The Theology of the Smirk

How, Once Upon A Time, I Smirked Too

Three weeks into Trump 2.0, and I’m still haunted by JD Vance’s condescending smirk at the National Prayer Service.

He wasn’t he only one. The entire Trump team was smirking and squirming. But since, once upon a time, I was also a young, straight White man, with conservative views, I took special notice of his smirk.

And, in an unsettling way: I remember that smirk. I remember that guy.

Before I came to truly understand the words of Jesus —the compelling, soul/society shifting message of The Gospel— the world behind that smirk...a world of seemingly confident, and endlessly powerful, straight White men, assured in their place and position in society, and completely ignorant of their privilege…that was my world too.

That was my “team.”

To be clear, I’m not suggesting I’m now magically devoid of privilege as a CIS gendered straight white guy. (I know I’m not…) And, it would also be overstating things to suggest I was ever an active Evangelical Christian (I was not) or a the Republican Party operative.

But once upon a time, I was the kind of young White man who heard Bishop Budde’s theology; and in reaction to it would, cluelessly, and thoughtlessly…smirk.

In the early 1980s, at a UT student, I regularly sat in the balcony of First United Methodist Church of Austin, and heard Rev. Jack Heacock preach sermons about liberation theology, and El Salvador and Guatemala. He’d roll his tongue when pronouncing the names, and me and my friend would make fun of it.

What I know now, looking back at my own self, was that those sermons, and much else in my life at that moment, was pushing me. It was convicting me, challenging me.

The idea that God has a special love for the poor and outcast…the idea that women, POC, the LGBTQ community did too…I had never head that before.

I knew that meant that my tribe, the Tribe of White Men, was one of the problems. (Maybe the only problem…)

As I said, I wasn’t active in Republican Politics. But I loved the muscular “posing” that young men in the Reagan era did, and I tried to fit in to that.

So it was that in my dorm room, I had a poster of a Nicaraguan “Contra” up on the wall. We all now know these “freedom fighters” were illegally funded by the Reagan administration, in moves that were deeply harmful to the people of Central America.

All I saw was a cool looking Latino man, dressed in military fatiques, and it reminded me of “Apocalypse Now.” I didn’t know shit about war. I didn’t know shit about politics. But such posturing was “cool.”

Again, it was posing, it was a tribal identity: the tribe of young, Straight White Men in the early 1980s.

So, I would hear these sermons on Liberation Theology, on God’s compassion for suffering Central American campesinos, and yet….I’d come home to see that poster on the wall.

“Smirk.”

To review, when JD Vance “smirked” he was specifically listening to Bishop Mariann Budde’s plea for mercy. She was describing how people in our society are “scared right now.” Which was true in that moment, already, and is simply MORE true today, several weeks later.

Every day of Trump 2.0, there is some new group targeted…

Trans people, Immigrants, Women, People of Color, Federal Workers. It’s a long list of people that, conspicuously and intentionally, of course, excludes White men. (And, always will).

So, we can clearly see: Budde was right.
People are scared, and they are more afraid, every day.
And the reaction, of course?

“Smirk.”

The Theology of the Smirk…

The moment I first saw the Vance smirk, I knew I was going to write this essay. I wanted to write about “the theology of the smirk.”

I planned to describe the wrong-headed theology and politics that allows somebody to be so self-confidently devoid of compassion in that moment.

But, as it turns out, JD Vance did it for me! JD Vance has —beautifully and horrifically— explained the theology of the smirk.

Vance has given a interview with FOX News, where he spools out the theology in full form in a simple, and easily refutable, way.

Vice President JD Vance called this next quote a “old-school, very Christian concept.”

“You love your family, then you love your neighbor, then you love your community, then you love you fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside their own borders. That is no way to run a society.”

Let me scream out the “lede” right here:

THAT’S NOT AN OLD SCHOOL CHRISTIAN VIEW.

THAT’S ACTUALLY AN ANTI-CHRISTIAN, PRO-CHRISTIAN NATIONALIST VIEW.

Sorry for shouting. But, as always, I’m writing a lot of words here, an I don’t want those to get lost. This view is actually a “Christian Nationalist” view. It’s a view that twists the Gospel message, inverting it’s true message, to serve a political ideology. And it’s a horrifically clear, and helpful, little paragraph for us to unpack.

The theology of the smirk goes like this:

1. We love our family.
2. We love our community.
3. We love American citizens.
4. Then and only then do we love anybody else in the entire world.

This view of love is UP and DOWN. Greater or lesser.

And finally —and please don’t miss this point— it actually posits that Christianity and Christian theology is simply one tribe among many tribes. It’s just, in their mind, the only “true” tribe.

Christian families, Christian communities, Christian Americans, are to be loved, honored and privileged above all others.

I probably don’t need to tell you that, right now, this theology is ascendent in the Trump 2.0 administration. The proposed director of OBM is the Christian Nationalist, White Racist, creator of “Project 2025.”

The theology of the smirk is being foisted on our entire nation in ways that will be deeply harmful for generations, assuming the Republic actually survives.

Debunking The Theology of the Smirk
JD Vance’s smirk…and mine own as a younger man…is based on misunderstanding of the words of Jesus.

Because contrary to Vance’s claim here, it is the "theology of the smirk" that “inverts” true Christian theology.

Paradoxically, the theology Vance decries was not created in modern time, among the American “Far Left.”

It’s from JESUS. It’s literally Jesus’ words that destroy the hierarchical theory of the smirk…the theology he falsely calls “old school christian.”

JESUS is the one who, when his own biological family shows up to see him, disses the idea they are “special” by asserting that "family" is anyone who does God’s will. (So much for biological family first!)

JESUS is the one who says the Great Commandment is to love God, self, *and* neighbor. (So much for the world, last…)

JESUS is the one who then helps us define “who is my neighbor?” (Parable of the Good Samaritan). The answer: our political enemy or somebody from an entirely different tribe than ours. (So much for geographic neighbors being second…)

JESUS is one who said (Luke 4) that there is no distinction between God’s love for a foreigner and God’s love for a citizen, a messages that garnered him not only “smirks,” but his very first death threats (during his very first sermon…)

JESUS is the one clearly destroys hierarchical theology, by saying: “the last shall be first, and the first shall be last…”

JESUS…INVERTED this hierarchal view of love: Not “liberals.”
This is the true “old school view.”

So….if you’ve got a problem with this view, you need to take it up with Jesus!!!

This how both Mary (Jesus’ Mother) and Paul get their theology.

This is why Mary sings in the “Magnficat”:
“God has pulled down the might, and lifted up the lowly. God fills up the hungry, and sends the right empty away.”

This is why Paul asserts that all our human binaries are destroyed, through the Love of Christ Jesus:

There is no male/female gender binary.
There is no Jew or Greek….cultural and racial binary.
There is no Slave or Free…economic binary.

Paul was naming the great binaries and hierarchies of his day, and clearly stating that anybody who wants to follow Jesus will follow in the act of destroying binary-thinking in their day too.

Which is how we can see, so clearly, just how wrongheaded Vance’s smirky “Christian” theology is.

History of the Theology of the Smirk
But, since Vance brought up the phrase, “old school concepts,” let’s be blunt about where his theology comes from….

Vances hierarchical theology descends DIRECTLY form Colonial Theology, Imperial Theology, Enslaver Theology, Eugenics Theology.

Not so long ago, scientists, politicians, and theologian all conspired together to create interlocking hierarchical views of God and humans…with MEN at the very top (in the West, usually White Men) and everybody else in a descending hierarchical position underneath them.
(IMHO: We must not excuse science or politics as we also, rightly, condemn this historical theology)

JD Vance is right: His theology IS an “old school concept.”

But it’s the old school Christian Nationalistic theology that oppresses *everyone,* save the elite and the powerful.

On the day of JD Vance’s memorable “smirk,” Bishop Mariann Budde didn’t go into all this.

All she did —and this should haunt us too— is ask for mercy.

Here’s the truth I know from my life of faith in Jesus:

The true message of Jesus is always “triggering” to Christian Nationalists. They will always smirk.

But, as we have seen, they will do more than smirk. They will seek to enforce their will on what I like to call “The Tribe of Everybody Else.”

As with almost everything I’ve written since the ascendancy of Trump 1.0, I feel like I understand how we got here, but simultaneously feel totally inadequate to the cause of “how we fix it.”

For me, as I’ve recounted many times before, God saved me through the message of the Gospel. The truth Gospel message I have recounted above. The non-smirky Gospel that rejects political/theological White Supremacy.

It started in earnest on Election Night, 1984.

I had voted for Ronald Reagan a second time, even as the “Rainbow Coalition” message of Jesse Jackson had inwardly convicted me in ways that troubled my soul. But Jackson wasn’t on the Fall ballot. Reagan was. And, to me, Reagan was the candidate of “my tribe.”

But on that night, to celebrate Reagan’s landslide victory, I went down the Student Union bar at UT, and from afar…I watched the guttural, tribal, victory yells of a group of Young Republican Men. I’m sure there’s must have been some women in their group, but my memory is of the young men in top siders and blue blazers.

Reagan had won in a landslide. And I had enough Christian mercy to think in my head, in the moment:

“You don’t have to gutturally stomp on your enemies if you win in a landslide, unless your goal is their destruction, and…...oh shit…”

In that moment, my own “smirk” fell away forever.
I suddenly knew it this group of Blue Blazered consevative men was no longer my “tribe.”

I couldn’t countenance the “smirk,” the knowing “flex” of White Male Privileged at the expense of…everybody else.

The Cost of the Theology of the Smirk
Christian Nationalist theology —like the Conservative politics it serves— will always suggest it’s the true champion of the poor and POC.

But we are already seeing countless heartbreaking stories of Trump 2.0 supporters having that same kind of “waking up” moment I had back on Election Night 1984.

They’re saying “I didn’t vote for that…” to all manner of early Trump 2.0 decision.

I’m hearing tragic stories of…

Latino men who regret their votes, and have family members at risk…
Federal workers, who voted for Trump, whose jobs have been frozen…
Poor Whites who wonder why a billionaire has access to their earned Social Security…
“Back The Blue” rule followers, horrified by presidential pardons for cop killers…

Lot’s of buyers remorse out there.
None of this surprises me, and…yes…most of it privately enrages me.

But also this: Once upon a time that buyers remorse came to me too, on the night my own “theology of the smirk” started to fall away for good.

What Do We Do?
And yet, even with that history, I still don’t know what to tell you to do to “fix” stuff.

I know it takes repentance. That’s what it took for me. It wasn’t *groveling* repentence, because true repentance, as I have learned…is not connected to *groveling,* but instead to all our future choices after that moment.

True repentance is hard, life long work.

And…do we have lifetimes for folks to change?
Seem like, no.

Seems like we might have weeks-to-months to truly save any vestige of the American Republic, if that.

So, for all you non-White men…for all of you not under the sway of the “theology of the smirk,” all I know to tell you is:

1. Resist.
Yes, do that. Resist this ascending fascism.
Join political movements that are resisting…but please make sure you make your movements as broad as possible, smashing the binaries, not reinforcing them with litmus tests.
As I’ve said for many, many years: Only when progressive coalitions are invitational broad of EVERYONE can they win.
(And: They are always one step from collapse…)

2. Renew.
Find community to be with.
As I wrote last week, if you have a Christian core, find a Progressive Christian congregation.
This was, if I’m being honest, my own personal salvation many years ago. To be connected to people of faith…who try best we can to name of our shortcomings and privilege, and try best we can to join with all people…this is the movement that saved my life.

It opened a space for me inside the broad group I like to call: “The Tribe of Everyone Else.”

For me, in this very moment, I’m leaning hard into the wisdom of the American Civil Rights movement, and the World War II Confessing Church in Germany.

It’s sobering. These words of their bodily sacrifice might soon be literally true for some of us. Many of us may be called to put our bodies on the line, for the sake of humanity. That is not preacher hyperbole.

That, it seems to me, is “where we are.”

Unplug.
Please don’t spend/waste all your time doomscrolling. I am preaching to myself here. The solutions, such that they are, will always be found in real world communities and movements. Our devices tend to reinforce our tribalism, not destroy it.

So, please pull yourself away…take breaks….don’t get sucked in completely.

And then: Rinse and repeat.

Do it all, again and again.
That’s how personal habits of survival will create humans who can resist.

Finally, I come back to the beginning and —as I so often do— issue special plea to White men.

If you are a White man, I especially urge you to abandon the “theology of the smirk.”

If you find yourself recognizing JD Vance’s smirk, or even agreeing with it, right now you are doing great harm to our world.

I know you’ve been taught otherwise. I know you’ve been taught the toxic lessons that White men are supposed to “lead,” and everyone else supposed to follow.

But White men are humans beings, like everybody else. White men are not Elon Musk’s apocalyptic “Trans-humans.”

Look it up…there are disturbing parallels between an historic Christian theology that “once upon a time” placed White men as super heroes over all others, and Musk’s futurist visions of human beings that can, somehow, escape all bonds of human limitation. (I will soon write about Meghan O’Geiblyn’s sobering book on this…)

Just as scientists 100 years ago promised it would “change” humanity.
Just as the “theology of the smirk” falsely promised all shall be well if we just let White men lead.

So too now, the Trans-humanists (Musk and his pimply minions) have now come alongside of those of you who are White Christian Nationalists with their own secular, yet equally apocalyptic, version of your own more Christian “theology of the smirk.”

They honestly hate your Christian theology. But they’re happy to work with you, right now. (You probably oughta think about that…)

All these are dangerous fictions —scientific and theological— that in each historical era, seek to set White men back at the top of the very pyramids Jesus came to destroy.

As White men, our power, when unchecked, has always been, and is now, dangerous to others…especially when it lacks MERCY. And, dear God, is mercy lacking now.

This is the wisdom, the Christian faith, of which Bishop Budde spoke. God is a merciful God, not a vengeful one. Jesus came to destroy hierarchical systems, not put you, or me, or any White man, back at the top.

Believe it or not (and I’m confident you do not)…It’s FREEING to abandon hierarchies and trust in the wisdom of “The Tribe of Everyone Else.”

But it takes a true “repentance” on your part. Not just a logical repentance, of the head…but perhaps even an entire shift of how you see yourself, in relation to everyone else. I know that’s threatening and world-shaking. And I’d guess behind your “smirk” you wouldn’t even know where to start. (I wrote about my own journey here…)

The true Gospel message of Jesus is against all you’ve been ever taught *about* the Gospel message of Jesus.

I know how disorienting that last sentence is.

I know how you’ve been bred to lead, because that’s how I was once “bred.”

But we are men, not racehorses. And everyone in a pyramid scheme —even if you are at the top— is oppressed and limited by their demanded “place.”

Just as Roman Soldiers and synagogue leaders in Jesus’ day repented of their own privilege, so too there’s a world of freedom and God’s love that awaits you too. Promise.

So, please, in the name of God, look up, look around, look beyond your smirk, and see the destruction being wrought right now.

I know that “theology of smirk” you were raised to believe.

And I know the hubris behind it will kill everything you love.