This article was first published in the State of Faith newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox each Monday night.
The day after the shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner, President Donald Trump told CBS News that the alleged gunman was a Christian believer and “then he became an anti-Christian and he had a lot of change,” Trump said in a “60 Minutes” interview.
The night before, the annual dinner held at the Washington Hilton Hotel was interrupted by gunshots. The president and other officials were rushed off the stage. Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in Utah last September, was heard saying in a video: “I just want to go home.”
As the news unfolded, a manifesto allegedly written by the suspected gunman Cole Thomas Allen appeared online, published in full by the New York Post. Allen had apparently sent the letter to his family members before the attack. Allen’s intent, he wrote, was to target the administration’s officials “from highest-ranking to lowest.”
The manifesto is a disturbing document, which we are not publishing. It’s made more disturbing by its reference to Christ’s teaching to “turn the other cheek.” Christ’s teaching was directed to the oppressed, Allen allegedly wrote. He didn’t see himself among them. “Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.”
The troubled explanation from the alleged shooter got me thinking about what “turning the other cheek” actually means and how it might be interpreted today.
The phrase comes from the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus is reinterpreting Hebrew law. He’s directly engaging the principle of “an eye for an eye,” which, in its original context in Exodus, was meant to limit retaliation, not encourage violence.
I called up Rev. Matthew Potts, a minister in Memorial Church and professor of Christian morals at Harvard University, to ask him what “turning the other cheek” means.
Potts first pointed out the context: Jesus is speaking while under Roman Empire occupation and during a time of political oppression. “There was a lot of state violence imposed on Jesus’ people,” he said.
He continued saying that the concept of “turning the other cheek” is open to interpretation, but “at the very least, it’s extending the obligation of love to one’s enemy,” he said, noting that the phrase “love your enemy” is not in the Hebrew Bible.
Scholar Walter Wink had interpreted this teaching to be a form of “nonviolent resistance” as opposed to an act of submission and passivity. In Wink’s view, each teaching of Jesus — asking a Roman soldier to walk a second mile, giving away your cloak, and turning the other cheek — is an act of disruption of injustice, but one that’s quiet and nonviolent in nature.
While not everyone might agree with Wink’s interpretation, Potts said, “generally, everybody agrees that Jesus is saying — reciprocal harm or retaliatory harm is not the way we ought to respond to harm.”
Potts described the challenge of Christian ethics as trying to live out Christ’s multiple moral commands at the same time: to love ourselves, love our neighbors and love our enemies — all of which culminate in loving God. We are thrust into a fallen world, Potts said, and so the idea of acting only under conditions of perfect moral purity is impossible.
“The problem with Christian ethics is that we have these commands which are given to us and we have to make judgments about what we’re going to do when we cannot live up to all the commands we’re given,” Potts said.
Christ’s teaching on turning the other cheek also offers an opening, Potts suggested: “There’s a possibility here for us to read it metaphorically — we need to think really creatively about how to resist violence without reciprocal violence.”
Fresh off the press
- The latest on the Ten Commandments posters: Last week, the Fifth Circuit Court allowed Texas to require public schools to display Ten Commandments posters.
- More Catholics are leaving than joining the faith, according to the recent Pew Research Center analysis from 24 countries. The story looks different for Protestants.
- On the meaning and symbolism of new Young Women class names from my colleagues Amy Ortiz and Tad Walch.
- My colleague Gitanjali Poonia traveled to Yuma, Arizona, to understand how the town is grappling with the lingering challenges of the migrant surge.
- The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a major case challenging a Colorado law that requires publicly funded preschools to accept children of same-sex couples.
How religious is President Trump?
Last week, from behind the resolute desk in the Oval Office, Trump looked into the camera, his hands folded on the splayed Bible, and read from the book. “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land,” Trump read from 2 Chronicles 7:11-22 in a video message.
The message was part of the weeklong Bible-reading marathon put on by the conservative lobby group The Family Policy Alliance Foundation. Trump has made other expressions of Christian faith central to his office. Last year, he launched the America Prays initiative, a call for Americans to pray for the country in honor of its 250th independence anniversary.
Still, most Americans aren’t convinced that the president is all that religious. Seven in 10 Americans think Trump is “not too or not at all religious,” according to a Pew Research Center report released last week. It’s an 8% jump from what people believed two years ago.
Only 5% of Americans think the president is “very religious” and about 24% say he’s “somewhat religious.”
Recently, Trump feuded with Pope Leo over the war in Iran and posted an image of himself resembling Jesus Christ (although he clarified he meant to show himself as a doctor). The Pew data was collected before these exchanges.
It’s mostly the Democrats who view Trump as not religious, while almost half of Republicans see Trump as not too or at all religious.
The view of Trump as “at least somewhat religious” is especially spread among Evangelical Protestants. The Christian denomination that has the most believers who view Trump as not religious are Black Protestants.
Another interesting question posed by the survey was whether Trump stands up for the religious beliefs of Americans. Here are the takeaways:
- About 22% of U.S. adults feel that Trump strongly defends religious views that are similar to theirs.
- Among Republicans, a strong majority feel Trump at least somewhat champions their religious interests — 43% say he does so greatly, and another 22% say moderately. Democrats disagree, for the most part: 73% say that he barely or never represents their religious community.
- White evangelicals largely mirror Republican sentiment, most feeling Trump offers at least some support for their beliefs.
Faith in the news highlights
In Odesa, Ukraine, the House of Mercy is a center of hospice care, but also of peace and prayer amid the turbulence of war. — The New York Times
Why writer Christopher Beha stopped being an atheist and returned to the faith of his childhood. If you’re interested in Beha’s journey, make sure you also read the Deseret News story. — The Washington Post
End notes
In the latest online influencer news: Hulu’s “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” is expanding into a spinoff based in Orange County with a brand-new cast, that, let’s just say, has even less to do with religion than the original show.
The announcement has spurred some confusion online — what does the nickname “Mormon” have to do with the show in which none of the women are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and most have no ties to the church at all?
“I feel like none of these people are actually Mormon?!” one commenter wrote on Instagram. Another one said: “Can yall just call it ‘secret life of influencer lives’ because yall be using Mormon lightly.”
Another one: “I fear the Mormons & the wives are not in the room…”