“Go Tell It on the Mountain”

As Christmas Day is now less than a week away, let’s think about the Christmas song “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” That beloved song was originally an African American spiritual that was adapted into a Christmas carol by a man with the unusual surname Work. 

John Wesley Work II was long connected with the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University. That school was established in 1866 for the purpose of educating freed slaves. It was named after Clinton B. Fisk (1828~90), a Union general and a key figure in Reconstruction. In 1871, the school was facing a financial crisis, so the school choir, known as Fisk Jubilee Singers, toured the U.S., raising funds.

Graduating from Fisk University as valedictorian in 1895, John W. Work II (1871~1925) later taught at his alma mater and directed the Jubilee Singers. A book with their songs was published in 1907, and it contained the first printed appearance of “Go Tell It on the Mountain.”

It was more than 50 years later that Work’s carol was published in a major hymn book: in 1958, it was included in The Pilgrim Hymnal, issued by the United Church of Christ. And, surprisingly, the next major denominational hymnal to include it was the Southern Baptist Convention’s 1975 edition of The Baptist Hymnal.

The third stanza of “Go Tell It on the Mountain” says, "Down in a lowly manger / The humble Christ was born, / And God sent us salvation / That blessed Christmas morn." 

When the “humble Christ” was born, he was placed “in a [lowly] manger, because there was no place for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7, NRSV). A while later, an angel appeared to Joseph, telling him to “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt …. for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him” (Matthew 2:13, NIV). The Christ child was clearly poor and oppressed.

This verse of the Christmas carol also resonates with the adult Jesus’ language, which often paralleled the words of the prophets about justice for left-out and oppressed people. The reading for the Third Sunday of Advent says, “The Lord … has anointed me.  He has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted ….” (Isaiah 61:1, CEB).

Jesus cited those words from Isaiah in his “first sermon,” as recorded in Luke 4:18-19. And then when the imprisoned John the Baptist sent two of his disciples to Jesus, asking him if he was the Messiah or should he look for someone else, Jesus concluded what they should tell John with these words, “Good news is preached to the poor” (Luke 7:22).

What message are we telling on the mountain today? Is it a message about the “humble Christ” and about bringing “good news to the poor”?

In our country today for so many who are economically poor, Christmas is too often a time of financial stress as Christmas gifts are often bought with credit cards that charge high rates of interest. *¹

On the other hand, for those who are economically well off, Christmas presents usually include luxury goods in addition to (or in place of) “necessary goods.” The former term is defined as “non-essential items that signal wealth and social status.” The latter, of course, refers to the broad category of daily “necessities.”*²

One of the richest men in the world is Bernard Arnault, the chairman and CEO of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods conglomerate. Arnault (b. 1949), a Frenchman, was ranked #1 in wealth by Forbes in the spring of 2024, and Forbes now lists him (with his family) at #7. And I assume that he/they add/s significant monetary earnings during the Christmas season.

Multitudes of people celebrate Christmas; far fewer celebrate the birth of the humble Christ, whose ministry was as an itinerate messenger of God, a man with “no place to lay his head” (Luke 9:58), who was executed by the complicity of religious and political leaders. Humble Christ, indeed!

The Christmas carol in question also says, “God sent us salvation.” Of course, conservative evangelicals interpret that salvation as being the promise of eternal life in Heaven after death. But the humble Christ didn’t talk much about that. Salvation was more about being freed from unjust social structures, such as Work saw when arranging “Go Tell It on the Mountain.”*³

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*¹ AI says that if $300 is charged on a typical credit card in December, by making only minimum monthly payments, it would take until the following December to pay off the charges of $336, including the payment of 12% interest. Of course, some of us use credit cards, but pay all the charges each month, so rather than paying interest, we get from 1~3% refund for what we have charged. This is just a small way by which the “rich” get richer while the poor get poorer.

*² For example, many people now wear “sneakers” (or what we old-timers used to call tennis shoes). They could accurately be called necessary goods. But the retail price for the expensive sneakers is from $1,250–$2,000, and they would surely fall in the luxury goods category.

*³ James Baldwin’s debut novel, released in 1953, was titled Go Tell It on the Mountain, and according to Perplexity AI, Baldwin’s novel reflects the “Black hope that God’s saving act breaks into slavery, segregation, and humiliation.”

WWHS? (What Would Hannah Say?)

Hannah Arendt, the noted historian and philosopher, died 50 years ago, on December 4, 1975. Since totalitarianism was one of the main themes of her academic work, I am considering what Arendt might say about current U.S. political leaders, and especially about the Secretary of Defense.  

Hannah Arendt (c. 1951)

Hannah Arendt was born in Germany in 1906, the only child of secular Jews. She was exiled from Nazi Germany in 1933, came to the U.S. in 1941, and became a U.S. citizen ten years later. Although she did not like to be called a philosopher, she is widely considered to be one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20^th century.

Arendt analyzed the political catastrophes that occurred in the first half of the 1900s, especially totalitarianism, state violence, and the collapse of political responsibility. Her ideas remain influential because they examine the conditions that allow political evil to arise, not just the outcomes of such evil.

Of her eight published books, her most influential one is The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), which is a study of how propaganda, ideology, and mass resentment can destroy the shared world needed for democratic life. (I have previously written about her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem, in which she discussed “the banality of evil.”)*

Arendt warned that democracies can erode gradually: through defactualization, misuses of power, and the replacement of judgment by ideology. Fifty years after her death, her work remains a powerful lens for examining political actions—especially those involving state violence and the degradation of human dignity.

I am not projecting what Arendt might say to Pete Hegseth (Trump’s Secretary of Defense, whom he now calls the Secretary of War), but drawing on what she wrote in her 1951 book (mentioned above), I am suggesting how what she said then elucidates problems with what Hegseth has done and said in recent months.**

Many of Secretary Hegseth’s ideas/actions seem to align with what Arendt wrote in her book on totalitarianism. For example, “Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”

Regarding Hegseth, I am not calling him a crackpot or fool, but he seems to exemplify the kind of attitude Arendt described. It can be argued that he was elevated to his Cabinet position chiefly because of demonstrable loyalty to Trump’s ideas and opposition to his (Trump’s) enemies.​

Trump’s choice of Hegseth also fits a broader pattern of the President appointing figures whose public role is to advance a polarizing ideological position to attack critics, even when they lack the conventional qualifications for the post they hold.​

Arendt also wrote in her 1951 book, “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction … and the distinction between true and false … no longer exist.”

What Hegseth has said regarding the killing of two unarmed men clinging to the wreckage of a boat illegally struck by a U.S. missile on September 2 certainly seems to be an example of what Arendt was articulating.

Hegseth minimized/denied the documented elements of the strike. He reframed unarmed survivors as legitimate targets, and he treated legal and moral distinctions (combatants vs. shipwrecked survivors) as irrelevant or expendable. This is a deplorable stance for a Secretary of Defense/War.

What Hegseth has said and done may well lead to his removal from office. As an opponent of totalitarianism, as all Americans should be, I think if Hannah Arendt were still alive, she would say, “the sooner, the better!”

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  * My 12/5/2014 blog post was titled “The Banality of Evil.”

** I also wrote about Hegseth in my blog article posted on November 20 (see here). That was in connection with his emphasis on “the warrior ethos.” I don’t intend to be unduly hard on Hegseth, but when he was first nominated for a Cabinet position by the current POTUS, he struck me as the weakest of several already questionable choices, and I assumed he would not be confirmed. However, the Senate confirmed him as Secretary of Defense on January 24 by a 51-50 vote, with Vice President Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. (Three Republicans joined all the Democrats in opposition.)

Note: I was assisted by ChatGPT and Perplexity AI in the research for and writing of this piece.

True or False?

“Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most.” Those are words from the movie Secondhand Lions. At the end of last month, Thinking Friend Anton Jacobs shared that statement and related comments with me and a few mutual friends, prompting an interesting discussion. 

Are there things we should believe even if they are not true? That seems to be what is implied in the above-mentioned movie. Three years ago, my wife and I watched, and enjoyed, that 2003 American comedy-drama film. But I hadn’t remembered the words cited above or the longer statement:

That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil …. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in.

My first reaction to the above words was negative, mainly because I think a person always ought to believe in only what is true. How could it be possible, let alone necessary, to believe in things that are not true? If every statement is either true or false (which I think is correct), why should we ever believe what is false?

There are, indeed, many “facts” that can readily be determined as either true or false. But so much of what we encounter in the world are not facts that can be scientifically verified. Often, we must affirm what we believe to be true without any assurance that those things are, in fact, true.

That certainly doesn’t mean we should believe things that we think are false, even though we must realize that whatever we believe might be false. That is far different, though, than believing things that are false.

Michael Polanyi’s book Personal Knowledge (1958) is on my list as one of the “top ten” most important non-fiction books that I have ever read. I spent numerous hours in graduate school reading and seeking to understand Polanyi’s thought. That study became foundational for my epistemology (= the study and understanding of knowledge).

Several years later, my first writing to appear in a published tome was the 18^th chapter of a book published as a Festschrift for Dr. Eric Rust, my major graduate school professor. The title of that chapter is “Scientific Knowledge as Personal Knowledge.”**

Thirty years later, in October 2009, “All Knowledge is Personal Knowledge” was the title of one of my earliest blog articles. In a comment further explaining my point, I wrote,

Knowledge is always tentative. And there is no proof; there is only belief. Thus, there is always the possibility of being wrong. One "can only believe something that might be false," says Polanyi—and he adds that that is his argument "in a nutshell" (Personal Knowledge, p. 312).

Even though everything we believe “might be false,” rather than embracing the idea that we are going to believe what we believe, whether it is true or not, Polanyi emphasizes the importance of “heuristic passion,” the ongoing desire to seek and to find what seems most likely to be true.

Perplexity AI summarizes well Polanyi’s concept of heuristic passion: “He thinks all knowing (from physics to ethics to theology) is personal, fiduciary, and fallible, and therefore always involves passionate commitment and an open‑ended search for deeper contact with reality.”

There is no place for the “lazy” stance of saying we are going to believe what we choose to believe whether it is true or not. No, since none of our core beliefs (including scientific beliefs) can be scientifically proved, we continually strive to examine those beliefs, driven by heuristic passion to seek more adequate, more comprehensive articulations of reality.

If heuristic passion for determining what is true and what is false is necessary for progressive Christians (such as I), it is certainly necessary (and maybe even more so) for secularists on the one hand and conservative evangelical Christians on the other.

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** The title of the book, edited by Robert E. Patterson, is Science, Faith and Revelation: An Approach to Christian Philosophy (Broadman Press,1979). Last month, my wife came across a long letter handwritten by Dr. Rust (over 45 years ago!) in which he thanked me for the essay I wrote about Polanyi for the Festschrift. 

Remembering Martin of Tours (and Pete Hegseth)

Perhaps many of you don’t remember much (or anything) about Martin of Tours. But he is a man worth recalling, and his commitment to non-violence is commendable for people of all ages to consider and to emulate. 

Icon by Kreg Yingst

Martin of Tours was born around 316 A.D. in what today we call central Europe. He was the son of a Roman military officer. Like his father, he was compelled to serve in the Roman army. Even though a soldier, Martin was drawn to the Christian faith, still relatively new and sometimes suspect within the Roman Empire.

When he was still under 20 years of age, he encountered a poor, shivering beggar on a bitterly cold winter day. Moved by compassion but having nothing else to offer, Martin cut his heavy military cloak in half with his sword and gave one part to the beggar, keeping the other for himself.​

That night, Martin had a vision or dream in which Jesus appeared to him wearing the half of the cloak he had given away. Jesus said to the angels around him, “Martin has clothed me with this garment.” This story may have been embellished with dramatic details, but it captures the essence of Martin’s compassionate character.

This vision deeply affected the young man, leading him to be baptized soon afterward. For two decades or so, however, he continued to be a Roman soldier. But when he was about 40, Martin finally decided he could no longer remain a military man.

According to some sources he had another dream or vision which convinced him he could no longer be a soldier. Julian, the Roman emperor, prepared a military campaign in which Martin’s unit was expected to participate. But before the campaign began, Martin stepped forward and declared, “I am a soldier of Christ; I cannot fight.”

The emperor interpreted Martin’s words not as a matter of conscience but as cowardice, accusing Martin of seeking to avoid battle. Martin replied that his refusal was based on his Christian faith, not fear. This was the beginning of conscientious objection to warfare, embraced by only a minuscule percentage of Christians in the following centuries

The Waldensians, who began in France late in the 12^th century, is the only Christian group that practiced pacifism/non-violence before the beginning of Anabaptism in 1525. But it was challenging for even them and the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), which began in England in the mid-17th century, to maintain that practice.

In the U.S., conscientious objection to military service was not recognized as valid until World War II. (See my May 20, 2017, blog post about conscientious objectors).

Diana Butler Bass is a well-known and respected public theologian. She posts meaningful articles on Substack twice a week. Her November 11 post was the second one this year about Martin. I decided to write about him after reading “The Warrior Ethos,” her September 30 post about Martin (see here).

The latter was largely Bass’s criticism of Pete Hegseth, who from 2001 to 2021 served as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army National Guard. On January 24, Hegseth (b. 1980) was confirmed as a member of the POTUS’s Cabinet. On an official U.S. government website, he is now identified as “the secretary of war.”

In late September, Hegseth called a surprise meeting at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, to deliver a strong speech to several hundred top military generals and admirals about reviving “the warrior spirit” or “warrior ethos” in the U.S. military.

As Bass wrote, “Hegseth is probably the most openly Christian nationalist true believer in the entire Trump administration …. He always brings Jesus to the war party. Because, of course, in the theology of Christian nationalism Jesus is a Warrior.” In contrast, Bass goes on to state,

No early Christian — not a single church leader, pastor, or theologian —
in those first decades after Jesus lived, taught, died, and rose again would have ever considered their God to be a warrior.

Except in the most metaphorical sense of being a warrior for Love.

So, whose example and words do we choose?—those of Martin of Tours or of the current U.S. Secretary of War? For those who are true followers of Jesus, it seems like a “no-brainer.” What do you think?

The 1920s and the 2020s: Similarities and Differences

 As some of you may remember, in his 2020 Democratic National Convention acceptance speech, Joe Biden stated that “hope and history rhyme,” words quoted from the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. Biden drew parallels between the 2020s and the 1920s by highlighting similarities in political, social, and economic contexts. 

The 1920s were often called the Roaring Twenties. That term indicates that that decade was characterized by significant economic prosperity, rapid social and cultural change, and exuberant optimism following the tragic years of World War I.

The slogan "Return to Normalcy" was used by Warren G. Harding during his successful 1920 presidential campaign. He ran on that theme, appealing to the widespread public desire for stability and a return to pre-World War I conditions after a decade marked by upheaval, including the war, the 1918 influenza pandemic, and other serious issues.

The economy boomed in the 1920s. People in the U.S. used installment plans to spend liberally on consumer products. They also poured money into speculative new investments, such as automobile and telephone stocks. The prevailing interest rate was around 5%, a low rate that encouraged “gambling” in the stock market.

In a November 7 essay in The New York Times, William Birdthistle wrote that the “influx of buying from 1919 to 1929 drove the stock market up more than six-fold over the decade.”** But we know how that ended in October 1929. The stock market collapsed, triggering the Great Depression.

As Birdthistle pointed out, "Between 1929 and 1932, the stock market dropped 77 percent, and the global economy staggered into the Great Depression while unemployment and malnutrition spiked. In 1932, suicide rates soared to their highest in recorded history.”

Is that a harbinger of what might happen before the end of this decade?

F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby (1925) was written to portray the 1920s as a time of decadence, materialism, and moral bankruptcy.

According to what I learned from AI, “The novel critically depicts the era’s opulence and empty pursuit of wealth through its characters and their lifestyles. Gatsby’s lavish parties symbolize the era’s excess, but beneath the surface lies a loss of authentic human connection.”** Does that remind you of a man you read/hear about in the news daily?

You probably heard something about the 47^th POTUS’s lavish Halloween party last month. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote on November 4, it was “a party complete with sequined, feathered dancers and, yes, a scantily-clad woman in a giant martini glass.”

That party, held just hours before 42 million Americans were about to lose federal food assistance, was, in Krugman’s words, “grotesque” and “unspeakably vulgar.” The vapidity of that evening might well be referred to as a Holloween, rather than a Halloween, party.

The 1920s was also the time of Eugene Debs, the energetic socialist leader paralleled in significant ways by Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected mayor of New York City and a dynamic, young trailblazer for progressive Democrats in the 2020s.

In her November 5^th “letter,” Heather Cox Richardson wrote how Mamdani began his victory speech the night before with a nod to Debs, the Socialist candidate for president in 1920. He said, “The sun may have set over our city this evening, but as Eugene Debs once said: ‘I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.’”**

A blog article I posted in March 2015 was titled “Christians for Socialism” (see here). I wrote briefly about Debs there, so I know there are many differences between Mamdani and Debs, who was 65 years old in 1920 when he was the Socialist candidate for president even though he had been imprisoned in 1919 because of his opposition to WWI.

I also know that Mamdani is a Muslim and not a Christian, although I personally know several Christians who are happy that Mamdani was elected mayor of New York last week.

The best hope for most U.S. citizens in the 2020s lies partially in the hands of politicians such as Mamdani—and Bernie Sanders, AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), and other like-minded democratic socialist leaders.

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*¹ William A. Birdthistle, “Trump Is Bringing Back the Roaring Twenties. The Hangover Could Be Brutal.” The author served from 2021 to 2024 as director of the Division of Investment Management at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

*² This is from Perplexity AI, which I am now using more than Claude. It is linked to the web browser called Comet, which I am also using regularly now. – Regarding The Great Gatsby, I tried to read it for what I call my “recreational reading,” but I found it quite unenjoyable and quit reading it about halfway through. June read it just before her book study group discussed it last month, and I have learned more about it from her.

*³ I heartily recommend clicking on the following link and reading Richardson’s Substack post (found here:https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-5-2025. In contrast, on November 8, The Washington Post’s editorial board posted a very negative opinion piece about Mamdani. One wonders how much that is related to the owner of the WaPo being Jeff Bezos, whose net worth is said to be over $215 billion.

“The Just Man Justices”

Do you like poetry? I do (to some extent), but I find it hard to read. That is, poetry needs to be read slowly, and I don’t often take the time necessary to do so. And much poetry demands imagination and deep thought, often more than I have or am willing to exert. But I like the poem that sparked this post. 

Gerard Manley Hopkins was an Oxford University student when he came under the influence of John Henry Newman and the Oxford Movement, which sought to reconnect the Anglican Church with its Catholic roots.​ At age 22, Hopkins was received into the Roman Catholic Church by Newman himself.*

Hopkins (b. 1844) took the Jesuit vows in 1870, four years after converting to Catholicism, embracing the Jesuit ideals of poverty, chastity, and obedience. For the next seven years, he wrote no poetry, thinking it was contrary to his vows.

In the two years following the 1875 shipwreck of the SS Deutschland, though, Hopkins wrote a long, innovative ode titled "The Wreck of the Deutschland." A 2008 novel by Ron Hansen blends historical elements of that disaster with biographical elements of Hopkins’s life and a detailed narrative of his ode.**

Hopkins died of typhoid fever at the age of 44 in 1889.

“As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” one of Hopkins’s most celebrated poems, was written around 1877, but it was first published posthumously, in 1918. Here are the last six lines of that noteworthy sonnet:

I say more: the just man justices;

         Keeps grace: that keeps all his going graces;

Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is –

Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Eugene Peterson, the esteemed author of The Message (the popular paraphrase of the Bible), has also written Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, a weighty book whose title comes from Hopkins’s sonnet.

Peterson claims that Hopkins’s poem presents the perceptive reader with a helpful view of the “end” of life: “The vigor and spontaneity, the God-revealing Christian getting us and everything around us in on it, the playful freedom and exuberance, the total rendering of our lives as play, as worship before God.”

But this essay is primarily about the words in the first line cited above: “the just man justices.” What does that mean?

Hopkins creatively uses “justice” as a verb. That word is generally a noun, of course, although the phrase “doing justice” has a similar meaning. And the latter harks back to Micah in the Old Testament. Verse eight of the sixth chapter of the book that bears the prophet’s name says,

What does the Lord require of you but to do justice?

It is quite certain that the kind of justice Micah (and Hopkins) is talking about is not what is usually called retributive justice. Rather, it is social justice, seeking shalom for all people. As such, doing justice is something that cannot be done alone or by just us. We must work with other people.

This past Sunday, the worship leader at Rainbow Mennonite Church began by talking briefly about the Justice Together meeting she and her husband had recently attended in Wichita. That organization is “a multi-faith, grassroots coalition of faith communities in Sedgwick County, Kansas.”

Citing Micah 6:8, on their website (here), Justice Together states, “Doing justice … addresses systems rather than individuals. No single congregation has enough power to effectively do justice. Thus, we act together as justice in action.”

Further, if it is true that “Christ plays in ten thousand places,” as I think it is, doing justice is often done also by multitudes of people who do not claim to embrace any religious faith, such as many among the millions of people who joined the No Kings protest on October 18.

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  * Here is a link to the blog article I posted about Newman in March 2020, which was a few months after he was canonized as a Roman Catholic saint.

** Hansen’s novel is titled Exiles, which I enjoyed reading many months ago, and it also includes imagined backstories of the five drowned Franciscan nuns. It culminates in exploring themes of faith, exile, and divine mystery in the storm. Hansen (b. 1947) is an American novelist, essayist, and interestingly (especially for those of us who live in west central Missouri), he is also the author of “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” (1983).

The Tyranny of Greed

Tyranny is a word that has, unfortunately, been heard often in recent years. The term usually refers to “the usurpation of power by a single individual or group, or the circumvention of law by rulers for their own benefit.”*¹ But it can also describe any power, such as greed, that dominates and dehumanizes. 

Greed is the inordinate desire to possess wealth, goods, or objects of abstract value with the intention of keeping it for oneself, far beyond the dictates of basic survival and comfort. It is not merely a personal flaw; it is also a power that enslaves both individuals and societies.

The biblical phrase “the love of money” is clearly a reference to greed (“the inordinate desire to possess wealth”)—and also a clear reference to its tyrannical nature, as it is “the root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10, CEB).

According to my AI “buddy” Claude, “greed was absolutely central to Jamestown's founding in 1607.” The Virginia Company was a corporation “created explicitly to generate profits for its investors.” It became profitable after 1614, when it began shipping tobacco to Great Britain.

The greed of the Virginia Company led to enslaved Africans being brought to Virginia in 1619 to work in the tobacco fields. Human beings were reduced to property so that plantation owners could increase their wealth.

A century later, cotton became king, and greed increasingly drove the engines of slavery. So, citing Claude again, “the desire for wealth [=greed] from cotton drove the expansion and entrenchment of one of history's most brutal systems of human exploitation.”

“The more profitable cotton became, the more deeply the South invested in slavery, making it nearly impossible to imagine their economy without it—which ultimately helped precipitate the Civil War.”

But as far back as 1607, greed also wreaked havoc on Native Americans. The founding of Jamestown inadvertently initiated the genocide of the Native nations. Much later, the desire for more land to grow cotton was a major factor behind the Indian Removal Act of 1830. 

For much of the nineteenth century, greed fueled the seizure of Native American lands under the banner of progress, or “Manifest Destiny,” as settlers and governments justified the displacement/removal of the Indian nations for the sake of acquiring land to use for their own economic gain.

Whenever and wherever greed is rampant, people are exploited, lands are stolen, and justice is distorted. Sadly, though, even today, tyrannical greed continues to shape economies, politics, and daily habits of consumption—and that greed is epitomized in the current POTUS. His “business” activity is just one indication of his greed.

According to an Oct. 9 post (here), Trump has launched ads “to sell his new collection of watches.” This will add to the wealth he has greedily accumulated as President. He reportedly made $10 million in the last year selling watches, sneakers, Bibles, and guitars.

His most profitable business, though, is cryptocurrency. Last year, he made over $57 million from his stake in World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency platform. His $TRUMP meme coin launched in January 2025 is estimated to have earned $320 million in fees.

Since the tyranny of greed is so prevalent, attention needs to be given to Malcolm Foley’s book, The Anti-Greed Gospel (2025).*² (Here is a picture of author Foley and his “million dollar smile” along with the subtitle of his book.)

In his book, Foley cites John Chrysostom (d. 407), who asserted that “great is the tyranny of Mammon.” That tyranny exacerbated the idolatrous worship of Mammon rather than the true God. It also led to the construction of racism.

Plantation owners needed a moral and legal justification for treating human beings as property, so they constructed an ideology of racial inferiority. This allowed them to justify the brutal exploitation and to prevent solidarity between poor White and enslaved Black people.

While he does not cite them, Foley’s basic explanation of racism is similar to that of contemporary scholars Inram X. Kendi and Starlette Thomas.*³ They all argue that racist ideas were created to justify slavery. The latter was based on greed, which led to exploitation and then used racist ideology to justify it.

In the last part of his book, Foley challenges churches to confront greed as both a personal and systemic sin, and to replace it with practices of justice, solidarity, and truth.

Since greed is personal as well as societal, all of us need to remember the oft-quoted admonition of Thomas Merton: 

*¹ These words are from Timothy Snyder’s instructive book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017).

*² Foley (Ph.D., Baylor University) is a pastor, historian, and speaker who serves as special adviser to the president for equity and campus engagement at Baylor. Foley also co-pastors Mosaic Waco, a multicultural church in Waco, Texas

*³ Kendi is an author, professor, and anti-racist activist. He is the author of three books, the most influential being How to Be an Antiracist (2019). Thomas is an author, preacher, activist, and race abolitionist who serves as the director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative at Good Faith Media. She is the author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church (2023).

What Does It Mean to Love One’s Enemies?

It is hard enough to love one’s friends and even harder to love others as we love ourselves. But how can we love our enemies? In both the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:43) and the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:27), Jesus plainly says, “love your enemies.” 

Why do we have enemies? Are enemies people we harbor enmity against? Probably not in most cases. Why would Jesus’ first followers have had an “enemies list” so that he would have felt the need to urge them to love those on that list?

The answer is clear: our “enemies” are not primarily those we have enmity toward; rather, they are those who have enmity toward us for whatever reason. Note Jesus’ full statement: “pray for those who persecute you.” Those early followers of Jesus were persecuted, but they certainly were not persecutors.

Consider some notable examples of people who loved their enemies. First, of course, is Jesus himself. As he was being executed by the extremely painful means of crucifixion, Jesus uttered this prayer: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

Anabaptists (with whom I have long identified) have great respect for Dirk Willems, the Dutch Anabaptist martyr in 1569. He escaped from prison and was chased by a guard who fell through thin ice during the chase. But Willems turned back and rescued his pursuer—and then was recaptured, tortured, and killed.

Four hundred years later, Martin Luther King, Jr., steadfastly called upon Black people to show love for their enemies, the White people who had often lynched their ancestors for centuries and were still mistreating them in the present. His most well-known book is titled Strength to Love (1963).

I was certainly not a supporter of Charlie Kirk, although I grieved that he was killed. But I remain impressed by what Erika Kirk, Charlie’s wife, said at his memorial service. She forgave the shooter. Unlike the President, she expressed love and forgiveness toward him rather than hatred.

These are widely known examples of people who showed love for their enemies. Most of us, though, will likely never be in such dramatic situations. What does it mean for us to love our enemies?

“Love is more an attitude and action than a feeling.” That is the title of #25 in my book Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (2018). In that chapter, I cite John Hick’s explanation regarding the type of love Jesus meant when he commanded us to love our enemies.

The British philosopher writes that love is “to value a person in such ways as actively to seek his or her deepest welfare and fulfillment” (Philosophy of Religion, 1963). Or, as we might say today, love actively seeks the flourishing of all people, including our enemies.

In my above-mentioned book, I also cite how MLK importantly distinguished between liking and loving. King noted in Strength to Love that Jesus did not say, “Like your enemies,” admitting that it is “almost impossible to like some people.” But Jesus’ command was for us to love people whom we don’t like.

So, love of enemies is not sentimental affection, but deliberate goodwill and moral commitment. That is the attitude Jesus calls us to have for those who say hurtful things to/about us or do harmful things to us.

Loving in that way certainly doesn’t mean condoning injurious things that are said or done, to us or to others. We can’t be neutral concerning right and wrong, good and evil. Often, we must “hate” what people do, but love them for who they are, persons created in the image of God.

We could make a long list of people who do things we strongly disapprove of. Many of us have deep dislike for the things the POTUS and his henchmen such as Steven Miller and Russell Vought say and do, and we have the right (and responsibility?) to speak out against them.

But if we are serious about following Jesus’ command that we love our “enemies,” whether they are government officials we dislike, cantankerous neighbors, or whoever, we still must seek their “deepest welfare” and their flourishing. That is both for the well-being of others as well as for ourselves.

Remember, "hate is more harmful to the vessel in which it is stored than to the people on whom it is poured."

Considering, Sadly, the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek

Most of you are familiar with the phrase “the Trail of Tears.” Perhaps many of you, though, don’t remember hearing anything about the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. Only recently did I learn that that was the name of the first removal treaty that initiated the trail of tears for Native Americans. 

Andrew Jackson instigated the removal of Indians from the eastern U.S. states. One of the major events of the War of 1812 was the Battle of New Orleans in 1814, led by General Andrew (“Old Hickory”) Jackson. He was then regarded as a war hero, and 14 years later, he was elected the seventh POTUS.

As I noted in my June 2012 blog post about the War of 1812 (see here), the greatest losers in that war were the Native Americans. Jackson fought against the “Indians” then, and subsequently, in his first State of the Union address (in December 1829), he asked Congress to pass Indian removal legislation.

In April 1830, the Senate passed the Indian Removal Act, and then on May 26, the House of Representatives passed the Act by a vote of 101 to 97. Four days later, it was signed into law by President Jackson. Then the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was enacted 195 years ago, on September 27, 1830.

Dancing Rabbit Creek was the name of a small geographical area in what is now Noxubee County, Mississippi. The Choctaw Nation occupied more than 2/3 of what became the state of Mississippi. The 1830 treaty was with those living in the northern part of the Choctaw’s land. Their removal began in 1831.

The 1831~33 journey westward was marked by hunger, exposure, disease, and death. During that terrible time, the Arkansas Gazette reported that a Choctaw chief lamented that his people’s removal from Mississippi resulted in a "trail of tears and death."*¹

The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek continued genocidal actions of the U.S. against Native Americans. Even though most USAmericans have not usually considered the nation’s treatment of Indians as genocide, that seems to be an apt description of what has gone on for centuries.

The 1948 UN Genocide Convention defines genocide as acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

But according to Claude (whom I have repeatedly called my AI buddy), many genocide scholars now argue that the cumulative effect of European colonization, including disease, warfare, and deliberate policies, constitutes genocide even if individual components were initially unintentional.

For the Native Americans who lived in the northeastern part of what became the USA, a large percentage of the Native Americans in “New England” had already died before 1621 from diseases (mostly smallpox) brought by the Europeans who had come in the previous decade.*²

So, whether intentional or not, European colonists caused the genocide of Native Americans.

Much more needs to be done to correct past genocidal activities. Fortunately, it is generally said that the “Indian Wars” ended in 1890. But mistreatment of Native Americans continued long after that.

I was delighted that Deb Haaland became the first Indian Cabinet secretary in U.S. history in March 2021. But her maternal grandparents suffered under government regulations.*³   

Currently, up to 20% of Native Americans live on reservations. That represents several hundred thousand people out of a total Native American population of around 6-9 million. Many of those living on reservations suffer from poverty, unemployment, alcoholism, and relatively low life expectancy.

Native Americans have the highest poverty rate of any major racial group, and unemployment rates have averaged 50% for decades on many reservations. Alcoholism death rates among young Native Americans is over ten times the national average of the general population.

Further, Indian communities experience higher rates of suicide compared to all other racial and ethnic groups, and Native Americans have the lowest life expectancy among racial and ethnic groups in the U.S.

These negative considerations are all largely rooted in the shameful Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. And they are all issues that need to be addressed more fully by the federal government, seeking liberty and justice for all U.S. citizens.

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*¹ It should be noted that the term “the trail of tears” is most often associated with the removal of the Cherokee Nation from northern Georgia and bordering areas beginning in 1838.

*² This was mentioned in my Thanksgiving blog post made in November 2009: The View from This Seat: What About the First Thanksgiving Day?

*³ A January 2021 blog post was titled, “A Notable Nomination: Haaland for Secretary of the Interior.” That was certainly notable, for she became the first Native American to serve in a President’s Cabinet. Considerably after 1890, her maternal grandparents were, in Haaland’s words, “stolen from their families when they were only 8 years old and were forced to live away from their parents, culture and communities until they were 13.” They were forced to go to a federal Indian boarding school, and such schools continued until the 1960s.