The Coming Spiritual Awakening Under Trump and Other Myths

American multi-millionaire televangelist Kenneth Copeland stated, in so few words, that America will experience a spiritual revival under a second Donald Trump presidential administration. The sentiment in Copeland’s religious circles stems from a purported myth that President-elect Donald Trump is a Cyrus, of sorts, a secular leader instituted by God to assist and bless God’s servants on earth. His personal life, albeit problematic, can be either dismissed or accepted as long as Trump continues to place God and God’s faithful people first on Earth.

I must confess, this troubles me.

When America experienced its first of what would be three or four spiritual awakenings, it endured a time of extreme horrors and nightmares as the nation struggled to establish itself as more than mere colonies. Jonathan Edwards, a minister and then president of Princeton University, would lead the charge of returning a would-be reprobate and sinfully charged people back to God in fervent prayer and ministrations. What we now know as the Great Awakening began as Edwards preached sermons of hellfire and brimstone, repentance, reconciliation, personal piety, and public prayers and devotions made to the God of the Bible.

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire…”
“The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.”
“There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God.”
“Almost every natural man that hears of hell, flatters himself that he shall escape it; he depends upon himself for his own security; he flatters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or what he intends to do.”

Yes, that’s Jonathan Edwards. These are excerpts from his most famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

Laity and clergy, even those in the secular sphere, experienced what can be understood as a moral quickening, leading many to give up drinking alcohol and their gambling habits. Many no longer visited brothels, and others had returned to their families after having abandoned their sacred matrimonies for a time.

In this revitalized utopia, Jonathan Edwards led many to a place where they re-centered God in their lives, making the Puritan movement (a philosophy of separation from ungodly, sinful things, habits, practices, and festivities as a sign of personal piety) a focal point of their very being.

Considering how the Bible encourages believers (Christians) to adapt to a Christocentric mindset in their relation to the world (un-Christian), it seems as if what Edwards initiated in New England was biblical and godly. Who among Christians would not want a society devoted to the words and edicts of God Almighty? A society bent toward moral rectitude, ethical living standards, and mutuality where no one is seen as less than or despised as an outsider? The hungry are fed. The orphan is cared for. The widow is housed. And society has nothing to lose by behaving more like Jesus.

The problem with Edwards’ pseudo-utopia then, as will be the problem under Trump’s coming spiritual awakening, is the numerous spiritual and moral blinders that distort one’s view of God and God’s creation.

While Jonathan Edwards penned some of the most memorable sermons and teachings in American and literary history, he also advised his fellow congregants that although the foul institution of slavery, in its most cruel nature, was indeed wrong, he presumed and allowed for it in a more docile, friendly, and kind nature, as he had, he stated, with his numerous slaves.

Edwards thought that Africans were the spiritual equals of Europeans (and later white Americans). Hence his petition to see his enslaved servants converted to Christianity, for the sake of their souls in the name of Christ. He could not allow this message of salvation to be limited only to white congregants; therefore, he promoted an evangelistic outreach approach that allowed for the proselytizing and conversion of Black enslaved people in and around his community. He even allowed baptized slaves to hold full membership in his body of believers, something sometime later his church would disagree with.

Jonathan Edwards, the father of the American spiritual awakening, was morally blind to the evils of slavery as an institution as a whole and morally complicit in the nefarious nature of chattel slavery in the Americas. The man most pronounced as a religious maverick was equal parts morally bankrupt and spiritually anemic.

Now, before my audience accuses me of moral presentism, namely, that I am attributing today’s moral expectations to a different time’s moral expectations, you must understand that in Edwards’s day there existed a biting and acidic sentiment against slavery as a whole and chattel slavery in particular as it related the form of bondage being practiced in the Americas.

Interestingly, or perhaps prophetically, Jonathan Edwards shares a birth year (1703) with another religious maverick who was born across the Atlantic in Epworth, some 23 miles northwest of London: the methodical preacher, teacher, and abolitionist John Wesley.

Wesley decried the horrors of brutal and violent slavery, as did Edwards, but Wesley went beyond condemning only the grotesque savagery of chattel slavery to condemn the whole institution, no matter its grade on the spectrum of horror and bondage.

Below I set aside several quotes from Wesley’s “Thoughts Upon Slavery.”

Against the Defense of Capital Derived from Oppression

“But furnishing us with slaves is necessary, for the trade, and wealth, and glory of our nation:” Here are several mistakes. For 1. Wealth is not necessary to the glory of any nation; but wisdom, virtue, justice, mercy, generosity, public spirit, love of our country. These are necessary for the real glory of a nation, but an abundance of wealth is not. Men of understanding allow, that the glory of England was full as high, in Queen Elizabeth’s time as it is now: Although our riches and trade were then as much smaller, as our virtue was greater*”

“It is far better to have no wealth, than to gain wealth, at the expence of virtue. Better is honest poverty, than all the riches brought by the tears, and sweat, and blood of our fellow-creatures.”

Against the Institution of Slavery

“But waving, for the present, all other considerations, I strike at the root of this complicated villainy[slavery]. I absolutely deny all slave-holding to be consistent with any degree of even natural justice.”

“That slave-holding is utterly inconsistent with mercy, is almost too plain to need proof.”

“Wherever slavery is practiced, and an unlawful desire of gain prevails, it will have its natural effect, it will harden the heart, and induce to the use of hard and cruel measures, to obtain the end proposed.”

“Long and serious reflections upon the nature and consequences of slavery have convinced me, that it is a violation both of justice and religion; that it is dangerous to the safety of the community in which it prevails; that is it destructive to the growth of arts and sciences; and lastly, that it produces a numerous and very fatal train of vices, both in the slave, and in his master.–Freedom is unquestionably the birth right of all mankind; Africans as well as Europeans: to keep the former in a state of slavery, is a constant violation of that right, and therefore also of justice.–The British merchants obtains the negroes form Africa, by violence, artifice, and treachery, with a few trinkets to prompt those unfortunate people, to enslave one another, by force or stratagem. Purchase them, indeed they may, under the authority of an act of the British parliament. An act entailing upon the Africans (with whom we are not at war, and over whom a British parliament could not of right assume even a shadow of authority) the dreadful curse of perpetual slavery, upon them and their children forever. There cannot be in nature, there is not in all history, an influence in which every right of men is more flagrantly violated.”

Both Edwards and Wesley existed in the same world steeped in the grievous industry of chattel slavery. Great Britain enacted its military and naval forces to procure slaves for its monarchy and its colonies abroad, and the New England colonies were also continuous participants in the industry. Later, the United States would surpass the number of slaves it imported to its borders compared to what the English managed to secure for their numerous colonies.

It is in this world where Edwards, a promoter of soft and gentle slavery, operated and catalyzed the Great Awakening, a renewal of religious fervor and divine pursuits. And it is in this same world where Wesley instituted a Holiness Movement now recognized as Methodism, condemning slavery as a whole.

The notable essence of this story is that religious liveliness and rededications can take place in two distinct frameworks. One, where one believes he or she is aspiring to the holy directives of a Holy God whilst ignoring some grievous and nefarious wrongs explicitly found within society. The other exists where the person pursues God whilst exposing and confronting said wrongs within society.

Many Christians today are living, perhaps unaware, in the shadows of an Edwardsian revivalist mentality where they want the “move of God” in their immediate community and respective nation while ignoring the sins of society that they are very much willing to not only participate in but benefit from.

Consider, for example, the coming administration’s want for mass deportations of what they consider illegal aliens. One, you must understand that the laws that were enacted regarding borders and the legality of one’s right to belong and attain landed status were procured and written by men who had themselves divested the land of its original inhabitants. These [Indigenous people] were rounded up and then murdered, and those who survived mass extinction events were exiled further inland so that the newcomers could, in time, possess and reform the land as if it were theirs in the first place. These men, the dispossessors, were the ones who later formulated laws against any other group that did not match their expectations, from emigrating to the United States of America.

What is true is that migrants want to invest in the nation as the nation does in them. They want to establish familial and communal ties and acquire work, housing, and a livelihood that is honest and respectable. And if there is a demographic change that comes with time, it will be natural as a form of multicultural connections, without coercion, violence, or hate. This isn’t called racial displacement or replacement, it is called communal flourishing.

Something European settlers of antiquity did not have in mind. Their philosophy was one of displacement and devastation to create for them a utopia built on the bones and tribes of indigenous groups.

Now, consider Christians in this coming America who want a Christian revival to sweep the land, from the executive office down to the local mom-and-pop shop, a religious rekindling that would send the local farmer and his third aunt into a spiritual convulsion so strong that for generations to come, the whole nation would bow a knee to Jesus in faith, but, in this same reality, these same Christians comfortable separating families already in a vulnerable situation via mass deportation.

Christians who will gladly call upon the name of the Lord, wave their evangelical flags, return prayer and Bible reading to public schools, and, in the same breath, be perfectly content with people they work with, share a meal with, shop alongside, and live in the same community, experience what is akin to a revamped Holocaust that would demoralize the nation, not to mention the chaos such an effort would have on the economy.

Immigrants, legal or not, invest cash into the economy, you know.

There are Christians today, as there were in Edwards’s days, who believe a soft form of violence and coercion is acceptable to that of grotesque violence. They believe, with Bibles in hand and conviction in heart, that to see some suffering, limited, legal, and lawful suffering of migrants and minorities, is not only allowable but, within their framework, advisable because the law of the land and its executors believe it to be so.

We’re back, once more, to a dichotomy where some Christians want Jesus everywhere except the social realities of our neighbors and their lived experiences.

We want Jesus, transformative power and effect, in our personal lives, directing our devotions, as we sing our hymns and worship songs, developing our personal spiritual lives, but we cannot, and must not, allow this same Jesus to impact our social lives, as He would disrupt our expectations for our sheltered and exceptional society.

Christians who want to have Jesus, revivals, awakenings, and spiritual renewals, whilst having the right to own slaves. The sentiment is the same, but the oppressed, the disadvantaged, the dispossessed, the abused, and the downtrodden have simply changed in face and name over time.

Christians want all the glories of heaven on earth while displacing the hells already here on the backs of the less fortunate.

All for the sake of power, dominance, comfort, and a sense (a perchance understanding), albeit seldom explained, never explained, of moral superiority and false peace.

Christians who want to normalize public prayer, standing shoulder to shoulder, professing their faith in Christ while their neighbors are carted off to a land unknown, to a community unknown, where present danger and very much present destitution await them.

Christians who shout love, peace, and harmony to all the world whilst procreating in the hearts of their neighbors hate, war, and disunion as a result of hypocrisy and callousness.

How is it so? How did we get here? Is it chance that has afforded us such apathy and carelessness? Was Edwards’s moral blindness a consequence of pain or pleasure? Surely he could have set his slaves free if he truly despised the violent nature of chattel slavery. Surely he could not buy more teenage slaves, further separating them from their mothers, fathers, and siblings. Surely he could have come out against the institution, for he was a respectable minister, one who went on to become the president of Princeton University, albeit for a very short time, considering smallpox was his last lot in life.

Edwards, the trailblazer of American revivalism, was morally compromised. The evils he enjoyed, his contemporaries condemned. He preferred comfort and leisure over virtue and justice.

In like manner, many Christians today want comfort and wealth, no matter the moral and spiritual cost. This cost will be reflected in just how religious they become without the presence of God and the actions of God’s Holy Spirit evident in their lives.

Can God act in a man or a woman who owns slaves, however kind and gentle they are to the latter? Because it is evil to lay the whip at their backs but not evil to deny them justice, freedom, liberty, and their humanity?

In the same light, we believe it is wrong to deport people based on their race and nationality, but it is perfectly right and acceptable to destroy whole families, communities, and industries because their absence makes more room for our comfort, potential wealth growth, and national identity.

How is it that we can love God and profess to love our neighbors while in the same breath denying our neighbors their humanity? Yes, deporting someone denies them humanity. If you do not believe so, please allow yourself to be rounded up, cuffed, denied freedom, and then taken to a remand center where you will be watched and guarded like a murderer, and with time, you will either board a plane or a bus to a place or country you know very little about, and there you will then be treated as a second-class citizen, away from the family, friends, and life you once knew; perhaps the only one you ever had.

After which, you will be susceptible to the woes of a society that suffers from the challenges of economic and political depression. You will seek work but not find it. The work you find will not supply your needs. Your community’s infrastructure is in its developmental stages. Your society may be in uproar and the markets may not carry as much food as you need to subsist and exist. The police take bribes not to arrest the wrongdoer and the wrongdoer demands the little money you have. You will run from the dangers of a lucrative drug market and its imposing cartels, but you may fall victim to the violence it brews. If you’re asked to assist in the nefarious enterprise, you cannot refuse, for to do so will certainly cost you your life. And if you agree, that too, with time, will certainly cost you your life. If you, by some miracle, manage to attain an education in another country after being deported, you may be prey to a volatile market and system that diminishes the quality and worth of your education and studies. And, lastly, if all fails and you decide to offer your body to the streets and its many agencies as a means to survive, you may contract certain diseases from which you may find no cure or treatment in time. You may turn to drugs to forget and persist, and from there, you will retreat into an existential pit of sorrows and woes from which you may never return.

Should you ever attempt to seek, once more, a better life in America, you will forever be hunted and deemed second-class, unworthy, and dangerous in the minds of many should you cross into the United States of America again. Especially in the minds of Christians who devote their lives to displaying the love of God to all men.

How? I ask again. How can anyone who professes Jesus in name and be not only okay with but also promote a worldview and lifestyle that allows for this kind of thinking and administration to exist?

Can one truly be awakened, revived, and renewed by the Spirit of God and, in turn, call for the mass deportation of whole communities? If so, what kind of God is it that supports such a thing?

I must conclude otherwise my invective toward American Christianity will never end.

I repeat you must, if you desire a new and redemptive spiritual awakening in America, confront the social injustices that plague our society. You cannot call on God and, in light of the present and coming evils, support an administration, its laws, rules, regulations, policies, and edicts that promote the dehumanization and eventual devastation, if not decimation, of whole populations that represent and reflect the image of God.

You will either move into this new season of American religious revival with the spirit of Jonathan Edwards, the pious slave owner, or you will approach the coming age with the mind of John Wesley, the devout abolitionist.

You cannot be both. You cannot own slaves while promoting abolition. You cannot promote families while denying other families the right to exist under the same roof.

You cannot promote life while denying others their right to live.

Yours is the greater contradiction from which the name of Christ is maligned. Because of you, the name of Jesus is tarnished. His commands and desires are spat upon by unbelievers.

Which thinking person, on their best day, would choose a savior who at one point saves the soul but in another likes to tear to pieces the body? Are his servants, the body of Christ, pioneers of grace and justice, or the spawn of hell in launching terror on earth for minorities and vulnerable groups?

Edwards would have said that slaves are slaves because the law sentences them as such. And you say illegal immigrants are illegal because the law states they are such. Who is right? The law or God? Who deems them human and lawful? The law or God? And who, countless times, has been wrong, erroneous, and, sadly, discriminatory and prejudiced? The law or God?

Will you listen to the law of the land or the God of the universe?

“When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus 19:33-34

Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. – Proverbs 31:8 NLT