An address delivered at a worship service on Zoom
for Ipswich Unitarians, March 7th 2021 by John Midgley
Love is the doctrine of this church.
The quest for Truth is its sacrament, and service is its prayer.
To dwell together in peace,
To seek knowledge in freedom,
To serve human need,
To the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the Divine -
Thus do we covenant with each other and with God.
Griswold Williams
The last few years of the world’s history have been, to a large extent dominated by the presence of the now
former President of the United States, Donald J Trump.
One way of viewing Donald Trump’s rise to become President, and his subsequent decline and fall and trial in the Senate, is to look at his ‘religion’, which I have put in inverted commas for reasons which will become clear.
The first phase of his religion was based on the preaching of Norman Vincent Peale (1898 - 1993) and his book The Power of Positive Thinking. It is a book that has sold in millions. There may be some among you who have read it and found it helpful.
According to an extremely revealing documentary which I watched some months ago (PBS America: The Choice 2016, Clinton v. Trump. Alas, no longer available), Trump did not simply discover Peale’s book and find it helpful. The book, and the ideas it contained were thrust into him when he was a boy, by his very domineering father Fred, who was intensely ambitious, both for himself and son Donald.
Trump senior held the ‘racehorse theory’ of life and work. “There are winners and losers. Never be a loser.” He dinned this in to Donald: “There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who succeed and those who fail. You, my boy, must NEVER, EVER be a failure!”
Donald’s father took him to the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, in New York, where Rev. Norman Vincent Peale was the highly successful minister, preaching what is usually described as the Gospel of Success. The theology of this claims that God wants people to “be 100% alive! Be a success! You can solve all problems. Be a winner!” Donald Trump’s first marriage and the funerals of both his parents were held at this church, and he has in the past called Norman Vincent Peale his mentor. Was this, then, his religion?
Initially, it seems it was. What we have here is an approach to living that has some truth in it but becomes dangerous if taken to excess. This is what Donald Trump has done. It begins with, ‘Take a positive view of things and you are much more likely to succeed in what you want to do.’ True enough. All the signs are that the approach that Trump, both father and son took was to follow Peale’s method and imprint the idea of success on their minds, absolutely, at every turn.
Next stage: Never allow the thought of failure to enter your mind, only success. Never admit to the possibility of failure; never admit to anything going wrong, which came to mean - never admit to doing wrong. To the young Trump, this soon began to mean, everything you do is right, because it is what you want to do, in order to succeed.
As an adult, Donald Trump’s business track-record became in fact a mixture, both of successes and situations that failed. For example. As a property owner, he was sued for racism in selecting tenants, but, with help from a hard-hitting lawyer he denied any wrong doing. After losing a court battle, he settled and paid compensation, then simply denied that he had done wrong, claimed it as a success and walked away. Morality and truth had got lost along the way. Right and wrong did not come into it. All he wanted was success, supposedly God’s will for him, in the name of positive thinking.
In his time as President, we watched this put into operation. We saw him dismissing any reports that made him look bad, weak, in the wrong or unsuccessful as “fake news”. Reports of low numbers attending his inauguration, for example, and, in time negative poll ratings were “fake news”. To his mind, they must be fake because they imply failure, and failure is never admissible, only success. And when his November 2020 election campaign failed, we saw how he behaved. He conjured up the fantasy that it had all been rigged and stolen from him and led the insurrection that tried to take it back. He has faced a trial in Congress, albeit in his absence. The truth will out, we often say. And so it has. The damage, including the deaths of those killed during the insurrection, has been enormous.
I find great difficulty in calling this a religion. I see it as a state of such unreality as to be something close to a serious personality disorder. But anyone openly critical of him becomes a victim of Trump’s vindictiveness.
This is certainly a long way away from Christian moral teaching or any other moral teaching. Trump discards any ideas of humility, repentance, asking forgiveness, ‘turning the other cheek’ and being forgiving. Lost, too, are the words of the apostle Paul, “I say to every man and woman among you, not to think more highly of yourself than you ought to think.” (Rom. 12 v3.) And it shows a total distain for the concept of Truth. The Washington Post, a highly respected newspaper, kept track of Trump’s lies during his Presidency, and they numbered thousands.
Norman Vincent Peale attracted a massive following in his day, but was in the end condemned by theologians and psychologists as promoting a dangerous form of little more than self-hypnosis. Eminent theologian Reinhold Niebuhr criticised him, as did eminent Unitarian minister Rev. A. Powell Davies of All Souls Unitarian Church, Washington.
Dipping into politics in the 1950s, Peale took a very right-wing stance and famously clashed with the Unitarian Adlai Stevenson, a 1952 candidate for the Presidency, up against Eisenhower. Peale stated that Adlai Stevenson was not fit to be President because he had been divorced. He later said that John F Kennedy was not fit to be President because he was Roman Catholic. Adlai Stevenson’s riposte was to say, “I find St. Paul appealing but St. Peale appalling!”
Yes, I can agree, there is no value in habitual pessimism, always taking a negative view, constantly putting oneself down, imagining the worst, ‘beating yourself up’ as the common phrase has it. But there is virtue in admitting one’s mistakes and shortcomings (sins, if you like) and coming to terms with them. Not easy, but it is truthful, and in the words of John’s gospel, “the truth shall make you free.” The philosopher Rousseau called it the search for amour propre, appropriate love, an uplifting self-respect, balanced with realistic self-appraisal.
But there is more. Once he was in office as President, Trump appointed a chaplain, in fact several of them. They are all on the conservative evangelical wing of the Christian church, and one of them at least, Paula White, is a Pentecostalist preacher. Pentecostalists are those who take a literal view of the bible and believe, not only in the Holy Spirit that appeared to the disciples on the day of Pentecost, but some of them also believe that the world is populated by spirits, lots of them, some good and some evil. During a Presidential election campaign rally, Paula White was filmed calling down the angels to come and attack the evil spirits that were prompting people to vote against Trump. Paula White’s preaching is not really bible based. She believes she has special revelations directly from God. During this near hysterical incantation, she indulged in glossolalia, ‘speaking in tongues’ an outpouring of meaningless words, gobbledegook, that only she understood – or claimed to understand (available via Google – Paula White speaking in tongues. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/11/05/paula-white-trumps-spiritual-adviser-african-south-american-angels/6173576002/ ).
That is the most recent manifestation of the religion of Donald J Trump.
There is a sense, I think, in which as Unitarians we could be grateful to Donald Trump. He shows us what a Unitarian is, by showing us the very opposite of a Unitarian. His way of life is devoid of truthfulness, whereas we sing and pray and talk of Truth, a great deal. We do this so often we hardly know we are doing it! It seems so natural and obvious. And we speak of Reason and Tolerance.
His religion is devoid of Reason. He has no reason to think he won the 2020 election.
Speaking in tongues is a non-rational form of religion.
I have never heard the word Tolerance cross his lips.
He has no notion of the idea that the Truth will set you free.
I can understand someone reading The Power of Positive Thinking and finding it helpful. But to take it to extremes…? No.
Rather, positive thinking balanced with honesty. No-one can quarrel with that. To repeat the point: Trump has focused on a truth, taken it to excess and killed the Truth. Hardly a religion.
For us, Love is the doctrine of this church, and the quest for Truth is its sacrament.
Amen.