or what he was beyond the fact that he was a fellow human being and that alone was enough to provoke his loving response.  This is a far cry from the unashamedly racist sentiments of Donald Trump which continue to enjoy the uncritical support of the vast majority so called 'Evangelical Christians' in the US.

However its not just Trump's Christian supporters that need to ask questions of themselves, For any of us who are of a religious disposition this parable brings little comfort for it is the religious and pious, the priest and the Levite who pass by on the other side and leave this man for dead. Why? Because they are not driven by what is loving but rather by what is right according to the law, in this case most probably a concern for ritual purity which would be damaged by association with blood or a potentially dead body.

But times have changed - we have moved on and the Church of today will as Jesus did always do the loving thing.

If only! The greatest tragedy of contemporary Christianity (with few exceptions) is that unlike Jesus we do not preach or live a wide and extravagant love as he did - we do not preach or live  a love that challenges convention and the organised religion of the day - we preach and live a love that upholds the Status Quo - a love that is qualified and doctrinally circumscribed, a love which is rooted in the desire to preserve the purity of the institution. We as Church are the priest and the Levite in the parable. This is nowhere more evident than in the bitter division within almost every Christian church and denomination on the subject of human sexuality. Based on anachronistic interpretations of a paucity of scriptural verses we drawn boundaries around who is in and who is out, whose love is genuine and whose love is acceptable to God. Ironically we try to soften this with phrases such as 'hate the sin but not the sinner' or a declaration that we are welcoming to all, but those who do not conform to our terms soon find that there is a limit to the welcome and so a limit to our love.

What extraordinary arrogance on our part! In drawing any limits on Love we are effectively trying to limit and circumscribe God. Love is of God and is the essence of God and as such is unpredictable and beyond our control. Our attempts to do so are futile but also undermine our ability as churches to be transformative in society. Hate will triumph as long as our love is anything less than unreservedly generous and universal.

While we continue to debate who is worthy and who is not we are not just rendered ineffective but we are part of the problem. We are feeding the hate!

There are many within the churches today who complain about the marginalisation of the churches in modern Ireland. Part of this is most certainly the aftermath of the abuse scandals (which were not unique to Roman Catholicism and were a part of the legacy of the Church of Ireland too) but I believe that today a much bigger factor is the blatant hypocrisy of our churches in failing to follow the example and teaching of Jesus. Part of my work involves interacting with young people in our parish school and in Confirmation preparation and I can say I have never seen a generation with a greater sense of integrity and a passion for justice. They can smell hypocrisy a mile off and if the church is to have any future then we need to get our heads around just what unconditional Love means.

So what is my answer to Donald Trump when he says 'Go back to where you came from' - My answer must be and one which I would claim for every living person (who would wish it) on this planet - 'I will go back to the One who created me and loved me into being and nothing you can do or say can make me less beautiful or less precious in the eyes of God.'