By Rudy Barnes, Jr., April 26, 2025
On April 9 the stock market rose by 3,000 points based on Trump’s decision to pause most of his tariffs. It confirmed materialism and greed as priorities in American politics and religion, with Trump seeking to take credit for cleaning up his tariff mess ahead of the midterm elections. Any altruistic moral priorities have been lost over economic concerns.
The stock market has remained unstable, and for the first time polls indicate a majority no longer support Trump’s economic policies. Trump has since threatened to fire the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell--even though the President doesn’t have the authority to fire him. Trump seems determined to ignore the law in his efforts to control the economy.
It seems that Trump staged the dramatic comeback of the stock market on April 9 with a planned pause of his ill-conceived tariffs, just what you would expect from a shyster showman, and Trump has always been a showman. Thomas Friedman said it well: “When you hire a bunch of clowns to run the government, You can expect to have a political circus.”
Most of Trump’s supporters claim to be Christians, but they ignore the altruistic teachings of Jesus in the greatest commandment to love God and our neighbors as we love ourselves. It summarizes the altruistic teachings of Jesus and the moral imperative to provide for the common good in politics. While Christianity has long shaped American politics, it has not overcome the pervasive greed that feeds the materialism and hedonism of American culture.
America’s Constitution represents the foundation of the rule of law that has been ignored by Trump and his Republican regime. The Constitutional rule of law must be enforced to provide the universal altruism essential for good governance: We can only love God by loving others as we love ourselves, including those of other races and religions.
As the world’s myriad religions continue to evolve, they must become more universal and altruistic to conform with reason and advances in knowledge. When ancient religions cling to the inerrancy and infallibility of ancient scriptures they are doomed to the dustbin of history, as are fundamentalist church doctrines never taught by Jesus. For Christianity to survive, its exclusivist church doctrines must be subordinated to the universal altruism taught by Jesus.
For Christianity to become relevant to our times, the church must promote the common good over partisan objectives. That will require Americans to diversify their current polarized Congress with more partisan diversity to promote the common good. That will require the church to promote the universal and altruistic moral teachings of Jesus.
Trump, Netanyahu and Putin are demagogues who have exploited their nationalized religions to promote their political power. Jesus never asserted his divinity, or that God favored one religion or nation over others. He called his disciples to follow him as God’s universal Word, not to worship him as a Trinitarian God; and the Crusades illustrated how Christian religious exclusivity has promoted religious hatred and violence among Jews, Christians and Muslims.
Notes:
On Trump and Netanyahu Steering Toward an Ugly World, Together, see https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/opinion/trump-netanyahu-united-states-israel-autocracy.html.
On Musings of a Maverick Methodist on a Journey of Faith to Universalism, see https://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2025/01/musings-of-maverick-methodist-on.html.
On How Trump is turning American politics into a circus, see What Trump Cost America at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/opinion/trump-tariffs-pause-china.html.
On Why Criticism of Netanyahu’s Militant Zionism is not Antisemitic see
https://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2023/12/musings-on-why-criticism-of-netanyahus.html.
Richard Rohr is a universalist who has described “the horrible impact the doctrines of original sin and blood atonement of Jesus have had on Christian faith, including how God is depicted as a sadistic deity that needs payment before He can love His creation, and that nothing Jesus said, did, or taught in his lifetime means anything because his death is all that matters for our salvation.” Rohr asserts that “we must reject any theory of salvation that is based on violence, exclusion, social pressure, or moral coercion.” See Christian Universalism, meet The Universal Christ at https://christianuniversalist.org/2021/02/christian-universalism-meet-the-universal-christ/
On the Greatest Commandment as a Common Word of Faith, for Jews, Christains and Muslims, see
http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2015/01/the-greatest-commandment-common-word-of.html.
Universalism can reconcile progressive Christians, Jews and Muslims. While universalists are a minority in competing Abrahamic religions, they could be a reconciling force in promoting a universalist common word of faith. On universalism, see Universalism: A theology for the 21st century, by Forrest Church, November 5, 2001, at Universalism: A theology for the 21st century | UU World Magazine.
The Teachings of Jesus and Muhammad on Morality and Law is an interfaith study guide based on the teachings of Jesus and Muhammad taken from the Jefferson Bible. It’s posted in its entirety in the Resources at https://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com.
Thomas Jefferson considered “the teachings of Jesus as the most sublime moral code ever designed by man,” and Jefferson detested exclusivist church doctrines. https://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com.
In 1831 Alexis deTocqueville toured America and observed that its many Christian sects shared a “Christian morality” that produced common standards of political legitimacy that defined what is right, and imbued American politics with its moral authority. On the views of Thomas Jefferson and Alexis deTocqueville on the moral values of religion in American politics, see Religion, Moral Authority and Conflicting Concepts of Legitimacy (July 1, 2017) at http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2017/07/religion-moral-authority-and.html. See also Musings of a Maverick Methodist on a Universal and Altruistic Jesus, August 19, 2023, at http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2023/08/musings-of-maverick-methodist-on.html.
Carl Krieg has distinguished between The Political [exclusivist] Jesus and The Real [universal] Jesus at https://progressivechristianity.org/resource/the-political-jesus-and-the-real-jesus/.
The title of Robin Meyers’ book says it all: Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus (HarperCollins Publishers, 2009). Meyers spoke on this topic at the Barnes Symposium at the University of South Carolina on April 12, 2019. While Meyers is critical of the church, he was pastor of Mayflower Church, a large UCC congregation in Oklahoma City, for over 30 years.
For more emphasis on following the teachings of Jesus as the Logos and the universal word of God rather than limiting salvation to exclusivist Chritian beliefs in Christ as the alter ego of God and the atonement supports religious universalism and reconciliation. See Musings of a Maverick Methodist on Jesus as the Logos in John’s Gospel at http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2023/02/musings-of-maverick-methodist-on-jesus.html; see also, Musings of a Maverick Methodist on the Irony of the Logos in John’s Gospel at http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2023/02/musings-of-maverick-methodist-on-irony.html.
Dr. Rick Herrick has opined that “Jesus and God are one in the Gospel of John.” Most Christians believe that salvation is limited to those who believe that Jesus Christ was God in the flesh. It’s a deal most Christians can’t pass up since correct belief is all that’s required. “The first problem with this approach is that it’s an invention of the first century church with no ties to the Jesus of history; yet for 2,000 years the vast majority of Christians have based their faith on such exclusivist beliefs as the only means of salvation; but it has no historical validity.” An even bigger problem is that it’s an ideology with no connection to the heart.” It’s all about me, me, me and feeds the ego rather than helping to transform it to make it more open to the needs of others. Jesus is worshiped as a God, but not followed. This has made the church more a part of the world’s problems than a solution to them.” See https://progressivechristianity.org/resources/sadly-the-bible-is-the-problem/.
The Apostles’ Creed is taken from church doctrine and affirms exclusivist belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ as a requirement for salvation. A Modern Affirmation is based on the universal and altruistic teachings of Jesus and emphasizes the service of love as God’s Word:
The Apostles’ Creed affirms belief in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord: who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; the third day he rose from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
A Modern Affirmation affirms belief in God the Father, infinite in wisdom, power and love, whose mercy is over all his works, and whose will is ever directed to his children’s good. We believe in Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of man, the gift of the Father’s unfailing grace, the ground of our hope, and the promise of our deliverance from sin and death. We believe in the Holy Spirit as the divine presence in our lives, whereby we are kept in perpetual remembrance of the truth of Christ, and find strength and help in time of need. We believe that this faith should manifest itself in the service of love as set forth in the example of our blessed Lord, to the end that the kingdom of God may come upon the earth. Amen.
On Musings on Whether the Atonement Doctrine Is God’s Word, or a Christian Myth, see
https://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2024/09/musings-on-whether-atonement-doctrine.html (9/21/24). If Jesus didn’t sacrifice himself to atone for our sins or to appease the Father, what did he sacrifice for? I think Jesus sacrificed for the same causes or values as did other prophets over the centuries. For what MLK Jr. died for; or Mahatma Gandhi; or Abraham Lincoln; or Sojourner Truth; or other victims of war defending one’s family or community: For the cause of justice; for the cause of compassion. Jesus was killed by the Roman Empire (as were thousands who opposed its values) and with the help of some people in his religious tribe who were in cahoots with the Empire. He was inviting people and especially the poor to their own dignity and nobility; and Empires as a rule do not remind the subjugated how noble they are, and how to love themselves deeply, and others as well.
Jesus was aligning himself with the prophets of old who talked about justice flowing like a river and the coming together of all peoples, rich and poor alike. He sacrificed for the sake of awakening us all to our powers of compassion, a divine attribute and the “secret name for God” in Judaism. Thus, “Be you compassionate as your Father in heaven is compassionate” (Lk 6:36). He was calling us to our divinity therefore and looking ahead to a time when humans would choose to be god-like, to be lovers, to practice forgiveness and moving beyond hatred and vengeance and war and power-over into a realm (a “kingdom”) of power-with, of caring and of creativity, another god-like attribute that humans share as “images of God.” He obviously resisted his premature death, his prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane prove that. So he did not choose to make himself a sacrifice but he was committed to bringing about a new realm, a new vision, a new “kingdom/queendom” of the divine and he was not naïve enough to think it would be welcomed by all, least of all by the powers that be in politics (the Roman empire) or in religion insofar as they sided with the empire. The Last Supper demonstrates how he linked his coming death to the great stories of his ancestors around Passover and Exodus and liberation which come at a price. His (or the gospel writers or both) invoking Psalm 22 on the cross testify to this. As Gustavo Gutierrez puts it in the Conclusion of his book On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent: “The final words of Jesus—‘My God, my God, why hast though forsaken me?’ (Matt.27:46; Mark 15:34)—speak of the suffering and loneliness of one who feels abandoned by the hand of God.” He “makes the rest of the psalm his own and one can search the whole psalm to understand the meaning of his lament.” The psalm “expresses the cruel loneliness experienced by a man of deep faith....an innocent man who has been treated unjustly. ...Jesus did not compose this psalm, he inherited it....The important thing is that Jesus made it his own and, while nailed to the cross, offered to the Father the suffering and abandonment of all humankind. This radical communion with the suffering of human beings brought him down to the deepest level of history at the very moment when his life was ending.” (pp. 97-101)
The promise of Resurrection puts him and us on the side of hope overcoming despair and on the side of Resurrection, not death, having the last word. (Dr. Matthew Fox)
