Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Friday, February 11, 2022

What I Learned from (Almost) Attending a Trump Rally


President Donald Trump arrives at a rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., Thursday, March 28, 2019. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

What I Learned from (Almost) Attending
a Trump Rally


October 4, 2019


In January 2016, Donald Trump claimed that he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone and not lose supporters.

With the impeachment inquiry underway, his words ring prophetic.

With blatant corruption in full view, with the president turning to foreign powers to pursue his own personal gain, claiming that a coup is afoot, and labelling political opponents traitors, his critics are left wondering if there is anything he could do that would cause his supporters to turn from him.

I’ve wondered as much myself.

As a historian, I’ve spent the last three years examining white evangelical support for Trump. That research pointed me to the centrality of a militant white patriarchy at the heart of conservative evangelicalism that serves as a primary factor in mobilizing white evangelical support for the president. (Coming soon… Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation).

Just as I was putting the finishing touches on my book, Donald Trump descended upon my hometown of Grand Rapids. It was March 28, just days after Attorney General William Barr released his four-page letter detailing the conclusion of the Mueller Report. Then, too, the country was starkly divided. Wary of falling back on stereotypes in my own analysis, I decided to attend the rally to get a more nuanced, up-close glimpse of the president’s supporters.

Photos/Kristin DuMez

I was accompanied by my ten-year-old daughter, a political junkie in her own right. By the time we arrived downtown, the line of supporters stretched around several city blocks. We quickly found our place at the end of the line and settled in for a several-hour wait.

We had no intention of posing as supporters, but neither were we eager to out ourselves as those less-than-pleased with our sitting president. Still, it quickly became apparent that we didn’t look the part.

Although we were white (as was nearly everyone in the line), we were among the only ones not wearing Trump gear, for camo, or red-white-and-blue attire. So much for dispensing with stereotypes.

Everyone in the line was friendly, if not giddy with excitement. “Where are you from?” was the standard greeting. Here, too, we stuck out. Although the rally was in Grand Rapids, we didn’t meet anyone else in our section of the line who was from Grand Rapids proper. Everyone else had come in from neighboring small towns and rural areas, some having traveled several hours by car. Although it was a celebratory atmosphere, one man behind us frequently warned his friends not to post pictures of him on social media. He was afraid that he might lose his job if seen at a Trump rally.

He didn’t, however, hesitate to join in the political chatter. There was plenty of that. Victory cries of “Total exoneration” in light of Barr’s synopsis of the Mueller report. Crude joking about climate change (“What a hoax!”). Confidence that “the militia” would show up to protect us if things got out of hand. The “mainstream media” was a punching bag. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was an ignorant girl who belonged back behind the bar. Hillary Clinton was a punchline. Barack Obama, however, was no joke. Ocasio-Cortez and Clinton could be laughed off, it seemed, but mention of Obama elicited anger, bitterness, and resentment.

It didn’t take a historian trained in the study of race and gender to identify the centrality of both. American flags that blended into Confederate flags were available for purchase. The militant masculinity I’d spent years charting was everywhere apparent. Vendors were hawking T-shirts boasting “God Guns Trump: Keep America Great 2020,” “Keep Calm and Carry On,” and “Trump .45 (Cause the 44 Didn’t Work the Last 8 Years).”

Photos/Kristin DuMez

One could purchase pins for “Bikers for Trump,” pins declaring support for the Second Amendment, pins insisting that “Deplorable Lives Matter” and that “Hillary Sucks! But not like Monica!” Meanwhile, “Hot Chicks for Trump” shirts could be purchased, as could hot pink “Trump Girl” t-shirts emblazoned with a star-spangled stiletto heel.

Other t-shirts gleefully promised to “Make Liberals Cry Again,” and provided assurances that Trump “Ain’t A Mistake Snowflake.” Again, so much for demolishing stereotypes.

Photos/Kristin DuMez

Photos/Kristin DuMez

Photos/Kristin DuMez

Then, three hours into our wait, as the line continued to snake between downtown buildings, the mood began to change. The scheduled start time was drawing nearer, and we peered anxiously at the distance remaining between us and the entrance gates. Late-arriving supporters started to cut in line ahead of us, and our anxiety grew. We’d waited for hours, but it wasn’t at all clear that we’d make it inside.

We were behind the arena when the motorcade pulled up. Trump emerged and the crowd went wild. Once Trump was inside, attention once again turned to the line that stretched ahead. We all sensed it would be close.

It was at this point that something strange happened. For the first time that day, my daughter and I started to feel at one with the crowds. We didn’t share in their support of the president, it’s fair to say, but we all had the common goal of making it inside those doors—even if for very different reasons.

Turning the corner in front of the arena, we came face to face with protestors. The noise was deafening, the shouting back and forth obnoxious. My daughter grabbed my arm in fear. I reminded her that many of the protestors on the other side of the barricades were, in fact, our friends. Some were co-workers, some went to our church. We both knew it, but in that moment, it didn’t seem to matter. We were, quite literally, on the other side. From our vantage point, they did seem threatening. And I began to understand.

Other adults began to lavish attention on my daughter. Didn’t she love our president? Wasn’t she proud to be there? And then, suddenly, the line started moving quickly. Crowds were rushing the door. We almost made it in, but when the doors closed, we were stranded outside.

We did, however, have a front-row view of the jumbotron. We listened to Trump rail that “The Russian Hoax Is Finally Dead”—“the collusion delusion is over.” He mocked “little pencil-neck Adam Schiff,” went after the “fake news” media, and accused Democrats of “defraud[ing] the public with ridiculous bullshit.” He was draining the swamp, and he denigrated elites in Washington (“I’m president and they’re not.”)

My daughter was given a MAGA hat. She refused to put it on. We listened to the wild applause inside and outside the arena, but we were silent. When we finally decided we’d heard enough, we slipped through the crowd, walked down the street, and went out for Chinese take-out.

I’d gone to the rally hoping to gain a more nuanced understanding of “the other side,” hoping to realize that we shared a common ground if we only bothered to look. Instead, I left convinced that the gulf separating Americans along partisan lines was wide indeed. Perhaps insurmountable.

With news of impeachment dominating the headlines, I find myself transported back to that Trump rally, and fixated on that gulf. I’m also filled with a sense of wariness, a fear that anger—even righteous anger—may only make things worse.

*Cite: DuMez, Kristin Kobes. “What I learned from (almost) attending a Trump rally.” First published. Anxious Bench. Patheos.com. 3 October 2019.




White American evangelicalism from 1950 to the present hour





Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a New York Times bestselling author and Professor of History and Gender Studies at Calvin University. She holds a PhD from the University of Notre Dame and her research focuses on the intersection of gender, religion, and politics. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Religion News Service, and Christianity Today, and has been interviewed on NPR, CBS, and the BBC, among other outlets. Her most recent book is Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.
Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a New York Times bestselling author and Professor of History and Gender Studies at Calvin University. She holds a PhD from the University of Notre Dame and her research focuses on the intersection of gender, religion, and politics. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Religion News Service, and Christianity Today, and has been interviewed on NPR, CBS, and the BBC, among other outlets. Her most recent book is Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.



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