By Gary Topping–
For me, one of the pleasures of subscribing to the Deseret News (my online subscription sets me back a whopping $3.64 a month) is Michael Gerson’s syndicated column which seems to appear about once a month. I’ve posted about Gerson before, specifically his Atlantic article in which he attempts to explain why his fellow evangelical Christians have abandoned their historical commitment to social justice to follow Donald Trump’s siren call. I’ve always admired Gerson during his occasional appearances substituting for David Brooks as a conservative commentator on the Friday evening edition of the PBS NewsHour, but since the advent of the Age of Trump, his voice has achieved nothing short of prophetic proportions. Assuming that few of the Catholic readers of The Boy Monk take the News and may not see Gerson in other syndicated outlets, I return to him this week to summarize his June 19 column.
Gerson begins by pointing out two of the Trump administration’s claims, that “it is not to blame for the separation of families at the border and that a just God is pleased it is happening.” “The first claim,” he continues, “is a lie. Without the administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy, there would be no surge of detained children at overwhelmed facilities. . . . All of this is taking place as a direct result of Trump’s command to get tough at the border. And what shows toughness better than mistreating little boys and girls”?
Trump’s other claim is that the Bible—specifically Romans 13’s admonition to be “subject to the governing authorities”—sanctions his hard-line policy. To that, Gerson responds that “the Bible, like a gun, is a dangerous thing in the hands of a bigot.” Rather than legalism, though, Gerson asserts that “the centerpiece commitment of Christian social ethics is not order; it is justice.” He then goes on to cite Martin Luther King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” to the effect that “Any law that degrades human personality is unjust,” and observes that “Trump’s immigration policy is a carnival of degradation.”
Harking back to his Atlantic article, Gerson observes that Trump’s immigration policy is “so gross—so rotting, worm-ridden and hair-covered—that many evangelical leaders have refused to swallow it,” including even Franklin Graham, “awakened momentarily from his ideological slumbers.”
Gerson concludes by reminding us of Jesus’ warning that “whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” “Sometimes,” Gerson adds, “those who invoke God’s justice would do better to fear it.”
Since Gerson’s column appeared, the Trump administration has issued a vague cessation order regarding the separation of families with, however, no clear plan to reunite those previously separated. And the basic racism that underlies the entire immigration policy continues unabated.
