<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<div id="root">
<div class="css-3cvb8h">
<div class="css-12lf39s">
<div class="css-ov1ktg">
<div width="718" class="css-s84953">
<header class="css-d92687">
<h1 class="css-1z36ek">Autocrats Love Using the Bible as
a Prop. Americans Shouldn’t.</h1>
<div class="css-1qe21z8">
<div class="css-7kp13n">By</div>
<div class="css-7ol5x1"><span class="css-acjdas">Alan
Levinovitz</span></div>
<div class="css-8rl9b7">foreignpolicy.com</div>
<div class="css-zskk6u">5 min</div>
</div>
<div class="css-1890bmp"><a
href="https://getpocket.com/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Fforeignpolicy.com%2F2020%2F06%2F02%2Fautocrats-idolatry-trump-protests-george-floyd-america%2F"
target="_blank" class="css-1neb7j1">View Original</a></div>
</header>
<div class="css-429vn2">
<div role="main" class="css-q7xgeq">
<div id="RIL_container">
<div id="RIL_body">
<div id="RIL_less">
<div lang="en">
<div class="RIL_IMG" id="RIL_IMG_1">
<figure> <img
src="https://pocket-image-cache.com//filters:no_upscale()/https%3A%2F%2Fforeignpolicy.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2020%2F06%2FGettyImages-1216826630.jpg%3Fw%3D800%26h%3D533%26quality%3D90"
alt="U.S. President Donald Trump holds
up a Bible outside St John" width="481"
height="320"> <figcaption>U.S.
President Donald Trump holds up a Bible
outside St John's Church across from
Lafayette Park in Washington on June 1.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p>America opposes idolatry. Not just the act
of idolatry but the very idea that idols
have power. That is why its laws—unlike
those of many other nations—do not
criminalize the burning of holy books or the
destruction of sacred images. Its citizens
do not worship pictures of leaders. The
power of words and images in the United
States is in the values they represent, not
the objects themselves. Even the perpetual
attempts to criminalize flag-burning
consistently—and rightly—fail.</p>
<p>Just as destroying these objects has no
magic power, neither does holding them up.
Only idolaters believe that waving a flag
makes you a patriot or wearing a cross makes
you a Christian. As the singer John Prine,
who died of COVID-19 in April, put it: “Your
flag decal won’t get you into heaven.”</p>
<p>When U.S. President Donald Trump brandished
an upside-down Bible in front of a church he
rarely attends and whose leaders and
congregation work against the policies he
trumpets, the clouds of tear gas deployed to
part peaceful protesters and allow his visit
still hanging in the air, it was idolatry.</p>
<p>It was the same idolatry that whitens the
teeth and tans the cheeks and furnishes the
mansions of the prosperity gospel pastors
who pant for attention at his side, before
returning to homes like Trump’s, choked with
the same precious metal that King
Nebuchadnezzar used to <a
href="https://biblehub.com/niv/daniel/3.htm">craft
his image of gold</a>. And it was the same
spirit that drove Vladimir Putin to coyly <a
aria-describedby="sk-tooltip-5e63b7d8-efd2-4bf0-a003-f9018fc88a89"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
href="https://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/personoftheyear/article/0,28804,1690753_1690757_1695787-9,00.html">boast</a> of
the Bible on his plane and Saddam Hussein to
have a <a
aria-describedby="sk-tooltip-84673704-39a2-47f8-b824-a02b58468a74"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/saddam-husseins-blood-quran">Quran</a> written
in his own blood.</p>
<p>Far before Trump’s election, televangelists
like his thrice-married personal pastor
Paula White were busy rotting their religion
from the inside by making wealth and power
the goal of prayer. For white evangelicals,
the most stalwart block of Trump supporters,
that has long meant embracing racism, from
the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s lack of concern
about apartheid South Africa (Bishop Desmond
Tutu, he said, <a
href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-08-28-me-25050-story.html">was
a “phony”</a>) to overwhelming pushback
against accepting refugees. Dazzled by the
promise of gold and scared at the prospect
of having to share it, they worship a king
instead of love.</p>
<p>Nebuchadnezzar’s sin wasn’t merely the
creation of his golden idol. “Idolatry not
only refers to false pagan worship,”
explains the <a
href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c1a1.htm">Catechism
of the Catholic Church</a>. “It remains a
constant temptation to faith. Idolatry
consists in divinizing what is not God. Man
commits idolatry whenever he honors and
reveres a creature in place of God, whether
this be gods or demons (for example,
satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors,
the state, money, etc.”</p>
<p>John Adams also understood the broad nature
of the term, writing <a
href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-02-02-0096">with
concern</a> about “universal Idolatry to
the Mammon of Unrighteousness.” He
recognized how all tyrants, from Julius
Caesar to corrupt governors, <a
href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/01-02-02-0001-0005">exploited</a>
“the mad Idolatry of the People,” which
inevitably turned into “the surest
Instruments of their own Servitude.”</p>
<p> Satan disguises himself as an angel of
light, warns Second Corinthians—or, as Trump
calls it, “<a
href="https://www.npr.org/2016/01/18/463528847/citing-two-corinthians-trump-struggles-to-make-the-sale-to-evangelicals">Two
Corinthians</a>.” But disguises and
displays do not disclose what matters, and
using them has no transformative power. The
people who revel in display are suspect,
says the book Trump waves but does not read.
“When you pray, you are not to be like the
hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray
in the synagogues and on the street corners
so that they may be seen by men.”</p>
<p>Only idolaters would believe there is
something evil in the mere act of Trump’s
holding the Bible upside down or saying
“two” instead of “second.” The display, in
itself, has no power. No, the evil, as Jesus
warned, is pretending that a display of
religion is actual religion. The evil is
confusing the good book with a good prop.</p>
<p>This should matter to all Americans. Even
those who don’t care about the Bible should
oppose drafting it into a photo-op. “I am
outraged,” <a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/bishop-budde-trump-church/2020/06/01/20ca70f8-a466-11ea-b619-3f9133bbb482_story.html">said</a>
Bishop Mariann Budde of St. John’s Church,
when she heard how her place of worship had
been desecrated by the photo-op. “He did not
pray,” she <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/01/us/politics/trump-st-johns-church-bible.html">added</a>.</p>
<p>It was a desecration far more disgusting
than any physical damage could ever be.
Wrath and crime are bad, but they are easier
to forgive than idolatry. That’s why church
leaders responded differently to the
basement fire set by rioters only hours
earlier. “I want to point the attention back
to where it really should be,” the church’s
rector, the Rev. Robert Fisher, <a
href="https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2020/06/01/fire-causes-minor-damage-to-st-johns-the-church-of-presidents-in-washington-during-night-of-riots/">said</a>,
“which is the purpose of the protests, and
the people who did what they did to the
church do not represent the majority, who
are here for reasons that we totally
support.”</p>
<p>The phrase “virtue signaling” has special
currency among Trump supporters and other
critics of the political left, who see sin
in displays of liberal ideology that go no
further than furious hashtags and fair trade
handbags. The phrase may be used
overzealously, but it identifies a real
problem—the prioritizing of appearances over
action and authenticity.</p>
<p>It is hard to imagine a better example of
it than the signal Trump sent from St.
John’s, American flag pin on his lapel,
posing for his spiritual pornography.</p>
<p>There is concern among some deeply
religious Americans that secular liberalism
poses a grave threat to their faith. The
atheists, the socialists, the gay-marriers,
and the abortion-havers. The godless
educators who refuse to post the Ten
Commandments. But the real threat to holy
texts isn’t those who refuse to post them.
It’s people who think that once you’ve
posted them, there’s no more work to be
done, and go right back to the unrighteous
idolatry of mammon, blind to sin as long as
it is draped in a flag or decorated with a
cross.</p>
<p>Americans should all be terrified by this
unholy political theater. Terrified because
in this unprecedented crucible of
intersecting crises, the United States needs
genuine faith and love. Terrified because if
Americans are shaped instead by hollow
leaders holding empty symbols, they will
emerge battered and broken and divided,
incapable of distinguishing even the
crassest propaganda from the truth. And
terrified because, as the president
gleefully calls in the military after posing
with the unread word of Christ, the
idolaters may have finally won.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>