I confess that I got pulled down a fair few rabbit holes as I researched for the Trump & Evangelicalism blog series. The more I learned, the less I understood. I listened hard but found it increasingly difficult to identify with what I was hearing. The phrase ‘garbage in, garbage out’ became my mantra. A month on and I still feel a little queasy.

Donald Trump has cornered the market that was once the preserve of shock-jocks. Like a badly behaved 2-year old with doting family looking on, he has fitted puppet strings to the majority of the media. All he needs to do is perform the next choreographed stunt and everyone jumps to attention – either fawning at his genius or another round of performative outrage. If only we’d been strong enough to ignore him, refusing to be recruited into the vast crowd of onlookers who ultimately gave him what he needed: attention.

*

The only way of resisting rabbit holes was to remind myself on a frequent basis to resist articles and videos that existed simply to mock and ridicule. My tendency toward confirmation bias was so strong, but gratifying it led nowhere.

Trying to imagine myself into the skin of someone who is willing to filter out the character flaws in order to be driven by Trump’s narrative was incredibly difficult. The essential emotion I had to find a way of manufacturing was fear. Fear that all I’d looked to for security was being swept away by impersonal forces that didn’t see me and didn’t care about my hopes and dreams.

My natural tendency to play devil’s advocate makes it difficult for me to sustain a fearful posture. There is also no way I can bypass my skeptic filter which, for good or ill, seems to be a permanent legacy of 5 years researching for a PhD.

*

The videos I had to stop myself watching were the ‘gotcha, you biblically illiterate evangelical Christian’ ones. The victim would begin by answering positively to a question like: Do you think the Bible should be taught in schools? and then the mock interviewer would recycle the goriest bits of the Old Testament which the victim was clearly unaware were in their bible, and were reported as direct commands from God. Gotcha. The journalistic equivalent of spear fishing in a barrel.

There is one video I am prepared to share a link to which illustrates the way some people use religion to bolster their already held opinions. In it, James O’Brien is trying to force a caller to his LBC show to become aware of their own prejudices and biases, thereby missing the bigger story. I play it occasionally if I need a good laugh.*

*

If I were to be forced to play a similar stunt on right-wing American evangelicals it would be far more theologically literate. I’d ask anyone from the Trump tribe who claimed to believe every word written in the Bible whether God would like us to practise what he inspired in Leviticus 25.

The Jubilee wraps up the ecological wisdom of allowing the land to rest with a command that all people should be liberated from indebtedness. All are to return to their ancestral lands, debts are to be forgiven, slaves are to be set free, and all land is to be returned to its original owners or their descendants. So if anyone had fallen on hard times and had been forced to sell either land or themselves to pay off debts, the state of indebtedness could never become permanent.

The chapter is making two important theological statements: land ultimately belongs to God, and so do people. The economics works much like the concept of leasehold property in the UK. A person can redeem land or be bought out of slavery for a price, the value of which should be computed according to the years remaining until the Jubilee. So the redeemer is purchasing future harvests and hours of labour remaining, and if there is no one to redeem land or people, both will be released for free in the year of Jubilee.

I’ve got a feeling this would look far too much like socialism for some right-wing bible-‘believing’ Christians. However, instead of pointing the finger, I have been left wondering in what ways I might also be reading my own views into the words I believe are inspired by the Spirit of God.

*