Once I lastly stopped laughing on the picture of the “grasp of actual property” promoting Bibles to pay authorized charges, I considered Clyde Edgerton’s novel, “The Bible Salesman.”
Edgerton provides a parable of Donald Trump the Bible vendor. Henry Dampier, the 20-year-old title character of the ebook, has a persistent case of the triangulation blues. At first of the narrative, on his rounds promoting Bibles he has promised to provide away free, Henry meets a con artist of a extra secular kind: Preston Clearwater, who bilked the Military out of a warehouseful of provides and is now attempting to work his manner up the post-World Battle II organizational ladder of a car-theft ring. Clearwater tells Henry he’s an F.B.I. agent infiltrating the ring and wishes a accomplice — Henry can promote his Bibles when he isn’t serving to Clearwater (and the bureau) steal automobiles.
A evaluate of the novel within the New York Occasions says, “Scripture and hormones are {powerful} forces, and Henry is decided to cheat neither. A religious Baptist, he has no compunction about mendacity to promote a Bible, however sweats the inconsistencies throughout the Gospel. Like: If God is omnipotent, why does he must relaxation on the seventh day?”
The odd combination of promoting Bibles and stealing automobiles suits the unusual sight of Donald Trump in court docket throughout Holy Week for the setting of his trial date. He has been indicted for paying “hush” cash to Stormy Daniels, a porn star, to cowl up an affair.
Not since Johann Tetzel got here beating his drum promoting indulgences has there been such a humiliation of conflating revenue with the gospel. Martin Luther, incensed by Tetzel, swore, “I’ll beat a gap in his drum.” He then composed the Ninety-5 Theses and launched the Protestant Reformation. I’m removed from being a Martin Luther, however I’d gladly put a stopper in Trump’s trumpeting of an idolatrous model of the Holy Bible.
Is it doable the foray into Bible promoting lastly rips the masks off “God’s Robust Man” and exhibits him to be one other backyard selection con artist, a door-to-door salesman with a present of limitless gab, a pack of lies, and a coronary heart of stone? Will People lastly say, “We’re not shopping for any extra of what Trump is promoting?”
Trump himself, in fact, just isn’t on the road hawking Bibles. He has endorsed the Lee Greenwood Bible. Trump, nonetheless, will put his title on something with an opportunity of turning a revenue. Trump will promote something, and he has bought his followers a invoice of populist, demagogic “turnip greens.” This Bible takes its place alongside the $399 gold “By no means Give up Excessive-Tops,” digital buying and selling playing cards, cologne, and fragrance.
This promotion appears low even for Trump. Margaret Hartmann, senior editor for Intelligencer writes, “This can be a man who took the go well with he wore in his mug shot, reduce it into tiny items, and bought these scraps glued to buying and selling playing cards — or not less than licensed his title to an organization that did all that. Now he desires us to drop $60 on a Bible that doesn’t function Trump’s signature, a golden cowl, or the phrase ‘NEVER SURRENDER’ someplace within the textual content?”
Trump has already skilled loads of grief by being in shut proximity to the Bible. His “Two Corinthians” comment at Liberty College introduced him an explosion of rebuke. He brags on the Bible; he doesn’t understand it.
His stunt of holding up a Bible outdoors St. John’s Episcopal Church after he had ordered the world cleared of peaceable protests met with howls of rejection. He even held it awkwardly and used the Revised Customary Model, the interpretation anathema to conservatives extra more likely to name it the Reviled Customary Model.
When requested to share his favourite Bible verse in an interview with Bloomberg Politics in 2015, he didn’t give a direct reply. “I wouldn’t need to get into it. As a result of to me, that’s very private,” he stated. “The Bible means rather a lot to me, however I don’t need to get into specifics.”
Later, Trump landed on what appears to drive him relentlessly: “An eye fixed for an eye fixed and a tooth for a tooth.” Displaying no biblical sense, Trump has insisted that he has by no means performed something that required repentance. He has preached a gospel of revenge and “getting even” his complete life.
Trump, with opinions about every little thing, is of the opinion, “All People want a Bible of their dwelling, and I’ve many. It’s my favourite ebook,” Trump stated within the video posted on Fact Social. “I’m proud to endorse and encourage you to get this Bible. We should make America pray once more.” Does he hold a Bible subsequent to his mattress together with his copy of Hitler’s ebook?
The advertising division for the “solely Bible endorsed by Donald Trump” could not have seen that 20 million Bibles had been bought within the USA in 2023. In accordance with The New Yorker, the Bible “is the best-selling ebook of the 12 months, yearly.” There will not be a lot of a marketplace for the Trump Bible, until MAGA of us, who buy every little thing “Trump,” suppose that is the ebook they will need to have. Sixty million Magadonians at $60/Bible equals $3.6 billion. Trump would haven’t any bother paying his authorized charges, fines, and judgments from gross sales of the Bible.
The Trump Bible is each Christian Nationalist’s dream ebook. Labeled the “God Bless the USA Bible,” it additionally consists of, along with the Outdated and New Testaments within the King James Model (undecided if it’s the New King James Model) the Bible comprises the Structure, the Declaration of Independence, the Invoice of Rights, and a handwritten copy of Lee Greenwoods patriotic music, “God Bless the USA.”
Colonel Flynn, a flaming Christian Nationalist, giving preaching recommendation to pastors advised them they need to be preaching from the Structure. The brand new Trump Bible is a one-stop textual content portfolio for preaching patriotism, nationalism, racism, and all of the worst sorts of -isms.
Holding up a Bible for a photograph op, bragging on the Bible, promoting the Bible, and quoting verses from the Bible doesn’t make Trump a Bible believer. What he’s peddling just isn’t Christianity.
Rodney Kennedy has his M.Div. from New Orleans Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Louisiana State College. The pastor of seven Southern Baptist church buildings over the course of 20 years, he pastored the First Baptist Church of Dayton, Ohio — which is an American Baptist Church — for 13 years. He’s at present professor of homiletics at Palmer Theological Seminary, and interim pastor of Emmanuel Friedens Federated Church, Schenectady, New York. His seventh ebook, Good and Evil within the Backyard of Democracy, is out now from Wipf and Inventory (Cascades).