Page 8 - Presbyterian Connection

8 SUMMER 2023
The Present Crisis
presbyterian.ca
By the Rev. Philip Lee, retired minister living in Fredericton, N.B.
Two retired Presbyterian ministers got together on a writing project. One had spent most of his life as a pastoral minister, the other as a professor of theology. They were classmates and old friends. It oc- curred to them that while every generation has its own crises to contend with, our own generation has a critical one: we are facing a dangerous political turn toward authoritarianism resembling, in many ways, the disastrous rise of Fascism in Europe during the 1930s. This movement, taking place here in North America, is being enthusiastically supported by millions of Evangelical Prot- estants. Without their passionate support, this calamity would not be taking place.
In response to the Christian churches’ complicity in the rise of the Nazi regime in the 1930s, Di- etrich Bonhoeffer declared: “Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. God will not hold us guilt- less.” In our current situation, mainline churches have been, for the most part, reluctant to speak or to act on these “misrepresen- tations” if not perversions of the faith.
So, in light of this develop- ment, and a vision of our call- ing, Philip J. Lee of Fredericton, N.B., and Alexander J. McKelway of Irvington, Virginia, have been sending out a blog entitled, “The Present Crisis.” The blog has had 31 issues, and the following is an example, number XXIV.
To subscribe, visit medium. com/@pjlee_39329 and click “Follow.”
“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and
you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8: 31–32).
In these familiar words, Jesus promises his disciples that follow- ing his teachings will keep them in the realm of truth, of reality. Truth/ reality is the opposite of lies, of un- reality. And while the consequenc- es of truth/reality are freedom—a free spirit, a free community—the consequences of lies are bondage, bondage of the person and bond- age of the community.
The source of our present cri- sis is the willful promotion of lies, the denial of reality. One of the two political parties in the United Sates, in fact the party whose first elected President was
Abraham Lincoln, is sponsor- ing the lie that the 2020 federal election was stolen. Its leader, ex-President Trump, recently said at a large rally that he, Donald J. Trump, had not only won the elec- tion, but he had won it by a land- slide in all 50 states. In reality, of course, President Biden won the Electoral College vote 306 to 232 and the popular vote by over 7 million. However, the Republican audience at the rally responded to Trump’s preposterous untruth with roars of approval.
If that were not alarming enough, how do we deal with the fact that the great majority of folk at the rally, and of Republicans in general, are professing Christians?
The core of the party are right- wing Evangelicals and right-wing Roman Catholics. Without the pas- sionate suppor t of those claiming to be disciples of Jesus, there would be no MAGA movement.
Hannah Arendt, in her monu- mental work, The Origins of To- talitarianism (1950), helps us understand what is happening. Arendt tells us that lies are nec- essary for the overcoming of de- mocracy and its replacement with autocratic rule. She says that for this transition to take place it is necessary to create “a fictitious world through consistent lying.”
Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the rise of totalitarianism in the 1930s is frightfully prophetic of our pre-
sent crisis. She points out that “the chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an error.” The parallel with Donald J. Trump is obvious. While no rational human being can claim to be flawless, Trump has never admitted a weak- ness or error, despite his numer- ous moral and mental failures.
Arendt also draws attention to another component in the cultiva- tion of a fictitious world based on consistent lying: “a mixture of gul- libility and cynicism is prevalent in all ranks of totalitarian move- ments, and the higher the rank the more cynicism weighs down gullibility. The essential conviction shared by all ranks, from fellow travellers to leader, is that politics is a game of cheating and that the first commandment, ‘the (leader) is always right,’ is as necessary for the purposes of world politics, i.e., world-wide cheating, as the rules of military discipline are for the purposes of war.”
Could there be a better descrip- tion of the present Republican Party? Certainly, the higher ranks of the party—the senators, mem- bers of congress, various state officials—do not for a minute be- lieve that the 2020 election was stolen, much less that Trump won by a landslide, but how many of them have broken ranks and spoken out for the democratic process? Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are outstanding excep- tions, and both have been virtu- ally expelled from the party.
Jesus promised that the truth, a correlation with the reality of God and of God’s creation, would make us free. The opposite—the lie, a disconnect with the reality of God and God’s creation—will de- liver us into bondage. That choice looms.
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