Long ago, and far away, when I was serving a congregation in Hartford, CT, on my way to work one morning, I was of course doing my daily devotions in Dunkin’ Donuts. I heard a crash outside. There a car had run over the curb and smashed into another car that was parked right in front of DD’s. I was able to read the motto on the front plate of the car that had run over the curb. It said: “God is my Co-Pilot.”
That license-plate announced a truth about what is sometimes called American Civil Religion. We hold this truth to be self-evident: God is on our side. I would wager a single lottery ticket on the veracity of that judgment. Certainly, many of the true-blue followers of Donald Trump do believe that. Although I, for one, who have come to think of Trump as a new Hitler, also believe that God is on my side (or, truth be known, I hold that belief Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays).
Okay, then, who’s right? Your Trumpist uncle? Or the likes of me? Such questions take me back to the days when I was grading sophomore papers. I would sometimes write in a margin: “Is this the question you really want to ask?”
Well, no. Shift gears. When it comes to such questions, the first one, as has often been observed, ought to be this, biblically speaking: whose side is God on? Answer: neither yours nor mine, surely not on the side of the rich and the powerful who are running our government today. It’s the poor, y’all, the poor! Forget about Trump. And, yes, forget about you and me. The biblical take is clearly this: first and foremost, God’s on the side of the poor.
At least, this is what the one whom some of us think of as the Mother of God apparently thought when she sang her lullaby about the God of her newborn: “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich empty away.” (Luke 1:52f.)