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The church
of God in the Christian faith across the globe, woke up to ululation and shouts
of holy phrases and songs in celebration of the risen Christ on Sunday the
fifth (5th) of April, the year of Our Lord 2026, Hosana, Hosana he is Risen, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is not in the tomb, his disciples were told by the Angel according to the Gospels. this day is generally
known as Resurrection or Holy Sunday. The doctrinal belief of the Roman Catholic,
its Protestants, the Orthodox church and other Christian denominations, is that
‘the Messianic figure that is Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rose from the dead on
this day, after his crucifixion by the Roman authorities more than two thousand
(2000) years ago’. Therefore, Resurrection or Easter Sunday is considered to be
the most important day in the Christian faith, the cornerstone of Christian
theology, representing 'victory over sin and death, offering hope of salvation'.
This Sunday
also marks the beginning of the season of Eastertide, which to the adherents of
the faith, symbolise ‘an encounter with the Risen Christ and living the new
life which Christ’s victory over death assures’. Therefore, sinful in nature as
they are, as a human race, they vow to walk on the side of holiness during the
entire week which starts on Palm Sunday, a Sunday before the Resurrection day,
known as the Holy Week. Ironically, the world on this day also woke up to a horrifying
statement of the escalation of bomb attacks on civilians of the sovereign
nation of Iran in the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, between American and
Israel against Iran. The President of the United States of America Donald Trump
on the holiest of all days posted on his ‘truth social’ and said “Tuesday will
be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will
be nothing like it!!! Open the F&%$#’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll
be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah” (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/07/trump-iran-threat-truth-social).
Notwithstanding the fact that it is the responsibility of liberation theologies
to speak against such reckless political behaviour, the interest of this
inquiry is not so much on ‘the political implications and ramifications of the statement,
considering that it might just be another political chess card that Trump is
playing to rattle the world economy and influence markets in one way or the other’.
But rather the theological contradictions of faith and the many ironies that
the statement presents, especially in a Religiously Pluralist world of the
contemporary, to this Jason Carter, the grandson of the late American President
Jimmy Carter, is reported to have condemned Trump’s comments as “unAmerican”
and “unChristian”. Another irony in this theological inquiry is that ‘we refer
to a theological contradiction on a statement made by a non-theologian’,
suggesting that the man was in fact not aware of the ramifications whatsoever –
which we shall address in brief. However, because this statement is made by a
leader of the most powerful nation of this world, who is a known adherent of
the Christian faith, we ought to interrogate the theology behind the statement.
We also know that President Trump identifies with faith, in particular the Christian
faith because of how American Presidents religiously use the prayer or phrase that
is synonymous with America “God Bless America” in their public addresses. In
addition, we also know that President Trump is a believer because a little over
a week after the start of the said war, a group of American religious leaders
gathered in his Oval office at the White House – supposedly to pray for him and
America and Israel’s victory in their war against Iran – I use supposedly
because the purpose of this gathering gave rise to a pertinent theological question
as to “the role of the church in society, especially in the midst of conflict” –
which we ought to address.
And so a woke African adherent of the Christian
faith in me couldn’t help but find the statement of the American President to
be ‘a theological oxymoron of this century, or at least in my lifetime’, such
that I am tempted to liken this period of our history with that of ‘the 9th
Century Biblical kakistocracy of king Ahab’ in the book of Kings, more-over because
Israel is at the center of what seems to be a political crinkum-crankum, in
that Americans are adamant that their President’s decision to go to war with
Iran, the myriad of inconsistencies in his messaging during the same conflict and the endless about-turns,
are primarily based on his alliance with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, reminding us of the alliance of Israel under Ahab with his wife
Jezebel’s country of birth Phoenicia, to which the alliance later broke and
left Israel weaker. Therefore, given Donald Trump’s unreliability and
inconsistencies, one wonders if the people of Israel will not be left
vulnerable should Trump negate on their diplomatic ties at some point.
The overarching theological question
in this scenario relates to the oxymoron that is found in the fact that ‘a sitting
president of a powerful Christian state, who happens to be a believer, is found
using profane language on the holiest day in the faith and makes a mockery of
another faith, in the 21st century’.
This left me wondering if President
Trump had any idea that “the Arabic phrase ‘Alhamdulillah’, when translated to
English means ‘Praise be to God’ or ‘All praise belongs to Allah’, often used
much like the English expression “Thank God” to show relief, gratitude or to
request God’s favour and mercy”. Now, Santanuk Patro makes a point that “like
Jews and Muslims, Christians believe in the one God, called Yahweh in Hebrew
and Allah in Arabic” (S. K. Patro 2010: 129), the key question in this scenario
is ‘whether the President of the United States is aware of the reality that Christianity and Islam share a God or Allah, and that
‘not only is he mocking the Islamic faith, but he’s also making a mockery of the
same God of the Christian religion that he strongly believes in’?. Unless an argument
that says ‘for a politician, all these phrases and religious prayers means
absolutely nothing’, but it makes no sense at all for a believer to publicly
disregard a holy observation by using language that goes against the values and
principles of the same faith, including advocating for violence, while at the
same time implore the same deity of that faith to partake in the restoration of
the same evil that they themselves actively created, or perhaps to Trump Allah
and the God that he keeps imploring to bless America are two different deities.
From this we ought to back track to the prayer day at the oval office where American religious leaders had gathered in prayer to intercede for him and America in its war against Iran, which gives rise to the question as to “what the church ought to do in response to this quagmire or to have done in the case of praying for a President in the midst of a war which he started”? It is my conviction that “the church has a duty to assume a superior, non-partisan position at all material times”, by remaining impartial in its prayers, stand on the side of the victims and not the perpetrators of violence, encourage religious pluralism and respect for all belief systems and speaking truth to power”. Audrey Chapman reminds us of the South African Kairos Document, where “Kairos theologians put emphasis on the importance of church speaking truth to power”. Therefore, because the war between Israel, America and Iran had already started at the point when these religious leaders were in the Oval office praying for the President of America whom by law had started an illegal war and already killed more than 100 innocent school children, but instead of calling for peace, praying for the families of the victims of this war and others across the world, they chose to pray for a perpetrator of war crimes, a big theological question on the part of the church and humanity, "is God, a God that advocates for war, is God a God that protects, strengthen and give wisdom to perpetrators of war crimes, is God a God that stands on the side of the perpetrators of war"?
Kgosiemang Phejane
Writing in his personal capacity
