Preaching the Cross in the Trump Era

A fool's errand for God

But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness.

1 Corinthians 1:23

What does this passage mean in our current context?

What does it mean for a pastor to preach and a church to live by Christ dying on a cross, especially in light of the following tweet?

Which was later topped by this tweet on the official White House account no less:

I’m not going to start making references to the Nazis or Hitler as many have done, but it is hard to downplay this: it’s serious. I don’t know what it all means, but it isn’t good and I doubt it will end well.

But what does preaching the gospel make a difference?

I think it does.

For the last six months, I’ve been part of a group called the Iowa Preacher’s Project, a cohort of pastors from various traditions who come together to support each other in preaching the gospel. Over and over, the phrase that many of us associate with the project talk about is preaching Christ crucified. As Donald Trump was being inaugurated, the cohort was in Orange County for the Winter Retreat. I could only hope for the best and pray that God would guide the president.

Of course, it didn’t turn out that way because…Trump.

The executive orders, the slashing of federal jobs, and the foreign policy moves are having their effect and will impact the lives of ordinary people.

So how do you deal with all of this as a pastor?

One way is to join the “resistance” and participate in demonstrations. But I think many of those actions are ineffective, saying more about what one is against than what one is for. 

You could do what Karl Barth is rumored to have said about preaching with the Bible in one hand a newspaper in the other. But as Jason Micheli has said, too often preachers are tempted to preach with the newspaper (or smartphone since this is 2025) in both hands and just dispense with the Bible altogether.

Since I grew up in the black church, I know and accept that the church can and should speak out against injustice just Martin Luther King and countless others have. And yet, I also know how that tradition can be co-opted by partisan politics and and up speaking for one party and not truly being prophetic.

I need to stress something here: I am not saying that any of these options are bad or that one should not do any of them. I think there is value in participating in demonstrations, including current events in sermons, or clearly speaking out prophetically on social issues. But I think these approaches need to be the fruit of our faith, not the root. What grounds us in a time when so many things are being uprooted and disrupted? What grounds us when you feel this sense of anxiety in the pit of your stomach?

I think the answer lies in two essays, one secular and one religious.

First the secular. In his weekly Friday column, Jonah Goldberg describes Donald Trump in a way that a friend has described: as a mafia don. Goldberg makes sense of how Trump acts like a mobster and how that affects how he sees the world:

How does a mob boss act? Well, in broad brushstrokes, he treats his enemies—or rivals—with respect. The heads of the five families are like little monarchs or feudal lords. On their turf, they have, well, sovereignty. You must ask for permission to do things in their territory or deal with people under their authority. Meanwhile, when it comes to people in your own organization or network or territory, you can do what you want, to one extent or another. There are rules—made men and all that—but sh-t also rolls downhill. The key is that your allies, friends, and normal citizens under your authority must show you deference and respect. It’s a different kind of respect than that of an equal from another crime family. It should be obedient and deferential.

He continues:

Anyway, this is basically how I think Trump sees the world. The American “family” is in charge in the Americas, Western Europe, Japan, and Australia, more or less. He’s the boss of that family. Xi Jinping is the boss of another “family.” Putin is the boss of his “family.” They are owed respect because they are strong, manly, powerful. And Trump wants to be seen the same way. This view illuminates why he sees nothing wrong with belittling and intimidating allies while sucking up to enemies or adversaries. His underbosses, his clients, need to get in line and show more deference to the head of the family. Tariffs are, in his mind, a way for America to get a bigger cut from other families, to gain tribute or sell access to American rackets. I think this is why he thinks NATO is essentially a kind of protection racket, and why member states aren’t “kicking up” enough to the boss. It also helps explain why he thinks Russia and China deserve deference on their turf.

I remember back in the first Trump administration, a phrase that was made common about Trump and his allies was “the cruelty is the point.” But I don’t think that’s true. I don’t the point of Trump or Musk or others is simple cruelty. Instead, I think the point is power. Cruelty is about exerting power over people. Trump wants to see himself as power and he also sees American power as a projection of himself. He is attracted to other men that he see as power, such as Russian leader Vladamir Putin and Chinese Primeir Xi. It’s also why he disrespects nations that aren’t as powerful like Ukraine or Canada. Neither of these nations commands the respect that a Russia or China does, so why treat them as equals?

It’s also why his allowing Elon Musk to run roughshod over the federal government. These workers were disloyal in his eyes and not powerful. Same with the dismantling of foreign aid. Why help weak countries or NGOs?

So that’s the secular understanding, what’s the religious understanding?

Ben Crosby, an Episcopal priest studying in Canada, wrote a fascinating piece in September 2024 on the cross in the current political context. He begins with a quote from Martin Luther giving advice to Philip Melanchthon when three questionable men show up in Wittenburg. They were expelled from Zwickau, Germany for believing they had direct spiritual authority from the Holy Spirit and not from the careful reading of Scripture. Luther told Melanchthon to not listen to them if the cross was not mentioned. “Therefore, examine [them] and do not even listen if they speak of the glorified Jesus, unless you have first heard of the crucified Jesus,” Luther said.

On the cross and the Christian life

Ben then explains why the cross was so central to Luther’s theology:

In Luther’s making suffering the mark of true Christianity and exultation the mark of false spirituality, he echoes a variety of voices in the Christian tradition, including the late medieval mystical text the Theologia Germanica (of which Luther published an edition). This text is deeply concerned with differentiating true from false forms of Christian life, true piety from the false light. How does one differentiate between the two? The anonymous author argues that the answer is in the relationship to suffering. The false light teaches that the highest form of the Christian life is a transcendence of suffering, an enjoyment of divine bliss. But true Christianity, the true living of the Christ-life, a life in which Christ dwells in the believer, is one of suffering and the cross. The cross just is the Christ-life; suffering is not a lower stage of the Christian life to be cast away in favor of permanent rapture in this life but the most perfect form of self-surrendered life in Christ. For the Theologia, true bliss in Christ comes paradoxically in and through suffering, in and through the cross.

That’s nice, you might say. What does this have to do with Donald Trump? Ben continues:

I’ve been thinking about how to diagnose where they have gone so terribly wrong, and I think this is why I was so struck by this Luther letter. Most obviously, there is evident racial animus: a lot of these guys just don’t seem to like non-white people, and seem to especially dislike black and Jewish people. But I also think that they fundamentally misunderstand the shape of the Christian life, because they — like the Zwickau prophets or the false lights of the Theologia Germanica — want the Christian life to not be about self-surrender in suffering but about victory, strength, and power.

Driven in some cases by explicit postmillennialism (the belief that Christ’s return will happen after a period of Christian triumph and rule over the world), they teach that ordinary Christians have been betrayed by effete, defeatist evangelical elites who have taught them that “down here, we lose.” Instead, they proclaim that Christ’s present lordship means Christian rule in the here and now, that Christians are empowered by God to build successful, victorious families, cities, and nations while liberal secularism collapses into despair around them. In some cases, there are explicit attempts to ally Christianity with a sort of Nietzschean vitalism, a rejoicing in the use of power to shape the world to one’s will and a condemnation of the weak as, well, losers. It’s this sort of attitude that leads to the criticism of traditional Christian emphases on the love of enemies as weak-willed, as I discussed in a Plough piece last year. It’s an attitude that meshes very well with the ‘dissident Right’ of the Trump era, a movement increasingly uninterested in liberal or even democratic norms and committed to the return to glory and power of those they consider true Americans (needless to say, this category excludes Haitian migrants).

We preach Christ crucified because this is how God is revealed, not in power but in weakness. Trump and many within MAGA look at the weak with disgust and that is a tell in how they miss the whole point of our faith.

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he says the church preaches Christ crucified, which doesn’t make sense to the rest of the world. “A stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles,” Paul says. He continues to say that God chose the foolish in the world to shame the wise.

So what is a preacher to do right now? Preach Christ crucified. Preach a Jesus that stands with the weak, preach a Jesus that offers salvation and love to everyone regardless of who they are. Preach a Jesus of grace. Preach a Jesus who became a servant and not act like a king.

Preach a Jesus knowing that you are imperfect and seek with the help of God to love the enemy, which in this case might be a diehard MAGA person.

The next few months and years will be challenging as the rulers of this world will run roughshod over people’s lives. They will look to a God (or god) that is more interested in glory and power than in mercy. But we who are Christians worship a God that became a servant and is known in the weakness of the cross. We must preach this as a witness against the powers, in order to preach good news and to stand against those who seek to diminish life.

Let us preach the crucified God. The rulers of this age won’t get it. And that’s okay.