The primary election is this Tuesday.
On that day, people who didn't go down to the courthouse early to vote, like me, and those who didn't vote absentee, and are voting, will cast their votes.
I've been following politics since at least 1972, when Richard Nixon won his second term in office. I can remember doing so as a kid. I was nine. Teno Roncalio, a Catholic lawyer from Sweetwater County, a veteran of Operation Overlord, and a Democrat, was our Congressman. Gale McGee, a University of Wyoming professor, and a Democrat was one of our Senators. The other was Cliff Hansen, a rancher from Teton County when Teton County still had real ranches, and a Republican, was our other Senator. Stan Hathaway, a Republican Episcopalian at the time, who later became Secretary of the Interior and a Catholic, was our Governor.
Yep, that's right. We had more Democrats in Congress than Republicans. Being called a "Democrat" wasn't a slur.
In the 1980s, a very conservative and extremely religious Wyoming politician who was LDS attempted to have a bill passed targeting pornography sales. He was widely lampooned. HE had not, however campaigned on his faith, even though it obviously had informed his legislative effort.
I can't recall, until Foster Friess run for Governor in 2018, any Wyoming politician making their faith central to their campaign. If you knew much about candidates, you often knew what their faith was, but there was never anyone who boldly claimed "I'm a Christian" as a reason to vote for them. People probably would have been offended if they had, and of course Wyoming was and is the least religious state in the Union.
Something that did happen in that time frame was the arrival of the new Evangelical churches. I pass one every day on my way to work, and two gigantic ones have been built. I know very little about the one that I pass, which proclaims itself to be an "Evangelical Free Church", thereby proclaiming a denomination without realizing that its done so, and even less about the two gigantic ones, other than that one has a huge following, including members who are openly living in sin or violating Christ's injunction about divorce and remarriage.
With their arrival, and the campaign of Freiss, who wasn't from here and was never of here, and the evolution in national politics, we now see Evangelical proclamations thickly made, but with the adherence to the message of Christ thinly understood. One Natrona County legislature, newly imported from Illinois, Jeanette Ward, proclaimed her Christianity while asserting in the legislature that we are in fact not our brother's keeper. Numerous politicians in the hinterland have claimed that the Constitution is divinely inspired, a minority Protestant and minority LDS view that seemingly has wide acceptance in the populist right. A candidate in this district proclaimed his Christianity, and his wife, in his support did the same in a mailer, while making statements that are outright lies.
Now someone approached him and said, “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?”He answered him, “Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” He asked him, “Which ones?” And Jesus replied, “ ‘You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and your mother’; and ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
The young man said to him, “All of these I have observed. What do I still lack?”
Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to [the] poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Matthew Chapter 19.
We are all familiar, of course, with the uncomfortable comment from Christ that its harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. This statement is so disquieting that one entire branch of Christianity, the heath and wealth gospel group, has dispensed entirely with focusing on it. They aren't alone, however. I heard plenty of homilies in the 70s and 80s, probably the 90s, from Priets who discussed "spiritual poverty".
I don't hear that much anymore from Apostolic Christians, whose clerics have become increasingly more orthodox.
And I think the warming is real. Vast wealth corrupts. You only have to look at the impact of the vastly wealthy to realize that, whether it be Elon Musk or Donald Trump and their personal morals.
People who look at Trump and see him as a devout Christians are fools.
But then, a lot of American Christians are Christian Light.
How does this relate here?
Well, in a culture loudly proclaiming itself to be Christian, that of the American political right, we see an awful lot of people whose adherence to the basic tenants of the Gospel are absent. That's why one right wing commentator could seriously maintain the Hawk Tuah Girl was exhibiting a conservative value (pleasuring her man, she stated), rather than seeing her for what she is, a sad example of a person whose become debased. Whole sectors, however, of the far right have become debased in various degrees, which is not to say that the left is a beacon of moral purity.
Seeing either party as a Christian one is foolish.
Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.
And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives.
They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law. Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonor, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they, rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. They are attacked by the Jews as aliens, they are persecuted by the Greeks, yet no one can explain the reason for this hatred.
To speak in general terms, we may say that the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body. As the soul is present in every part of the body, while remaining distinct from it, so Christians are found in all the cities of the world, but cannot be identified with the world. As the visible body contains the invisible soul, so Christians are seen living in the world, but their religious life remains unseen. The body hates the soul and wars against it, not because of any injury the soul has done it, but because of the restriction the soul places on its pleasures. Similarly, the world hates the Christians, not because they have done it any wrong, but because they are opposed to its enjoyments.
Christians love those who hate them just as the soul loves the body and all its members despite the body's hatred. It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together, and similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together. The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amidst perishable things, while awaiting the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians flourish under persecution. Such is the Christian’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself."
From a letter to Diognetus (Nn. 5-6; Funk, 397-401)
I'm fearful of what this election holds in more ways than one. One thing I'm afraid of is that the co-opting of Christianity by the Trumpists will harm it. The only really Christian party in the race is the American Solidarity Party, but it doesn't stand a chance. Some elements of Christian Nationalism are actually deeply Christian, with an understanding of Apostolic Christianity, whereas some parts are American Protestant, which have an erroneous view of the end of the Apostolic Age. They are not compatible. The deeper National Conservatives, for that matter, are an insurgent group within the far right seeking to slip in, take over, and effect a sort of social revolution. They saw J. D. Trump as their Trojan Horse, but thought they were through the gates of Troy too early.
Real Christian movements do rise up periodically. But that's what they do, rise up. They aren't imposed down. Some of that has already occured, with the far left reacting strongly to it. But that doesn't seem to be appreciated here.
I don't see a lot of really deep Christianity out there in the political field. If I did, frankly, quite a few of those things that the Democratic left have proclaimed as weird would be practiced, which may be why J. D. Vance, for all the negative attention he's attracted, is the only really honest figure in the Trump camp. He does believe the traditional things he says, I'm quite sure, currently regarded as "weird" or not. But then, like the members of the New Apostolic Reformation, which he's not party of, he's seemingly willing to make common cause with lies in order to try to advance what he regards as a greater good, something that's always tactically iffy and morally reprehensible.
Satan, we're told, is the father of lies. Lying, we're told, is a sin. In Catholic theology at least, it can be a mortal sin, which has not deterred at least one Catholica elected official here from campaigning on a whopper during the last election. Lying always has a bad end.
Lying will have some sort of existential bad end for those now doing it. Lying to yourself does as well. You can't really be "a devout Christian" with multiple marriages, or when shacked up, or when favoring your career over others or over nature, or while prioritizing wealth,
And if you are seeking to transform society, you have to give society a reason to transform. Simply declaring that you are on the side of God doesn't really do that.
