Jesus said to the Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, you are truly My disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
(John 8:31-32)

‘America – the land of the free.’ So runs one of the most famous identity taglines in modern history. But is it true? Many are the Americans who have believed in Jesus. And many are those who continue in His word and who are shining examples of His disciples, living in freedom and truth. But these iconic verses remind us that the opposite of truth is not just a string of lies lies, but spiritual bondage and captivity – and America, like so many other nations, including our own, has not released freedom into the world in the way they would have wished.

America will celebrate 250 years of independence in a few weeks time, but its history is far older than that. And whilst it has brought spiritual life to many, much of its history has also been needlessly unholy and bloodthirsty. However much it prides itself on its freedoms, American history tells another story – and it continues to this day.

Christ is teaching here not that truth is glossy and showy, or designed to rabble-rouse, but that freedom and truth are indivisible.

But those who prefer to believe and put their trust in lies (2 Thess. 2:9-12) are not content just to resort to the odd convenient lie here and there but seek rather to undermine the very existence of the truth. They can be said to be succeeding when people give up seeking truth for themselves and end up just believing whatever the ‘strong man’ declares the ‘truth’ to be.’

An identity rooted in reality?

Depending on the metrics you use, America’s ranking on global “freedom indexes” (like those from the Cato Institute or Freedom House) usually places it in the top 15 or 20, trailing a long way behind countries such as New Zealand, Switzerland, or the Scandinavian countries, which tend to score higher on social mobility, safety, and personal autonomy.

But whilst America does not have a monopoly on freedom, its obsession with the concept is unique. It is a nation defined by ongoing, messy arguments over what freedom actually means – and who gets to have it.

The old wounds of enslavement

It has been good over the years to draw on John Dawson’s excellent book ‘Healing America’s Wounds,’ as a prayer resource, but there is still institutional ugliness aplenty – including from household names who continue to be held in high esteem in many quarters. But who were guilty of crimes on a grand scale that many of us may be unaware of. Think Christopher Columbus and Junipero Serra, the 17th century founder of missions to California for instance.

Let your heart be stirred by this challenge George Monbiot brings us in ‘The Holocaust we will not see,’ a short chapter from his book ‘How we got into this mess.’ It is disturbingly eye-opening.

The greatest acts of genocide in history scarcely ruffle our collective conscience. . . . The people of the nations responsible [for the genocides in America] – Spain, Britain, the US and others – will tolerate no comparisons, but the final solutions pursued in the Americas were far more successful [than those of the Nazi regime].

In 1492, some 100m native peoples lived in the Americas. By the end of the 19th Century almost all of them had been exterminated. Many died as a result of disease. But the mass extinction was also engineered.

. . . this is a story no one wants to hear, because of the challenge it presents to the way we choose to see ourselves. Europe was massively enriched by the genocides in the Americas; the American nations were founded on them.

This chapter ought to be prescribed reading in American schools and colleges. It makes for profoundly disturbing reading.

And if that were not enough of a challenge, may I point you also to this article from Mitch Johnson, Why Do People Believe Anything He Says?, which discusses the fact that, when a fact threatens your group identity, your brain treats that fact as a physical threat. You do not weigh it. You filter it.

What threatens your own sense of identity? And what do you do about it? What would the Lord say to you?

We grieve before You Father, both for the terrible things that have been done, of which but a tiny selection are featured in Monbiot’s chapter, but also for the spirit behind them, which persists to this day – especially in terms of the white supremacist and racist actions that Trump, and so many of his ilk, have stirred up.

New wounds: No freedom of speech for federal workers

Trump is currently wanting Federal workers (that is, anyone who draws a Federal salary) to sign NDAs. Former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger makes it clear that this isn’t about protecting national security, it’s about protecting Donald Trump, making it explicit that if you cross him, there will be a hefty price to pay. Under this regime, it is those who stand up for truth and the law who pay the price, whilst those who break it are rewarded. This is what authoritarianism and its accompanying corruption looks like on the grand scale.

No freedom for those who speak out against him

Trump warned before his re-election that he would devote his presidency to gaining retribution over those who opposed him in the past, and who dared to speak against him. Sadly, he has been only faithful to his word.

Trump has ‘deselected’ senators such as Bill Cassidy, who dared to challenge him for example over such things as the redistricting, and Thomas Massie, who pushed hard to release the Epstein files – and the long-term and highly-respected senator in Texas, who had faithfully voted for Trump in 99% of cases, but who Trump branded as intensely disloyal for that 1%! These are the extremes to which Trump has taken the nation as he throws one loyalist after another under a bus, to say nothing of his attacks against his opponents.

Lord, we cry too You to have mercy on all who fall foul of the system in America today, and who find themselves in the nation’s grim network of internment camps. We cry to You for the release of those who should not be there, for a great improvement in living conditions, and for You to be at work in eternal ways in the midst of such suffering.

No freedom for the poor

While America boasts multitudes of billionaires, it offers a much weaker social safety net than other developed nations. The concept of “freedom” must feel very alien to the increasing number of people trapped in systemic poverty, and awash in medical debt.

How will these wounds shape America’s identity? Can it truly be a godly nation?

Writing before Trump was returned to power in 2024, Jim Wallis writes of ‘the way Trump talks about immigrants as “animals and “vermin” who will “poison the bloodstream of America.” That’s not found in the Bible, but the opposite: to welcome the stranger, rather than creating huge internment and deportation camps immigrants, many of whom have been here for decades and most of their lives. And where in the Bible does it say to favour the rich and ignore the poor, as the huge tax cuts for the wealthiest he pledges to push for should he return to the White House. And the God of the Bible is a God of justice, not the revenge and “retribution” that Trump is promising. Pardoning, [thank goodness that his efforts to financially reward the January 6th rioters look as though they have been successfully opposed!] his most violent supporters and punishing his adversaries is again exactly the opposite of what the Bible teaches.’ See this link.

Figures from the past: Junipero Serra

For those who would like more detail, to explore one of the people mentioned here in more detail, in the time I spent Majorca, the impression I was left with was that this son of the island, Junipero Serra, was a godly man intent on protecting the indigenous population from the worst excesses of the conquering imperial Spanish army.

The reality is a great deal more ambiguous, as this article expounds. Serra’s missions have, in fact, often been compared with the very worst kind of internment camps, (such a hot topic in America to this day!) more closely associated with concentration camps than conventional missions – places of forced labour, brutal punishments, below starvation rations and ‘charnel houses’ where people died in their droves from European-brought infections, against which the indigenous people had no immunity.

How shall believers respond?

Trump’s one-time staunchest ally Marjorie Taylor Green says, “Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness.” Adam Kinzinger, who is an outspoken, practicing Christian, certainly believes that Christians can remain true to their faith whilst opposing leaders whose behaviour fundamentally violates the teachings of Jesus.

Saints and Presidents

What kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you eagerly wait and look forward to the day of God and speed its coming, . . . being on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position, but rather grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
(2 Pet. 3:11, 17-18)

Just think for a moment of how amazing it is when people respond to the call of God, and turn their back on the ways of the world.

The best example we can have is a godly model, but sometimes the next best thing is to have a bad example that makes us want to shy away from it in order to pursue a better, richer, purer way, and to live in an entirely different spirit.

I love to study the lives of the saints. In days gone by, it was a great disadvantage not to live in a university or seminary town to have access to the great spiritual literature of the centuries: what a privilege and what an inspiration that we can discover so much online. The lives of the saints, Catholic and Protestant alike have to share in terms of helping us to aspire to a more Spirit-fire and Spirit-filled Christ-like identity. May we make the effort to make the most of these amazing resources!

Praise God that America has long been a land awash with very genuine saints. You can readily learn all about them online; but what is happening now in the higher echelons of power in America introduces us to an entirely different breed of people.

I thought you might be interested, therefore, to take a detour back in time to explore some of America’s worst presidents. Far from coincidentally, many of them turn out to be remarkably Trump-like in outlook, loutish behaviour and dubious morality.

Andrew Johnson

One of the most unlovable characters in U.S. presidential history,” Andrew Johnson was sworn into office as Vice President in a hung-over condition, which caused him to deliver a rambling speech, that Abraham Lincoln watched over with sadness, immediately before he delivered his highly acclaimed Second Inaugural Address. (It is really worth reading!)

Du Bois describes Johnson as ‘a man who, despite great power and great ideas, became a puppet, played upon by mighty fingers and selfish, subtle minds; groping, self-made, unlettered and alone; drunk, not so much with liquor, as with the heady wine of sudden and accidental success.’

Donald Trump bears comparison, for example, with Andrew Johnson, (1865-69) the 17th U.S. president, who took over following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Both were impeached U.S. presidents, and both exuded combative anti-establishment populist rhetoric. Both were intent on attacking political opponents and the media, calling for the imprisonment of their political rivals. Both promoted intense partisan divisions, and presided over deeply polarized eras, with Johnson proclaiming himself the champion over a deeply corrupt establishment.

A slave owner himself, Johnson shared Jackson’s prejudices against blacks, and set out to preventing the ‘Africanization’ of the country at all costs, making white supremacy the overriding characteristic of his presidency. He is defined by his vigorous opposition of ‘Reconstructionism’ – which was the attempt to develop an interracial democracy in the following the end of slavery. A fiercely racist man of vindictive temper, (he is commonly listed as one of America’s five worst presidents) he was determined to rule as far as possible without reference to Congress.

Vetoing all federal laws intended to protect former slaves from racial terror and from the Black Codes passed in the old Confederate states, African-Americans were reduced to a state of semi-servitude during his presidency.

Andrew Johnson’s counterargument to black empowerment was to assume a feigned victimhood. As he told one group of visitors: “‘I might say, however, that practically, so far as my connection with slaves has gone, I have been their slave instead of their being mine.” Similarly, in March 1869, shortly after the end of his term in the White House, when a newspaperman from Cincinnati conducted an interview with the ex-president at his home in Greeneville and asked about slavery, Johnson’s reply was rich in me, my, and I statements, as was typical for him: ‘The fact is’ [he laughed] I was always more of a slave than any I owned.’

How typical such victim-role playing this is of Trump’s egotistical playbook. (‘No one has ever suffered like I have’)!

Many of like ilk succeeded Johnson, including Presidential candidate Winfield Scott Hancock, who was a standard-bearer for the (at-that-time fiercely racist) Democratic Party in 1880. Hancock too sought to roll back Reconstruction, and to return the South to white supremacy, and to deny civil rights to Black Americans.

President Jackson

David (Barratt) remembers seeing a powerful openair drama of the deportation of the Cherokees, which President Andrew Jackson, Donald Trump’s particular hero, ordered from their ancestral territory in North Carolina. Many would say that Jackson is the president most akin to Donald Trump. Both were anti-Washington elite presidents who pursued populist policies. But there were key differences as this article in The Conversation highlights.

President Trump

All through his first presidency, Trump was champing at the bit to be free from all constraints. It would have required quite exceptional discipline and self-control to cope with the sort of power he now wields – and these are emphatically not his strong points. Mercifully at least some of the boundaries have withstood his thrashing around – but all too many others have caved in.
He is generally far less liked and trusted in Western Europe than in America, whether amongst secular or religious people, because he is seen as a divisive and highly unpredictable person and partner.

TRUMP AND TRUTH

Ever the supreme reality TV star and showman, Donald Trump is gifted with an extraordinary ability to sound sincere whilst promoting the utterly insincere, thereby blurring all boundaries between truth and unreality whilst all the time stirring up and playing on people’s deepest emotions.

We know that Donald Trump told more lies during his four years in the White House (30,573 by common accord!) than any other president. At a much deeper level, however, Trump has spent his life undermining even the idea of the truth – and now he is trying to dilute the nation’s understanding and comprehension of the truth: falsehoods that will lead only to bondage and ‘captivity.’

TRUMP AND RACISIM
How the Lord hates racist attitudes! The contrast between Donald Trump and Jimmy Carter, who went to be with the Lord recently at the age of 100 could hardly be greater. Carter took over as Governor of Georgia from a deeply racist man, and modelled something entirely different. The fruit he has borne in decades of faithful service for the Lord and humankind since he left the White House were exemplary.

But what else but genocide and the use of terror as a weapon was Trump calling for when he threatened that a whole civilisation would die in one night in Iran? This rhetoric drew widespread condemnation from international human rights organisations, legal scholars, and political leaders, who characterised his statements as threats of war crimes and potential genocide.

TRUMP AND THE CALL TO PRAYER

Oddly enough it is not so much more prayer that President Trump needs – there must be millions supporting him already – not least through the ‘America prays’ campaign – it is steering clear of the ra-ra-ra mentality that carries a grave risks of idolatry in its eulogising of Trump

For its part, the Catholic Church is not following the White House lead on the call to pray, but has come up with “A Path Toward Justice:” A National Prayer Service honouring the many journeys that shaped America.” This centres on themes of migration, displacement, and social justice, and offers a significantly different tone and focus from the administration’s initiative.

Over belief in American exceptionalism has taken large parts of the evangelical movement off course. What is needed most is to pray for Trump to humble himself before the Lord and to seek with all his heart to day to day Your will be done, not mine.

‘How the world sees it’ – a poem to inspire prayer

May I suggest we take this powerful poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox and turn some of the points in it into prayer?

How the World Sees It
To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men. The human race
Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised
Against injustice, ignorance, and lust,
The inquisition yet would serve the law,
And guillotines decide our least disputes.
The few who dare, must speak and speak again
To right the wrongs of many. Speech, thank God,
No vested power in this great day and land
Can gag or throttle. Press and voice may cry
Loud disapproval of existing ills;
May criticise oppression and condemn
The lawlessness of wealth-protecting laws
That let the children and child bearers toil
To purchase ease for idle millionaires.
Therefore I do protest against the boast
Of independence in this mighty land.
Call no chain strong, which holds one rusted link.
Call no land free, that holds one fettered slave.
Until the manacled slim wrists of babes
Are loosed to toss in childish sport and glee,
Until the mother bears no burden, save
The precious one beneath her heart, until
God’s soil is rescued from the clutch of greed
And given back to labor, let no man
Call this the land of freedom.

A Prayer for America

Lord, we grieve not only for the historic racist abuse, but also for the alarming tendencies we see right across the present administration. We pray that the clock be not turned right back. Lord, open eyes to see past the man of Mar-a-Lago, to Jesus of Nazareth. Turn hearts from worldly wisdom and rules to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. (Lk. 1:17)

May there be many who determine to declare and worship the God who is great over the nations rather than to devote themselves to trying to make America great again. For it is certainly not by looking inward and adopting historic pro-white nationalist and racist stances, but by being willing to pour ourselves out that You bless.

Thank You, Lord, for so many generous-hearted Spirit-filled missionaries who have set out from America for love of Jesus and to expand His Kingdom. May that flow of Holy Spirit inspired generosity not cease at this time when, at the governmental level, the US administration is withdrawing from one international initiative and body after another, to the concern and loss of many, and when people are being taught by example to regard certain nations as ‘bad’, with no thought for how the Lord feels about the people in those places, or concern for the work of His Kingdom in those countries.

Expand Your work despite the pressure, Lord, we pray – but deliver many from the trap of trusting so much in American ‘exceptionalism,’ rather than in rejoicing in being part of Your worldwide work.

Let’s pray for America’s future presidents

It is never too early to be praying over the horizon. Vance is currently the front-runner to succeed Trump. I watched him leading a fifty-minute White House press briefing the other last night. He is infinitely more articulate and intelligent that Trump, and adept and plausible and quick-thinking than Trump. He had, of course, a vigorous robust defence to argue as to why this Anti-weaponisation bill is a good thing, (now mercifully jettisoned) and skilfully deflected challenging questions to put the questionnaire in a bad light. Given that he also presents himself as a committed Christian, this is likely to ensure him tens of millions of votes – and, perhaps, a certain immunity from in depth further questioning.

But I remember what I saw in an interview he gave when he declared that he would be prepared to say absolutely anything in order to come to power. In other words, that truth meant less than nothing to him.

The November elections

The closer Trump comes to looking like he will lose the mid-term elections in November the more likely he is to resort to extreme measures, for he greatly fears the consequences of no longer controlling Congress. He will obviously be hoping that his major redistricting schemes will garner him enough votes to win by gerrymandering – and also by ‘the measures he has taken to make it harder for black voters to even get to the polls’. (Try looking up that phrase online for details. It will make for anything but pleasant reading but these are hugely serious issues.)

There is also a still greater danger lurking – and that is of Trump invoking rarely used emergency powers through the Insurrection Act and other last-ditch decrees that would effectively give him the powers of a dictator. May those around him prove strong enough to resist him now – and may the Lord yet bless America with much true freedom.

Photo by Daniel Eledut on Unsplash