How Pope Leo has become a quiet hero amid Trumpian attempts to warp the Christian message
Donald Trump and his followers, and the “woke” Pope Leo and his church appear to be engaged in an undeclared battle over who gets to define ‘Christianity’
History tells us that in times of rising fascism – or political movements with strong fascist elements – there are four ways to go. We can roll over and join the movement. We can retreat into private life and even into prayer, hoping that it will all go away. We can compromise and cut deals, in an effort to ensure our own survival. Or we can resist, possibly at a very high cost.
Even if it is a minority choice, though, resistance matters, as the source of those alternative visions of the future that point the way forward, in tough times. That is why commentators opposed to the Trump/Maga movement in the United States, and to all its ugly spin-offs across the planet, are currently scanning the horizon so anxiously in search of well-organised, high profile and sustainable points of resistance to Trump’s ideology and attitudes; and increasingly, their eyes tend to light on the slight but increasingly impressive figure of Pope Leo XIV.
Elected in May of this year, and born in Chicago in 1955, the first-ever American Pope now seems to be moving the whole Catholic church, across the world, into a position that could hardly be more clearly opposed to the Maga movement and all that it represents.
Interfaith understanding
This week, he made his first international visit as Pope, to Turkiye and Lebanon; his message was one of Christian unity and interfaith understanding, and of the dangers of the kind of fundamentalism – whether Christian, Islamic or of any other faith – that preaches and condones violence.
He has also spoken strongly, like his predecessor Francis, in favour of social justice and against grotesque inequalities of wealth; and in favour of radical change to combat the threat of climate change to the Earth’s natural riches.
And this matters, because in the United States, the UK and elsewhere, politicians and activists on the far-right are increasingly attempting to claim the western Christian tradition as their own; indeed it’s hardly an exaggeration to say that the Maga President and his followers, and the “woke” Pope and his church, are engaged in an undeclared battle, this advent, as to who gets to define ‘Christianity’ in our time.
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Bigotry and hate
In Scotland, of course, given our sectarian history, we should be used to groups with no real interest in religion, who none the less use religious allegiance as a cover for bigotry and hate-mongering.
Nonetheless, it is hard not to gaze in incredulity at the spectacle of Trump, his inner circle, and his followers across the world, laying some kind of claim to a Christian heritage whose values they evidently despise, and constantly trample underfoot.
No matter what kind of Christian upbringing we received, most Scots of my generation – growing up in the 1950s and 60s – received a pretty thorough grounding in New Testament values; in the idea of Jesus Christ as a preacher of love, peace and humility, and of profound fellowship with and care for those who are poor or sick, or outcast by society. Blessed are the meek, we chanted, for they shall inherit the Earth.
To Trump and his followers, though, “Christian” is simply a culture-war signifier, conjuring up the old pre-1960s’ America of their reactionary dreams. Bereft of a sense of irony, they simply seem not to notice that almost every word they utter and policy they enact – the brutal and divisive treatment of migrants and strangers in their midst, the impatience with law and justice, the blatant greed and obsession with lucrative deals, the vengeful lack of forgiveness for past wrongs, the graceless self-aggrandisement, the instinctive bullying of underdogs and cosying up to dictators and thugs – directly contradicts the teachings of the faith they claim to defend.
And now, the laughable claim that followers of this hate-based creed are somehow “defending our Christian culture” is also spreading across the UK. It’s coming to something, when a primary school in Inverness feels compelled to cancel its nativity play, because it attracted serious threats and online hate – about as far as it is possible to be, from the central values of New Testament Christianity – for likening the plight of Mary and Joseph to that of homeless refugees.
‘I was hungry and you fed me’
If I were a betting woman, confronted by this tussle over the West’s Christian heritage, I would be inclined back Pope Leo, and his view of Christian faith, to outlast Trump’s desperate raid on its meaning by decades, if not centuries.
All human institutions are flawed, of course, and Christian churches – including the Catholic Church – have been fiercely and rightly challenged, in recent years, for their many failures to protect vulnerable women and children from abuse by their own clergy and religious institutions.
Yet still, in a world searching for places to start in mounting a strong opposition to the brutalism and cruelty of the Maga era, it seems that churches, and religious communities of other faiths, could yet have a vital role to play.
“I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, I was a stranger, and you took me in,” says Jesus, according to St Matthew, adding that “insomuch as you have done this for one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me”. I don’t suppose Trump would understand this at all, obsessed as he is with hierarchies of importance, with who is a winner, and who a ‘loser’.
Yet whether we base our sense of human equality and worth on religious faith, or on deep humanist conviction, I think we can still recognise in these words, and in Pope Leo’s quiet adherence to them, a truth on which decent and enduring political futures have been built in the past, and will be built again, enduring long after the palaces of lies, hate and greed constructed by leaders like Donald Trump have crumbled into dust.
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