Grieving America

If you’re like me, you’re feeling very unhappy and unsettled by what’s happening in our country right now. The changes are overwhelming, the flood of negative news is unrelenting, and there’s a sense of loss as I watch what’s happening. In some real sense, it requires grieving, as I realize that things are changing rapidly and those changes might be permanent. So the real question in my mind is this: How do I respond? How can I process these changes, and will we ever get back to normal?

---

A few days after the 2024 election, I wrote the following as part in an extended thread on Twitter (I’ve since deleted all my Twitter content; sorry there’s no link):

We just watched the American church wearing purple and scarlet, standing in front of the beast she had long feared, and collectively decide, “I really think we can tame that thing.” It really is that simple: she wanted power and riches, and the beast offered exactly that.

I don’t think Revelation is literal prophecy. I don’t believe a Rapture is just around the corner. But Revelation is full of really good insight into humanity’s relationship between religion and empire, and the principles apply each time those two intersect.

For a few decades now, evangelicals have been slowly and steadily building a coalition, and establishing a rationale for controlling American society. They’ve indoctrinated their followers into important belief systems. They’ve found levers that give them power. They’ve discovered which campaign issues get votes. They’ve adjusted their theology incrementally, working from racism to abortion to Islam to gay rights to trans rights, always keeping the people on a wartime footing, ready to vote for more power over and against others.

Over the decades, various politicians have discovered this gold mine of votes, and bit by bit they tailored their own message to capture those votes. It came in fits and starts: Jimmy Carter. Ronald Reagan. George Bush and his son. Each worked with evangelicals to gain office. All those politicians were fundamentally good people, despite various flaws. But then something new appeared: a wicked man who understood far better than any politician before him how to appeal to people’s desire for raw power and riches. He even made a public career of it. But more than merely appealing to a desire for power, he was an absolute expert in trafficking in the very thing that the evangelicals always had: fear and loathing. In othering people. In xenophobia. And he had no moral safeguards against abusing others for personal gain.

So when this wicked man offered the Woman in Purple and Scarlet a seat atop the beast, it didn’t take much to convince them to sample his wares. And they liked the taste they got in 2016. He delivered the addictive rush of raw control and power, and they craved more.

2020 was just a speed bump to this relationship. They needed more of what they’d tasted. Much more. And as he waited, this expert polished his craft, and gave them more to hate, and more to crave. And as they watched, the other politicians saw that his coattails could help them too. So this time, nothing he’d done mattered. No negative publicity, no court convictions, no treason, no abuse of power, could dissuade the Woman from her lust. And she thought, “I want more. And I can get it. I’m climbing on the back of the beast, and I’ll tame it.”

But she won’t tame it. That beast is infinitely bigger than one politician who’s already slowly fading, losing cognition, and will be gone soon enough. But it doesn’t matter, because the beast was always in charge, not the politician who also wrongly thought he controlled it. That beast has been around for millennia of empire, it’s κόσμος (kosmos), the world order that stands in opposition to God’s Kingdom. It’s all the systems. In the words of dominionist evangelicals, it’s the seven mountains of society that they want to control.

And so it makes perfect sense that they’d want to ride this beast. 41% of American Christians believe it’s their God-mandated duty to control those seven mountains, to tame the beast, to make it their own “for God.” But Revelation 17 teaches us that’s just not possible.

Because the beast is not righteous. It’s all the ugly systems of the earth. You can’t take something evil and use it for good. J.R.R. Tolkien taught us this with The One Ring: you can wear it for power, but that power inevitably corrupts absolutely. And this beast corrupts.

So today, the evangelical church is rejoicing. They think they’ve finally conquered the beast in America, and that they’ll make all things right. But they’re deeply deluded. They haven’t paid attention to the wisdom from the last few verses in Revelation 17: “They and the beast will hate the whore; they will make her desolate and naked; they will devour her flesh and burn her up with fire. 17 For God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by agreeing to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God will be fulfilled.” She thinks she’s in control, but the Woman in Purple and Scarlet will soon discover that she was just a tool, just something to be used and discarded, just a prostitute who sold her body for riches and power, only to be cast off, thrown down, hated and devoured and burned up.

And we cannot miss this critical thing: God is the one doing it. The Woman needs to be purified of her unrighteousness, and it will be that beast and the nations that she thought she could control that will be exactly, and very painfully, what God uses to purify her.

Honestly it doesn’t matter if you believe Revelation is true or predictive. You can see it in every era of history. A religious system finds a strongman to advance their agenda, and eventually that strongman has used her like a whore, and discards her for his own agenda. And in being discarded, the people outside that religious system inevitably hate her, and soon “make her desolate and naked, devour her flesh, and burn her up with fire.” Just like The One Ring, it’s impossible to use that power and not become hated and eventually subjugated.

I have no good news here, because recovery is too far in the future. The American church had a chance to make a better decision, to refuse the temptation, but the majority of them didn’t take it. They pushed off the arrival of the Kingdom by generations, thinking they were ushering it in today.

But I’ll offer this hope: in every generation, there is a faithful remnant, those who refuse temptation, who reject power, who serve quietly and faithfully, who love sacrificially. And now it’s up to us, exiles from most of the American church, to resume building the true Kingdom. The Plan won’t be derailed. The Kingdom WILL come on earth as it is in heaven. But it won’t happen because the Woman subdues the beast. It will be through love and sacrifice, one disciple at a time, becoming more like Jesus, like the Sermon on the Mount.

And a final thought: one by one, people in the American evangelical church will realize what a horrible mistake they made. And we exiles need to be ready to graciously and gently welcome them back without condemnation, open their eyes, and turn them back to Jesus once again.

---

Okay, that was the thread on Twitter.

Looking back five months, I don’t disagree with anything I wrote there; in fact, I think it’s more relevant today than it was then, because although a lot of the right wing accused their opponents of overreaction and fearmongering, almost everything the liberals warned us about has been proven true.

I’ve seen a lot of anti-conservative posts in the last couple weeks excited about various court victories against the right wing agenda, and setbacks for the policies. I’m also happy about those wins, but they don’t give me the kind of hope that I think most people have.

Because while I’m happy about every victory, I really don’t think it’s likely that America can heal from this damage, partly because, in some sense, I don’t think it’s damage as much as a revealing. By that, I mean that what we see happening today in America is being allowed to happen, even encouraged, by a rather sizable fraction of its citizens and its leaders – slightly over half of Congress and the Supreme Court in particular, and something approaching 40% of the voters. So while some specific harms are unrolled or rescinded, that doesn’t change the underlying fact of this disconnect between those who support them and those who oppose them. We went from being a “bell curve” of opinions, generally centrist with some fringes, to being two mountains at either extreme end of the political spectrum, with very little population left in the middle.

This really shouldn’t surprise any student of world history. It’s been the pattern of society after society, culture after culture, where there is a fairly long period of peace and stability, but where an undercurrent of discontent grows steadily, an imbalance of wealth and power creeps in, and eventually those with power and wealth run roughshod over the rights of those without. Eventually everything either collapses outright into ruin, or a strongman is given power, and then abuses the power, and the people suffer for generations.

And unfortunately, I think we’re at the end of that peaceful period in America. To be honest, it’s only been peaceful and stable and good for a certain majority, those white middle- and upper-class folks. Certainly for them, it’s been a long halcyon period, despite the conservative Christian claims of constant persecution.

But here we are in 2025, and the things that have been undertaken or attempted bear a shocking resemblance to the list of complaints about King George II I in the Declaration of Independence:

• “He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
• “He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
• “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
• “He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
• “He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
• “For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
• “For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
• “For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
• “For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences”

Now, many of the current harmful changes can be overturned or blocked if even a handful of patriots in Congress were willing to stand up to this onslaught. But this is the first harm which will be very hard to undo: in the halls of Congress there currently reside over 230 men and women who are more determined to get their way than to think about the long-term damage that these actions are causing to a system which has sustained and served us for 250 years. And to a great extent, five of the nine Justices on the Supreme Court are largely rubber-stamping these actions. The very fundamental nature of checks and balances on the power of the executive office have been undermined and I don’t think they will recover, even if we overturn the balance of Congressional power in 2026.

For that matter, the second harm that I see concerns the elections scheduled for 2026. One of the things that this administration and a sycophantic Congress are doing is changing the functioning of the electoral system. Presidential executive orders and Congressional legislation about electoral laws are beginning to strip away the guaranteed right to vote and fair access to ballots. If they succeed, I have serious doubts that the 2026 elections can possibly be fair or equitable or accessible. In their lust for power, these conservatives are willing to undermine the very foundation of our entire political system: open and fair elections. They couch these changes as being designed to increase the fairness by preventing aliens from voting, but the charge of widespread fraud has been proven untrue, a nd when the result is definitively to exclude women and people of color from voting, those excuses pale into outright lies.

Another great and likely long-lasting harm I see is the reputation of our military, both at home and abroad. Much military leadership who might have opposed unlawful actions have been fired, truly implementing a loyalty test for both military and civilian leaders, generals, and admirals. While so far not much has changed at the lower level, military confidence in the leadership is suffering greatly – not least because of the rank hypocrisy of Signalgate, and the dissolution of many programs designed to protect our military against our Chinese and Russian opponents. These actions directly undercut soldier and sailor loyalty and confidence that everything possible will be done to protect them and to guard American interests.

If military action is directed against Greenland or Canada or Panama, as the president has repeatedly said he wants, I am not sure that there would not be open rebellion in the ranks. That prospect is truly frightening.

Also, the actions that the administration has taken against our NATO allies and our foreign trading partners have led to an unprecedented rift with other nations. Many of them have depended on the US for their security and even many of their high-end weapons. In just three months, that confidence has been utterly destroyed, and so thoroughly that it is unlikely to return, even if a very friendly president and Congress were to win in the future. Those countries have been burned, and they’re unlikely to make that mistake again. Thus, the worldwide balance of political power has been, in my opinion, permanently altered.

The same is true with regard to world economy. For generations, the American dollar has been the worldwide de facto currency. I believe that has, in just a few months, been irreparably damaged. Even if a future administration undoes ALL of this administration’s changes, we will not see that balance restored, ever. As with military confidence: once burned, twice shy. The world has been forced to distrust America, and it now realizes that no matter how friendly a president or Congress may be, the next administration may completely and instantly undo it all.

With these things in mind, it would be stupid for the world to trust America again for their weapons, their security, or their economy.

Also of major concern is the use of emergency powers by this administration. If you look at history, one frequent feature of authoritarian takeovers is the abuse of emergency powers. This administration has in just a few months established a pattern of calling everything an emergency – in public rambling speeches, but also importantly in executive orders – thus authorizing the executive branch to ignore all kinds of legal restrictions on his power.

If this were not bad enough, Congress has refused to restrain these abuses of executive power. And so far the Supreme Court has refused to step in. Effectively, the representative and judicial branches seem content to let the executive branch take full control of the government. This methodology has been unleashed and those benefiting from it are salivating at the opportunities, rather than seeking the long-term good of our governmental system and corralling that abuse. I don’t see that genie being stuffed back into the bottle; such raw power over one’s opponents is too seductive and intoxicating to be given up in the future.

I am also deeply concerned over this administration’s abuse of human beings. For the first time in my life – although not in the lives of all living American citizens, some of whom found themselves in Japanese internment camps during World War II – our government has casually and heartlessly cast aside all legal protections for human freedom, and has been imprisoning without recourse, and shipping off to foreign jails, people who do not adequately support the current regime. Some argue that it doesn’t matter, because they’re not citizens who don’t have any Constitutional rights. But due process is an essential part of ensuring that ALL people are protected. Even if I were to agree that citizens have more rights than non-citizens – which I do not – it is still incredibly important to follow our laws for every human. How can one determine if they’re a citizen without due process? But that’s where we are now: people being dragged off the streets and out of classrooms and churches into unmarked vehicles by unidentified masked thugs, never to be seen again. Don’t believe for a minute that you’re safe just because you’re a citizen. It’s a tiny, tiny step from abducting non-citizen dissenters to disappearing citizen dissenters. It’s happened many times in world history, in shockingly short time frames. Read your history, especially of German and Russian secret services.

These are a few – but certainly not all – of the abuses which I see taking place today, which I do not believe can be fully undone, not within my lifetime.

In other words, I find it necessary to grieve for what we have lost. Not what we will lose – but what, from my perspective, we have already lost.

I will be happy if I am proven wrong about this. Perhaps, by some miracle, in 2026 the opposition to this administration will be so overwhelming that they will win a landslide, and quickly oust every official who has taken part in blatant abuse of American laws and Constitutional principles, and undo these changes, and we can start over.

But I truly don’t expect it.

So what can we do, aside from repeating the mourning of the Biblical prophets who sat in sackcloth in the city streets and poured ashes over their heads, wailing at the decay of their society?

I think we need to be reminded of the five stages of grief and mourning: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

First we’ve got to get past denial. I think it’s important to truly recognize and accept what is happening to America. Not just to recognize what’s happening today, but also to recognize and admit that it’s likely a permanent loss. I don’t think there’s any value in rejecting that. I also don’t think there’s any value in saying “hey, that’s defeatist. We can take this nation back and restore it all.” I wish that were true, but I don’t see any chance it will happen in my lifetime. It doesn’t mean I don’t fight hard to take back what we CAN take back, but I also have to be honest with myself and admit that a lot of these things are simply and perhaps irrevocably broken now.

The next step is getting past our anger, enough to be useful. Anger doesn’t help anyone in a situation like this: maybe it inspires us to fight, but rage over the losses we see mounting up will only blind us to what we CAN do about the changes.

We also have to get through the bargaining stage. Honestly, I am a bit scared of the bargaining stage, because that can lead us to make some pretty poor compromises with the evil we see being done, in the hope of saving some of what we value. I think that any compromise with this evil agenda is a mistake. And we can’t bargain with our past selves, or our past society. Asking “what if” won’t help in this process. It is what it is; the question is what we can and will do to move forward.

Depression? That’s going to be the hardest, perhaps, because we’ll desire to withdraw from the fight. I don’t know how to deal with that right now; I’ve been touching on that stage already for a couple months. All I can say is, let’s not do that. Let’s stay engaged and keep doing whatever we can to resist this horrible thing that is being done to us.

And finally we come to acceptance.

That’s the end goal of any grieving process. I think the key here is that we have to make our personal peace with things not being the way we remember them, the way we want them to be. It’s not giving up; it’s being realistic. And I think being realistic is the key to being effective in the future. The ones who clearly see the situation around them are the ones who can do the most to help others around them.

I think that groundedness is going to be absolutely critical in the future. There will be many people who simply cannot accept the changes. They’ll go crazy. They’ll get violent. They’ll emotionally collapse in on themselves. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

And this is where my Christian heritage comes in. From where I read the Bible today, I see the gospels and the epistles as a story of a people under oppression, under the thumb of horrible rulers and despots, suffering at the hands of religious authoritarianism, often opposed by those of a different religion altogether. Those people were wrestling with how to effectively live together and to continue to worship and glorify God in those horrible circumstances. It’s not a tale of triumphalism. “But Revelation” you say? Well, that book gives a vision of a far future where there will eventually be victory – but it’s not descriptive of what actually happened historically, and it’s only really applicable to the very end when the Kingdom is fully revealed on earth.

In light of that story, of observing those people wrestling with their real, temporal, earthly situation in light of their experiences with God, what can I do?

I really don’t know for sure. But I know this: their focus switched from fighting the dangerous and harmful earthly kingdoms around them, to revealing the heavenly kingdom that was demanding their allegiance instead. The words they spoke about the earthly kingdoms began to focus on living as aliens, as foreigners, as exiles, even in their own land. Of being ambassadors of a spiritual king, even while living as citizens of an earthly kingdom. Of opposing the harm while still praying for their earthly leaders. Of looking beyond their earthly circumstances to something higher, something less visible, but somehow more real. Of being willing to surrender earthly things for a higher reward.

We Christians have been using that language for a couple thousand years, but those of us modern well-off Americans who have grown up in the last few halcyon decades have perhaps forgotten some of the realities of our status as exiles. Our status hasn’t changed – but our society was comfortable enough that many evangelicals mistakenly figured we were seeing the beginnings of the Kingdom coming on earth, that America was the very real and present inauguration of God’s Kingdom. And many of them are watching what’s happening in Washington today and rejoicing, because in their eyes, it’s all coming true, finally. They see these days as finally beginning what they’ve been waiting for, what they believed has been long prophesied.

But in my eyes, they’re horribly and tragically wrong, because they don’t realize which of the characters in those prophesies they actually ARE. Just like the woman on the beast, they will be completely surprised when the beast and the world turns on them abruptly and “they will make her desolate and naked; they will devour her flesh and burn her up with fire.”

If that’s true, and I’m convinced it IS true, then those of us who have refused to climb on the beast with her need to be fully prepared to ride this thing out, as exiles, not just from society but even as exiles from that woman, the church that bore us. Revelation 12 also talks about the child born of that woman that the beast was enraged against and sought to destroy.

I know the child of Revelation 12 is understood to refer to Jesus, but I imagine it is just as much about those who also truly represent Jesus – who promised us that those who truly bear His name would suffer as He did. We are called to be so closely aligned with and representative of Jesus that the world will look at us and see Him, just as He said that if we have seen Him we have seen the Father. And given my current understanding of scripture, I think that we who truly follow Jesus will suffer the same persecution as He did – from the religious elite, the authoritarian religious leaders of our day as of His, those who sided with empire to have Him killed.

And yet, it was those who suffered with Jesus in His day who became the light of their world. Their steadfast refusal to bow before empire, even unto death, was what inspired a movement that persists to this day. Not because they took control of their earthly situation, but because they were faithful to resist it unto their own death if needed. They didn’t win by taking over, but by losing. And Jesus predicted that very pointedly.

I guess if I had to tie this all together, it would be this: are we willing to let go of our dreams and hopes and confidence in our earthly nation, of being in control of our destiny, of winning some culture war, and instead in the growing darkness to set an example of faithfulness against all odds, refusal to bow in fear, and yet forming a community that loves and cares for each other in the midst of oppression? Can we resist any and every evil of this empire, loving and seeking whatever good remains in our nation, while still demonstrating our ultimate allegiance to a heavenly king? And I don’t think we can do any of that, if we cannot get through the grieving process. We’ve got to get past the denial and anger and bargaining and depression, until we accept where we are, accept where we’re going, and move forward as a people of true faith.

Thanks for spending some time with me today. I know this is a difficult topic. I’ve been thinking about how to address this for some time, and I finally felt like I couldn’t hold off any longer. I hope it gives you some sense of direction in this season. So go with God, and be blessed. We’ll talk again soon.