Does Trump Have More In Common With Jesus Or With Don Corleone?

John Pavlovitz had an Easter Sunday tweet this morning: "It's impossible to be devoted to the Jesus of the Scriptures, while refusing refugees, expelling immigrants, demonizing Muslims, vilifying brown people, worshiping political power, and neglecting the poor." And he pointed his followers to a post he wrote in February, The Heresy of Christian Nationalism. But earlier in February, there was another Pavlovitz post easier to fixate on: It’s Time Anyone Stopped Calling Donald Trump a Christian-- a train wreck kind of fixation. "Even in the early days of the Presidential campaign," he wrote, "it was a ludicrous idea: that Donald Trump was now a Christian; that he’d miraculously 'found Jesus' right at the time he needed to pull in millions of Evangelical voters. Never mind that his life showed an open contempt for most of the things the Jesus of the Gospels lived and preached: humility, generosity, respect, empathy, kindness, peace. The high profile-evangelists in his corner assured their rightly alarmed flocks, that behind the scenes Donnie was changed man, a 'baby Christian' who’d now seen the light and was making his way down the narrow road of faith to lead us all to the Promised Land (where curiously America was first and everyone was white.)"

The opportunistic religious leaders began publicly framing the vile, profane, relentlessly offensive Trump as a flawed, imperfect tool of God‚ and American church folk raised on a faith of fear and conditioned to believe they are perpetually in danger—began buying it. Little by little, it became okay, even sensible to call Donald Trump a Christian. (Talk about a miracle.)

And for someone who has served as a pastor for twenty years, the transformation was astounding and disheartening to witness. Millions of fundamentalists who’d previously spent their days parsing out Bible verses to condemn the LGBTQ community, Muslims, entertainers, Atheists, Democrats, suddenly became a people of Grace. They got really liberal with the Scriptures. They lectured those of us who questioned it all “not to judge lest we be judged”, and heaped shame upon us for bringing up example after example of the man’s hypocrisy, because “God looks at the heart” and how dare we assess another’s professed faith. (Somehow these things were never in play over the eight years they spent daily crucifying Barack Obama, but perhaps the issue there was one not of religion, but of pigmentation.)

But this far into Donald Trump’s tenure, Christians need to speak the truth that sets them free: Donald Trump is not a Christian. He can do every ceremonial, photo-op Bible Study he wants.

Yes, he may have shown up in a church during the campaign (looking as comfortable as a cow in a slaughterhouse), and he may have given some lip service prayer to one of his preacher pals while golfing, and he may have bamboozled scores of Christians already dying to believe it so they could make peace with their vote—but he is not a man following Jesus. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks these words:

“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.”  Mt 5:15-20

Jesus says that we can judge people. We should evaluate the things we can see. We can measure devotion to God by what is manifested outwardly. We look at the “fruit.”

What is the fruit of Donald Trump’s life, of his marriages, his business dealings, his campaign, of his Presidency?

What is the fruit of eliminating healthcare for tens of millions of poor people?

What is the fruit of tear-gassing refugees and separating their families?

What is the fruit of walling off Mexico and demanding they pay for the gesture?


What is the fruit of driving an oil pipeline through sacred Native American land?


What is the fruit of filling your Cabinet with billionaires?

What is the fruit of demonizing and banning Muslims?

What is the fruit of appointing a white supremacist to the highest level of government?

It’s rotten fruit, that’s what it is.

It’s exactly the kind of greedy, bloated, bitter, violent, self-centered, myopic existence that Jesus spent his life calling us to reject. So no, I don’t know the President’s heart or his inner confession of faith, but I have eyes and they see no love or benevolence or compassion-- and that does matter to Jesus.

Christians need to stop insisting that Donald Trump is a Christian if they really care at all about people coming to know Christ. If that is the greatest burden on their hearts, using this man is tantamount to spiritual treason. It is a perversion of the Gospels that provides such a dissonance to the bystander, as to make Christ all but invisible. Until he says or does anything that remotely resembling him, we need to stop using him and Jesus in the same breath because it distorts Jesus by association.

Christian, you can continue to support this man, but don’t say you’re doing it because he is a man of God, a follower of Jesus, someone striving for Christlikeness. The putrid, stinking fruit of his life-- says otherwise. 

Or, in the words of Guardian reporter David Smith, writing today from Washington, DC, "After Mueller, the president is being compared to mobsters from John Gotti to Tony Soprano. And yet he remains in office... [Mueller's report] portrays him as a serial liar willing to abuse power, shred norms and bend the rule of law in a White House rotten to the core. Amid this culture of malfeasance and mendacity, trusted lieutenants are expected to demonstrate absolute loyalty, up to and including obstructing justice to save the president’s skin. 'He conducts himself like a New Jersey mob boss who is unconcerned about asking the people around him to conduct unethical or legally challenging behaviour,' said Kurt Bardella, former spokesperson and senior adviser for the House oversight and government reform committee. 'Truth and accuracy just don’t factor into his thought process at all. The demands for loyalty and fealty are like an organised crime network. Instead of the John Gotti family, it’s the Trump family and his solders are the Republican members of Congress who protect him.'... Mueller’s report depicted a man dangling pardons to acolytes, turning vicious against those who refused to kiss his ring and frantically scrambling to conceal evidence as law enforcement closed in. He appeared paranoid about who was on his side and who might betray him."

Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “I thought it was a shocking report. I don’t think we’ve had a president in the modern era who’s been revealed to be as coarse and brutish and willing to break the law as Donald Trump.

“The criminal intent is quite comparable to what Richard Nixon engaged in. Trump was able to get away with it because his staff said no. Nixon’s staff did the Watergate break-in and participated in the cover-up.”

The investigation spelled out just how far Trump has gone in pushing the limits of the presidency and making others complicit. Jacobs added: “What concerns me about this moment is the message it sends to future presidents: Trump was able to act in a lawless way and solicit help from a foreign rival. One shudders to think how future presidents will act. What’s the deterrent?”

As faithfully chronicled in The Sopranos, the most skilled crime bosses manage to remain untouchable even as their captains and footsoldiers are picked off. Trump managed to resist sitting down for an in-person interview with the special counsel.

The report’s appendix includes 12 pages of Trump’s written responses to queries from Mueller’s team. There were more than 30 instances when Trump offered variations of “I don’t recall”, answers Mueller deemed “inadequate”. He considered issuing a subpoena to force the president to appear but decided to avoid a long legal battle.

But there was another striking moment in the report that seemed out of character. Mueller notes that Trump was so agitated at the special counsel’s appointment on 17 May 2017 that he slumped back in his chair and declared: “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.”

A rare show of self-doubt from an otherwise shameless Don. Corleone and Soprano would not have approved.