Germany's Christians Are Casting A Suspicious Eye At Donald Trump
The election and subsequent inauguration of Donald Trump as U.S. President has left America's Christians soulsearching, but believers further afield have been asking their own questions.
President Trump wasn't shy when it came to touting his Christian beliefs in the run-up to his election as he sought to shore up the American evangelical vote. On inauguration day last week, he again wore his faith on his sleeve as he took his oath upon not one but two Bibles and drew upon Psalm 133 as he sought to paint a picture of a powerful, united America.
A strong personal faith has commonly been a source of appeal for Christian voters, but Trump is an uncomfortable fit for many Christians who take issue with his brash, bombastic leadership style, his at times questionable behavior, and often alarming rhetoric.
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Overseas in Germany, his ascendency to the White House has been met with disbelief.
In a column for the Catholic Church in Germany's website, journalist and author Uwe Bork joked a few days after the inauguration that "No, the world has not come to an end!"
But jokes aside, he was scathing in his putdown of Trump's references to scripture while at the same time presenting what in Bork's view was an unbiblical "me-centered" vision of "America first".
"Perhaps, it would have been better if Donald Trump read the Bible, instead of just swearing upon it," he said, as he recalled the parable of the workers in the vineyard in which Jesus famously preached that the last would be first and the first would be last.
"When policy so deliberately and demonstratively calls upon Christianity, as Trump did when he swore on the Bible, then that policy cannot revolve around 'me alone' and simply caring for one's own clientele," he said.
Evangelical theologian Tobias Faix, writing in German newspaper Die Zeit, was even more scathing, as he argued that for evangelicals in the USA Trump was nothing more than "a means to power".
What concerns him though is the degree of sympathy he perceives with the Trump cause among Germany's conservative circles. For Faix, the hope that a political leader like Trump could lead to a moral turnaround in society is not only misplaced, but "dangerous".
"The question also for evangelicals in Germany is: which values are we prepared to sacrifice for power?" he said.
