April 15thA Quiet Distinction
To my dear TFMC family,
To be clear: Donald Trump is not Jesus. JD Vance does not get to tell the Pope that his theology is wrong. And whatever Pete Hegseth is doing in Iran, it is neither a Holy Crusade nor divinely supported.
These claims of divine authority for political and military acts are exactly what our Anabaptist forebears warned against when they saw the state church merging with power. The marrying of church and politics is a dangerous thing. I believe, as did our forebears, that the church and politics must remain separate matters.
A quick refresher on Anabaptist history: The movement was born from a radical critique of the union of church and state. Early Anabaptists witnessed how the 'state church'—at that time the Roman Catholic Church—was so closely wedded to the politics of the day. They watched as church policies were manipulated by state interests. Preferential treatment was given to generous political donors who paid for indulgences—financial donations to the church that functioned essentially as bribes for blessings and spiritual favours. They also saw how the message of Jesus was co-opted to suit the powerful, even as it was used to oppress the weak.
And while history might not repeat itself, it certainly does rhyme. What our forebears rejected in the 16th century is now being celebrated in the 21st. It started as a prayer meeting with Donald Trump being compared to Jesus in his great ‘suffering.’ Next came an Easter social media message depicting Trump as Jesus, followed by a new image today of Jesus embracing Donald Trump.
The current President has made no secret of his desire to dictate theology to the Roman Catholic Church, openly criticizing Pope Leo XIV while parroting piety to swing voters and feed his own insatiable hunger for adulation. The Christian Nationalist movement in the US seems to have no problem with this merger, except perhaps for the blasphemous image of Trump as Jesus Christ.
This, sadly, is not new; it is just more open than it was. The intertwining of American politics and the Christian church reached a defining turning point in the early 1980s under Ronald Reagan, who cemented an alliance between the GOP and white evangelical Protestants. Though the foundations were laid decades earlier by neo-evangelical leaders and galvanized in the 70s, it was Reagan who transformed these disparate grievances into a cohesive voting bloc. He fundamentally reshaped the political landscape, binding the fate of the GOP to the agenda of the Religious Right. And the line from Reagan to Trump is pretty straight.
So while this fusion is not new, it is certainly more flagrant today. And while we, as Anabaptist-Mennonites, may advocate from our understanding of how Jesus modelled God’s dream, the church has no place suggesting that its theology should become state policy. We believe, as Jesus taught, that the Kingdom of God operates on a different logic entirely: Peace is the true Strength. Justice is the ultimate Victory. Love is the greatest Power.
I believe that the Anabaptist-Mennonite church will continue to be important and relevant to the world. In a world where power is exerted through violence and war, we believe that Jesus’ non-violent approach to conflict brings a peace that power could never achieve. In a world marked by greater injustice, we believe that God’s dream—God’s kingdom—is one that places the least and the last first, while the privileged are relegated to the back of the line. And we continue to hold the belief that the politics of Jesus are fundamentally incompatible with the politics of the world.
Yours,
Craig Janzen Neufeld, Pastor