Serious Concerns about the Short-term Future of USAmerica

A week has now passed since the 47^th president’s first full day in office, and it is hard to express adequately how calamitous these days since his inauguration have been for the country—and the world. Consider the following list of Trump’s troubling decisions and two additional serious concerns. 

Here are six of the worst changes begun by Trump’s “executive orders” and shifts in government policies that have occurred since January 20. (A whole article could easily be written about each of these.)

* Changes from prosecuting the January 6, 2021, wrongdoers to pardoning them and persisting in promotion of the “big lie” regarding the 2020 election.

* Changes from policies to combat climate change and ameliorate the growing ecological crisis to adopting those that will accelerate harmful global warming.

* Changes from accepting asylum seekers and other immigrants seeking to protect their lives and well-being to rejecting even those currently in the U.S.

* Changes from promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion of all citizens so there can be social justice for all to fostering dominance by White males.

* Changes from honoring past treaties with Panama to threatening to use force if necessary to gain control over the Panama Canal again.

* Changes from a government of, by, and for all the people of the country to one definitely tilted to a government of, by, and for billionaires.*¹

The “idolatry” surrounding President Trump is one of my main concerns. In his inaugural speech, which even prominent conservative columnist George Will said was one of the worst in U.S. history, the 47^th POTUS said he was spared by God from the assassin’s bullet in order to make America great again.

What hubris for the President to claim that God saved him on the same day the nation was honoring MLKing Jr., who was killed by an assassin! He also referred to “our God,” whom he seems to think wants the U.S. to be greater even though that would be detrimental to most of the rest of the world.

This “idolatry” is fostered by conservative evangelical Christians such as Franklin Graham, who in one of the inaugural prayers intoned, “Father, when Donald Trump’s enemies thought he was down and out, You and You alone saved his life and raised him up with strength and power by Your mighty hand.”

Trump seems to gloat at the fact that many conservative Christians consider him as the “savior” of a failed nation, and in his inaugural speech he referred to January 20 as “Liberation Day.”

Trump’s alignment with Christian nationalists is also a troubling concern. Two of his nominees for prominent offices are outspoken in this regard.

Russell Vought is Trump’s choice to be director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought, who was highly involved in the production of Project 2025, has called Trump “God’s gift” to America who was elected to restore the nation’s Christian calling “as a nation under God.”*²

Pete Hegseth is another highly questionable Trump appointee. Last Friday in a tie Senate vote that was broken by VP Vance, Hegseth was approved as the new U.S. Secretary of Defense, and he assumed that office on January 25.

Six weeks before the inaugural address on Jan. 20, the New York Times posted an article titled “Pete Hegseth and His ‘Battle Cry’ for a New Christian Crusade” (see here). That seems to have been more than just a figure of speech.

In his 2020 book American Crusade, Hegseth wrote, “We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must.” In that book, he also suggests the possibility of future violence: “Our American Crusade is not about literal swords, and our fight is not with guns. Yet.”

There are many reasons why Hegseth is unfit for a seat in the President’s cabinet. But I agree with Robert P. Jones, who objected primarily to “his support for Christian nationalism, “a set of beliefs that undermine the bedrock principles of a racially and religiously pluralistic democracy.”*³

Jones and I agree that there should be peace and justice for all USAmericans.

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*¹ At the end of his inaugural address, Trump mentioned the “golden age” of America that has “just begun.” Trump’s love for gold is well known, but it needs to be noted that in nearly all cultures, gold represents luxury and wealth as well as greed and excess. So, it is no surprise that most of Trump’s top appointees are billionaires, which reminds me of the old twist of the meaning of the “golden rule”: those who have the gold make the rules.

*² See this January 7 post by Baptist News Global is titled “Russell Vought: The gung-ho Christian nationalist who helps Trump be Trump.”

*³ Jones (b. 1968) is the founder and president of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). Here is a link to Jones’s instructive January 16 article about Hegseth.

Note: Even though quite long, I recommend reading this GoodFaithMedia January 27 post titled Pete Hegseth: Religious Extremism in a Brooks Brothers Suit by Jemar Tisby, PhD, Professor of History at Simmons College of Kentucky, a faith-based HBCU. 

Celebrating 500 Years of Anabaptism

“The Martyrdom of Felix Manz” was the title of a blog post I made in January 2013. In that post, I noted that on January 21, 1525, “a group of people met in the house where Felix lived with his mother, and they formed a new faith fellowship” based on baptism after an open confession of faith in Jesus.

Today and in the weeks/months ahead, the 500^th anniversary of that January 21^st gathering is being widely celebrated by Anabaptists around the world. 

Anabaptist World Inc. is a “journalistic ministry serving the global Anabaptist movement.” Danielle Klotz, the Executive Director of that ministry, calls this month’s edition of that magazine a “special issue for a big milestone.” And indeed, a 500^th anniversary is a big milestone.*¹  

The combined membership of all Anabaptist churches comprises a very small percentage of Christians worldwide. According to the centerfold of the publication just mentioned, the “approximate number of baptized Anabaptist church members around the world is 2.13 million.”

Only 22 countries have more than 10,000 Anabaptist church members, and surprisingly, Ethiopia is the country with the most, nearly 515,000. The U.S. is next, with 456,000. It can be argued, though, that Anabaptists have had influence through the centuries that outstrip their relatively small membership.

Anabaptists are “the most radical reformers” in Protestant Christianity. The quoted words are the title of a major article in the above-mentioned magazine. The author, Anabaptist scholar Valerie G. Rempel, avers, “Appealing to scripture alone, Anabaptists broke with tradition to follow Jesus literally.”

The Protestant Reformation began in 1517 with the ideas and activities of Martin Luther in Germany. In 1518, soon after becoming the priest of Grossmünster, the prestigious church in Zürich (Switzerland), Ulrich Zwingli began a similar reformation of the Roman Catholic Church there.

Both of those reformation movements, however, preserved the basic rituals of the Catholic Church. The sacrament of infant baptism was deemed especially important. But the Jesus-followers who met in sight of Grossmünster Church on 1/21/1525 could find no biblical support for such baptism.

Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel were young men who agreed with Zwingli’s reformation activities, but they thought his work was too slow. So, rejecting infant baptism (which they denied as being true baptism), the small group gathered in Manz’s home performed and accepted “believer’s baptism.”

Their “radical” reformation put them at odds with both the religious and civic leaders in Zürich —and they were soon considered heretics by both the church and the state. Manz was executed by drowning on January 5, 1527, and in the following years, thousands of Anabaptists were imprisoned or killed.^*2

From the beginning the Anabaptists emphasized discipleship. They believed that following Jesus meant living according to his teachings as found in the Gospels.*³ Jesus’ command, “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:43) was taken literally. To kill in the name of Jesus was unthinkable.

There are many differences among Anabaptists today. Progressive Mennonite churches, such as the one I am a member of, are far different from the various conservative Mennonite groups and the Amish. But from the beginning until the present, pacifism has been a core belief of all types of Anabaptists.

As I wrote in a blog post in 2012 (see here), “I decided while still in high school that pacifism is the position I should espouse because of being a follower of Christ.” So, I was long a “closet Anabaptist” until joining Rainbow Mennonite Church in July 2012.

The Southern Baptist Convention (that I was closely related to for nearly 50 years) as well as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (that I was later a part of for over 10 years) agree with the Anabaptists on believer’s baptism, and until SBC’s swing toward fundamentalism, on the separation of church and state.

But neither of those Baptist groups endorses pacifism, and the former especially has traditionally emphasized the New Testament writings of the Apostle Paul (and the “Roman road”) even more than the four Gospels. They tended to proclaim the Gospel about Jesus more than the message of Jesus.

Currently, 500 years after its beginning, the Anabaptist understanding of the Christian faith is still badly needed—and maybe more so in the U.S. now than ever because of the growing emphasis on Christian nationalism in this country.  

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*¹ Dawn Araujo-Hawkins is one of the nine members of Anabaptist World’s Board of Directors. She is a member of Rainbow Mennonite Church, where June and I are also members.

*² The name “Anabaptist,” meaning “re-baptizer,” was initially used in derision of the first participants in the “radical reformation” which began in 1525. For more detailed information (and a couple of pictures) about the beginning of Anabaptism, I highly recommend “Five Centuries of the Radical Reformation” (see here), the Jan. 16 Substack post by Thinking Friend Brian Kaylor.

Also, John Longhurst, an Anabaptist journalist who since 2003 has been the faith page columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press (the oldest newspaper in Western Canada), is the author of the informative Jan. 18 column, “2025 marks the 500th anniversary of Anabaptism.”

*³ Although Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran, his best-known book, known in English translation as The Cost of Discipleship, was first published in German (1n 1937) under the title Nachfolge, which literally means “following.” Since its publication in English translation in 1948, it has been highly appraised by Anabaptists as well as by many in other Christian denominations.

 

 

Are There Things God Can’t Do?

Thanks to my good friend Fred Herren, last year I became acquainted with theologian Thomas Jay Oord. God Can’t (2019) is the only one of his many books that I have read in its entirety, and initially I was “put off” by the book’s title. After reading it, though, I mainly agreed with Oord’s main points. 

Thomas Jay Oord was long a pastor and theologian in the Church of the Nazarene. Born and raised in Washington state, Oord (b. 1965) graduated from Northwest Nazarene College (now University, NNU) in Idaho in 1988.

After serving as a pastor of a Nazarene church for several years in Washington state, he enrolled in Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City, graduating with a Master of Divinity. While in seminary, he was a pastor in nearby Lenexa, Kansas.

After earning his Ph.D. degree at Claremont Graduate University in California, he taught theology at Eastern Nazarene College in Massachusetts and then for sixteen years taught at his alma mater (NNU). Since 2020, Oord has been directing doctoral programs of the online Northwind Theological Seminary.*¹

God Can’t, Oord’s thought-provoking book, is about theodicy, the attempt to resolve the problem of evil that arises when all power and all goodness are simultaneously ascribed to God. If God can prevent all evil, why doesn’t a loving God do that? That is a basic problem for traditional theology.

Oord explains his reason for writing God Can’t: “I wrote this book for victims of evil, survivors, and those who endure senseless suffering. I wrote it for the wounded and broken who have trouble believing in God, are confused, or have given up faith altogether” (3).

His book, though, is also of considerable help for all of us who know people who have trouble believing in God's existence because of the suffering in their own lives or that which they see starkly in the world around them.

Oord insists that “God loves us all, all the time.” He goes on to assert, “Every idea I advocate in this book assumes God is loving” (11-12). This leads him to reject belief in God’s omnipotence and to emphasize what he terms God’s amipotence.*²

According to Oord, “God’s nature is uncontrolling love.” Thus, “God’s love is inherently uncontrolling” (26). That is why God “can’t prevent evil singlehandedly. God’s love governs what God can do” (27). So, here is Oord’s “Belief #1”: “God Can’t Prevent Evil Singlehandedly” (44).*³

How could God be considered all-loving if God could unilaterally prevent evil but didn’t do so? By substituting amipotence for omnipotence, though, Oord concludes, “I can whole-heartedly adore my uncontrolling Creator, knowing God neither causes nor allows the evil I’ve experienced or know” (183).

And then he leaves these final words: “The Lover of the Universe empowers and inspires us to live lives of love. Let’s cooperate with this uncontrolling God of love!” (186).

Much more needs to be said about Oord’s challenging book, but I will mention just one more important thing I realized afresh from reading it. Much of what Christians have said about prayer is based on an erroneous view of God. So often God is asked to do what an uncontrolling God cannot do.

Back in August 2016, I wrote about this in connection with reports that Jimmy Carter was “cancer free” after being diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 2015. I encourage you to (re-)read that post (here).

I realize more fully now that it is simply “wrong” to pray for God to heal anyone or to perform other “miraculous” deeds. Yes, I believe in prayer, but not prayers that seek to change God or to “beg” God to do things that God could not do.

So, yes, given the loving, noncontrolling nature of God, there are some/many things God can’t do. But rather than that decreasing our devotion to God, such realization should cause our faith in God to deepen and to strengthen our determination to work with God for the betterment of the world around us.

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*¹ For more detailed information about Oord, see his website at https://ThomasJayOord.com. That site includes this recent news: “In 2024, Oord was taken to trial in the Church of the Nazarene for being queer affirming. The verdict was the removal of his ministerial license and membership in the denomination.” Last August, my friend Brian Kaylor interviewed Oord about his expulsion from the Church of the Nazarene. You can  hear that interview here.  

*² In April 2023, Oord published a new book under the title The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence. He coined the latter word, which means all-loving, to use in place of the former word, which means all-powerful. Christian theology has often talked about God as being omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. Those are not biblical terms, however, and Oord firmly believes that the latter term should be replaced by his new term, amipotence.

*³ Oord’s other basic beliefs articulated in this book: #2, “God feels our pain”; #3, “God works to heal”; #4, “God squeezes good from bad”; and #5, “God needs our cooperation.”

Note: Thinking Friend Anton Jacobs reminded me that Rabbi Harold S. Kushner’s bestselling book When Bad Things Happen to Good People (1991) presents ideas quite similar to Oord’s. I read Kushner’s book back in the 1990s but didn’t remember that similarity while reading Oord, who does not mention Kushner.