The United States government has declared war on the golden rule. Faith traditions have agreed for millennia that we should act toward others as we wish them to act toward us. It bolsters all wholesome family, institutional, and civic life. From Confucianism to Christ, the Torah to the Koran, this is not only what we believe. Without it, we can’t plan a date night, get home safely during rush hour, or conclude an arms treaty.
For people of faith, the golden rule is our territory, motto, and wall poster. It is time to raise high the banner and take the ramparts, peacefully but uncompromisingly. We must insist that all in power observe this universal law of love. If you respond with reference to the separation of church and state, my reply is that Trump has demonstrated that the trial separation, beginning more or less with the Enlightenment, must, for the time being, come to an end. We can no longer afford the risk we run by failing to confront the state’s worst practices with the church’s best values.
Over the years, the center-leaning faithful have grown timid. We don’t want people to think we’re not nice. Sometimes we don’t want to give offense to power or pledgers. We’re rightfully ashamed of the church’s hypocrisy, abuses of power, and disputatiousness. And yet it should alarm us that even when we agree, fewer and fewer listen. In December, I attended an interfaith and ecumenical service in Los Angeles where every speaker agreed, based on varying conceptions of the golden rule, that we should do far more for our unhoused siblings, of whom 1,365 died last year on the streets of Los Angeles County. We could’ve had doctrinal arguments over coffee all night. Yet we agreed that in one of the richest cities in the richest nation in the history of the planet, it is a profound moral failing that we permit thousands to die of exposure.
It is poor form even to suggest that God will punish politicians. But it is not a new idea. In “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens has Scrooge look out his bedroom window at frustrated spirits trying to help suffering mortals. He said those manacled together “might have been guilty governments.” So we might up our fire and brimstone game just a bit. As we read in Psalm 2, “And now, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth. Submit to the Lord with fear, and with trembling bow before him, lest he be angry and you perish; for his wrath is quickly kindled.”
God’s wrath is, of course, God’s business. But God’s work is our business. It is time for the church to say, in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, that we have an explicit golden rule agenda for our government. May a paragon of selfishness be remembered as the Cyrus of our reformation. After all, Trump theology mixes faith and politics daily. Officials with crosses on their lapels and around their necks bear false witness like Batman villains. A Roman Catholic, JD Vance interprets the gospel to mean that we should care for our families first and our neighbors last. Even rats and ostriches do that much by instinct. We need the gospel not to obey our biological impulses but transcend them.
Other Trump theologians say that empathy, long prized as a religious value, is heresy. And yet St. Paul teaches (1 Cor. 13), “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.” If one believes that Paul encountered the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, one must also believe that these words were among those the son of God whispered in his apostle’s ear.
But heretical nationalists listen selectively to the inerrant Word. They love politics in the pulpit when the sermon is about homosexuality and abortion. We can have a great conversation at Bible study about what ancient texts do or do not teach about modern family life. Our evangelical siblings are great proof texters on such points. Yet if you insist that public servants should treat others as they wish to be treated, or you stress gospel propositions that we should love our enemies and put our neighbors’ interest ahead of ours — all subjects of massive consequence, and subjects Jesus spoke about, unlike abortion or homosexuality — our conservative colleagues slam their Bibles shut.
They have no trouble on Sunday morning rounding people up on the basis of the color of their skin or with other Trump policies reeking of scapegoating and hate. If someone mentions the Prince of Peace, they say he isn’t the Christ we need right now. But he’s the only Christ we have. And he permits plenty of wiggle room. The biblical commandment that we are to put other’s interests ahead of our own is clear on sadism, cruelty, and graft without precluding self-defense or enlightened self-interest. The golden rule is not an ideology or a doctrine. It is inconsistent neither with conservatism nor democratic socialism. Decent conservatives don’t want people dying on the streets, while a few progressives would just as soon they stayed there, to help leverage radical solutions. But it’s unacceptable to blame our divisions and let our neighbors shiver in the night.
We can say that we still have a lot to learn about gender dysmorphia, and take care about what minors can do solely on their own authority, without interfering broadly with our neighbors’ access to desperately needed gender–based care, as Trump and his operatives have done. Sensible progressives and conservatives could fix the immigration system over a long weekend. Even though both sides would only take home half a loaf, it would beat nearly a century of going hungry.
We can have a foreign policy that stresses national interests while not neglecting our humanitarian responsibility to broker a just end of the war in Ukraine, which would serve our interests by keeping Europe safe and stable. We can battle drug imports without murdering people on the high seas. We can spend more carefully without slashing foreign aid and leaving children of color exposed to disease and death.
We can debate the balance of power between the president and Congress without sanctioning the Trump family’s naked profiteering or letting him get away with his seditious attempts to keep power illegally and permit potentially deadly attacks on 140 police officers on Jan. 6. Saying it will get better when Trump is gone overlooks cohorts of intellectuals and operatives angling to perpetuate Trumpism. In our country, secularization is begetting a new civic creed rooted in unkindness and selfishness that is an offense to the almighty God.
As for what people of faith can offer instead, it is less about the complexion of policies than the content of leaders’ hearts and what we insist on when it comes to basic principles of human decency. One quality is vital. For as long as he’s been on the public stage, Trump’s approach has been to leverage 35% of us against the majority. He has never articulated a vision of national unity. He doesn’t even give lip service to being a president for all the people. Our union won’t survive this way. We need leaders who can articulate a sense of common purpose and community — who actually believe we are a national community, with responsibilities to one another commensurate with the gifts we have received.
Millions fought and died for our still tender 250-year-old experiment. Remembering their sacrifices for our sakes should help us keep the golden rule in our hearts. Counting all our inherited blessings can enable us to recover a spirit of strenuous, friendly bipartisanship, notwithstanding our differences, in union if not always in unity. We’ve gotten this far as one people under God, and we cannot go much further without reclaiming the motto. We need to take better care of one another, as God has taken care of us. Psalm 2 continues, “Happy are they all who take refuge in God!” Happy are a people who live in together in freedom and devotion to the thriving of their neighbor.