Trump essentially defined grace as doing kind things in an unjust system.
No mention of creating a world that enacts justice. Only about surviving bad things and being nice.
What he described isn't grace. Grace is the radical presence of God that turns everything towarrd justice and compassion.
Grace restores, renews, reconciles.
Grace moves into the world like a lion (remember CS Lewis) and calls evil and injustice to account.
Grace welcomes strangers, makes peace, heals the sick, cares for widows and children, and challenges Caesar.
If you listened to the prayer breakfast speech, what you heard was pablum. Vanilla-pudding "grace." Not grace as in the Hebrew & Christian scriptures.
Kindness is part of grace, yes. Charity is part of grace.
But grace is the ever-present love of God, breathing through and in and with the universe, always creating and offering the possibilities of both mercy and justice.
In short, the National Prayer Breakfast speech was not about grace. It was about people submitting to an unjust system, one that perpetuates war and poverty, where religion makes us compliant participants.
I'd give that speech the "Religion is the Opiate of the People" Award for 2018.
It was what I'd call "soft nationalism." Using lovely terms to justify an immoral system that all the biblical prophets -- and Jesus -- wouldn't put up with for a second.
Do not be fooled. That wasn't Christianity (which, of course, is Trump's only idea of what a "real" religion is). It was a sanitized form of nationalism.
The interesting thing, however, was why? Why give a speech like that (ie., nationalism) in a room with Christians (and yes, they are mostly Christians) from around the globe?
In sum, the speech was really smart toward its ends of soft nationalism, but it was not Christian in any theological or traditional sense. It really harkened back toward the kind of Christianity @KevinMKruse describes in his work.
It was a throwback speech -- could have been given in 1957, but with even more malevolent undertones. It was a white Christian speech for a white Christian nation that doesn't exist any longer. Because, of course, it isn't 1957.
It twisted the central vision of Christianity -- a world endued with grace -- and turned it toward the ends of Trumpism. The Bible calls that kind of thing idolatry.
Civil religion is one thing. This is on a whole other level.
