How do MAGA supporters square their views with the Sermon on the Mount?
TurquoiseTastic
Kerygmania Host
in Purgatory
In Kerygmania @Rufus T Firefly posted:
Rufus T Firefly wrote: »Over the past few months, bearing in mind all that has gone on in the USA where so many people in power are proudly proclaiming their Christian faith, I have been drawn again and again to the Sermon on the Mount and especially to Matthew 7:15-23
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits.
Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord”, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?” Then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.”
When you consider all the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, especially the bits about loving your enemies and being peacemakers, I can't help wondering what the MAGA Christians make of all this. How do they reconcile their attitudes and actions with these words of Jesus?
I heard a story a little while ago about someone who had a friend who writes service material for conservative evangelical churches and who was warned not to include anything from the Sermon on the Mount as it was "too woke". I cannot confirm if this is true or not, so make of it what you will.
My question here (and this is why this is in Kerygmania) is "how are these passages being understood by people who proclaim their faith and yet eagerly pursue policies and actions that seem to be diametrically opposed to what Jesus was talking about?"
And don't forget Jesus's version of the Golden Rule: In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.
Comments
Personally I think we are unlikely to be able to answer this question helpfully due to lack of "own voice". In fact attempting to do so is quite dangerous because in trying to fathom the motivations of opponents with whom we disagree strongly we are very likely to ascribe malign and bad faith motivations to them which then colour all our interactions with them and actively hinder future understanding. I have seen this happen in much less fraught situations such as employment negotiations.
So have a go if you'd like. But my advice is - beware.
And regardless, can we respond appropriately if we can’t accurately describe the MAGA interpretation isn’t?
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/05/1192374014/russell-moore-on-altar-call-for-evangelical-america
I once heard a talk by a Dutch Reformed pastor who had been so racist he wouldn't even sit at the same table as black people when he attended church conferences.
His congregation were mostly black.
He became an opponent of the Apartheid regime and campaigned against racism.
A pertinent point alongside @ThunderBunk's point about how liberals should respond is how should conservatives respond?
It's the more conservative end of the Christian spectrum that is more likely to be influenced by MAGA-like views, or their equivalent elsewhere.
Deriding them isn't going to get us very far and any rational or reasoned debate is likely to be dismissed as 'anti-Trump' paranoia or the result of watching or listening to the BBC or CNN or any media platform that isn't Fox News or their favoured pundits.
A MAGA-dude accused my brother of being in some kind of delusional 'anti-Trump cult' when he aired his views about the current POTUS online.
We could parse this.
Your views are cultic and irrational.
Mine are sane and rational because they are based on reliable sources such as Fox News and Truth Social.
The trouble is, of course, is that however well or badly non-MAGA types behave, it's all likely to be dismissed.
They have Moses and the Prophets.
They have the Gospels.
If they don't listen to those they ain't going to listen to anyone else.
Nevertheless seeking to live out, as imperfectly as any of us do, the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount, has to be the way to go MAGA or no MAGA, Russkiy Mir or no Russkiy Mir, or any other warped ideology that happens to be current at any given time.
In his critique, he made the following observations (summarised from Google).
I think the Christian Right tend to ignore the part of the critique which describes the Sermon on the Mount as a constant rebuke to human pride. Personally I think he would be horrified at any suggestion that its contents should be ignored or not even read.
I get where Niebuhr is coming from in his observations about getting our hands dirty in a sinful world. But I don’t like his quoted observation of “heresy”. When we forget or discount these moral imperatives (however impossible they may seem to be) it is us who (for pragmatic reasons) are falling short of the mark.
I have no compunction in describing some extreme health/wealth 'word of faith' preachers as heretical, though.
Phyletism and ethno-centricity is regarded as heretical in the Orthodox Church for instance, but it is rife and remains the besetting sin within Orthodox Christianity.
Extreme individualism and lack of any real communal emphasis is, I hazard, the besetting sin of some elements within 'Western' Christianity.
MAGA feeds off that.
Hence Pope Leo's criticism of Vance. Charity begins at home. Stuff everyone else.
America First. Stuff everyone else.
Make America Great Again. At everyone else's expense unless they buy into the American Dream.
And on it goes ...
Neibuhr of course, was writing against the background of the 'failure' of the optimistic 19th century 'Social Gospel's' ability to cope with WW1 and the subsequent rise of totalitarianism and the horrors of WW2.
The Orthodox believe in human perfectability but are also realistic about the extent to which we all fall short.
The kind of 'batten down the hatches' return to an imagined idyllic past, whether it be Tsarist Russia or a misty-eyed nostalgia for early US 'pioneers' or a lovely Anglo-Saxon England before the Norman Conquest, doesn't get us anywhere. It leads to a closed and solipsistic cloud-cuckoo land.
There has to be a 'more excellent way.'
The irony is that resisting evil these days is indeed resisting precisely those excesses of selfishness and partisanship which so characterise the worst of MAGArism.
The Christian Right who have embraced aspects of Christian Realism should be aghast at the illegitimate child they have birthed into being.
Indeed.
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/20-march/regulars/cartoons/dave-walker.
It is aimed at Reform, BNP, GB News et al, but pertinent to MAGA suppoters.
Thanks for posting this. It is very helpful to see how someone whose theological position is almost certainly far more conservative than mine sees things and is concerned.
Re Niebuhr's first and third points, I agree that the Sermon on the Mount doesn't demand pacifism. responsible action often required "dirtying one's hands" to prevent greater evil - absolutely! I always thought that Tolstoy's approach of absolutist adherence to "turn the other cheek" and "do not resist evil" was wrong.
Re Niebuhr's second point, I disagree that it is an "impossible ideal". Once you go down that route, you automatically open the door to the attitude that says "you have to live in the real world, not an impossible ideal world." The challenges of the Sermon on the Mount are hard but they set a standard for all who claim to follow Jesus to try and achieve. We may fail again and again but there is always forgiveness when we do and there is no excuse for not even trying.
Yes - I saw that too and thought it was excellent.
I agree.
I think also we need to be aware that an endless assertion of the need to be perfect can have a counter-productive (and possibly unforeseen) impact. That it may foster guilty. I’ve seen the paralysing impact of that in nervous Christians.
As Gamaliel correctly observed, Niebuhr was writing shortly after the horrifying toll of death and violence resulting from WW2. The general recognition that appeasing Hitler had made things worse did bring into question what we should do about moral idealism in our sinful world.
It’s in that context that he talked about impossible possibilities. I think he did a good job of illuminating the dilemmas we all face.
But I do not in any way blame him for the way in which his thoughtful and challenging ideas have been hi-jacked. It’s absolutely clear that he had no intention of justifying neo-fascist tendencies.
Not that I've ever read Niebuhr first hand.
I think the cartoon was aimed squarely at the ongoing 'Living in love and faith' debate. As you can imagine, there was at least one enraged letter!
The Church of England's 'MAGA' equivelent is of course the wretched gafcon.
Not really; mostly it's the likes of CEEC and similar swivel-eyed loons.
Is it ? I assume Orr etc and the crowd around ARC are their own group with some linkages (Reform's meeting at St Micheals Cornhill, Peter Marshall being also linked with HTB etc).
I suspect you include me here, and don't see how it's different for me than for anyone. I too have to rebuke such people when I have the opportunity (I used my real life platform to do this just yesterday, though, given the publication, that time I was likely preaching to the choir). The only difference between me and more liberal Christians is that I'm a bit more likely to cause a sense of shock in those deluded by this evil. I doubt they'll listen, though of course I'm trying.
Yes. That’s probably more accurate.
For the sake of this discussion, I don’t think it makes much difference. Both the “naive” and the “non-naive” take the Sermon seriously and would oppose together any moves which say it should not be read or the subject of sermons.
It’s intriguing to me to see some folks using the “woke” word as a justifiable criticism. You’d have thought that anyone with a claim to evangelical belief could see that is elevating a cultural understanding above the authority of scripture.
Please keep on trying!
Personally I think you are generous in outlook and generous is one of the historic synonyms for liberal.
I got bothered when the words liberal and conservative are used in polarising ways. Viewed by the standard of generosity, I know a few ungenerous liberals.
And yes, I'll continue. At this point in time, I need wisdom, yes, but it's unlikely I'll pay any major penalty yet. If the day comes that I lose my job, we will all have had much more important problems to cope with by then.
I thought they were all for 'small state' stuff, effectively meaning that it's nobody's job and nobody's responsibility other than the fault of the poor themselves for being poor in the first place.
Can’t find the link but I recall the contents of a Bible Study which took place in the White House in the first Trump period.
The essence of it was that responsibility for care of the poor was first a matter for the person themselves, then their family, then the local church. It was not a government matter.
That was my response too, but he lost interest at that point.