What would Dr. Christie Do?

Since the advent of Trumpism several have inquired of me, “What would Dr. Christie think about what’s going on today?” Honestly, I don’t know. Dad was intellectually curious (especially in his latter years), non- doctrinaire, and could flexibly take on multiple points of view and argue them persuasively. He was both a scholar and a lifelong student and, in my estimation, steered clear of the arrogance that afflicts many of his standing. In a way I am thankful that he isn’t on hand to witness what’s happening for it would have burdened him greatly, probably to the point of apoplexy. But I do wonder the same as many: WWDCD? Here are some thoughts.

First, he would remind us to sharpen our historical literacy, and, in so doing, give context to what we are witnessing today. There is nothing novel about Trump and Trumpist populism. Read up on Huey Long sometime or the Know Nothing Party in the 1800s. Trump is only the latest in a long line of political opportunists and authoritarian crackpots to gain traction through the exploitation of widespread cultural and economic anxiety. “America First!” has been cried out before, and “Make _____ Great Again!” is a well-worn slogan. Clearly this doesn’t require genius but it does require volume and a good hatmaker in China. And it has grown exponentially more pernicious with the advent of social media.

Second Dad would have sounded the alarm to beware the incurious. He grew increasingly inclined to the Social Gospel end of the Christian theological spectrum. This was due in part to his own theological education and influences. But it also had to do with his revulsion at the passionate devotion to ignorance that seems to flourish  in Christian fundamentalism and on what we would today call the Religious Right or the White Evangelicals. Certainty, he may have admonished us,  is the gateway to atrophy.  Nothing could send him into the red quite like a fool with all the answers whose foolishness masquerades as conviction. He would have bristled at the arrogance of wall builders in the denomination who designate themselves Wesleyan. And a president who neither reads or exhibits an ounce of historical or intellectual curiosity - about anything - would have been intolerable to put it mildly.

Third he would have celebrated what may be the final days of The Lost Cause. I’m not sure he would have marched but he would have wholeheartedly endorsed the anti-racist protests that today carry more promise for real change than anything we have seen yet. He was hermeneutically and temperamentally most inclined to the Old Testament Warrior-Prophets like Amos whose cries for justice rang loud.

Fourth his prodigious, personal distaste for men like Trump who strut and preen like peacocks, lie incessantly to adoring followers, and routinely mangle the language would have driven him daily to the point of outrage. While I miss him to this day, I am thankful he was spared this now routine violation of decency and good grammar. Dad was manly without being macho and Trump’s daily ruse of machismo would not have sat well with the dean - not at all.

It is presumptuous of me to suggest I would know Francis Christie’s mind on these matters, but I think there’s some accuracy here.