Although many predicted it, no one really expected this moment to arrive so quickly and abruptly.

Donald Trump has begun his US presidency with a series of rapid jabs, simple solutions to extremely complex problems. He does so by ignoring basic rules and with global repercussions, far beyond the country that elected him.

In Europe not only politicians but also ordinary citizens have reacted first with shock (Is this America?) and then with deep introspection (And what now?).

The most immediate barometer of our feelings are the elections just around the corner in Germany, where 80 million people will decide what they think of their own ‘Trumpian’ alternative.

Lament and a renewed self-esteem

From the privileged bird watching tower that is Evangelical Focus, I have been able to follow the reactions of influential evangelical Christian leaders in Europe.

I have been struck by the unanimity of the hurried expressions of the last few days. In a continent so given to debate and nuance, the response to Trump’s first month in office ranges from lament at the mildest end of the scale to clear and undisguised indignation.

The US has abandoned its responsibility to democracy and the dignity of individuals and peoples, it is said. The US has sold its Christian values short to a nationalistic idolatry. The US no longer wants to be ‘a city on a hill’ but is descending into the mud to compete with autocrats.

The usual underlying questions are now suddenly of the utmost urgency. What should Europe do? What is really in our hands? And what is our moral compass to make the far-reaching decisions we must make?

Europe is known abroad as a place of cynics and pessimists, but these days it seems that a forgotten self-esteem is flourishing. There are calls to recover pride in our identity, to dust off the values that have built Europe.

Europe's strong and weak values

Well-known Spanish columnist Rubén Amón wrote this week a column entitled: ‘Why I am proud to be European’. His main argument is extremely interesting:

“Trump’s betrayal of democracy and common history is causing a state of shock that requires a response from a continent anaesthetised in well-being whose values represent all its strength and all its weakness”, he writes.

And then he goes on to say: “Europe is not weak because it has renounced its principles and its values, but precisely because it preserves and defends them. Europe is weak because it is home to an open, transparent and tolerant model of society, sensitive to human and labour rights. Europe is weak because there is freedom of the press and the separation of powers. And because the transfer of sovereignty from member countries has resulted in a supranational model that prevents us from our fratricidal past. Europe is weak because it believes in plurality and the circulation of ideas”.

It is curious that what attracts Amón and so many others who would be far from considering themselves ‘believers’ in a biblical sense are the values of a Europe whose pillars were built on a Christian worldview.

Vulnerable strength

We are all made “in the image of God”, says Genesis in the Bible. In other words, there is nothing more valuable than a human life. And from this Christian understanding of society flow principles we take for granted in the West (Glen Scrivener calls it ‘the air we breathe’) such as respect for the innate dignity of people, compassion for the exploited, service to others even against one’s own interest, community mechanisms to contain the corruption of the powerful, or respect for the freedom of the individual to express their convictions. Tom Holland explains more about this in his bestseller Dominion.

That strength expressed in vulnerability that Rubén Amón underlines is nothing more and nothing less than a nostalgia for a Christian worldview. 

As author Andy Crouch argues in his book Strong and Weak, true human “flourishing” (or that of a culture like Europe, I might add) occurs precisely when your ethics are so strong that you are willing to risk your security in order to defend them.

Crouch, talking about Jesus Christ (the one who proposed turn the other cheek to the aggressor), comes to the conclusion that “dramatically emptying oneself of authority, voluntarily relinquishing the capacity for meaningful action” and still returning from the dead produces “much more authority than we have ever seen or imagined”.

Philippians 2 is perhaps the clearest description in the Bible of this way of understanding life. The most powerful person in the universe makes himself vulnerable to the point of death and is then raised to the throne. He does not conquer by his strength but by his authority even in vulnerability.

Time to shine

Europe today longs for this ‘better story’ (as the psychiatrist Glynn Harrison would say). But it has forgotten where to find it.

Many on our continent sense that the values that built our culture are worth preserving. Some even realise that the way to fight for them could be, paradoxically, to resist the temptation to impose, to conquer.

I hope Europe will be encouraged to open the Bible and discover that there is a narrow path that makes its way between the two political monsters of our era: aggressive secularism that tries to eradicate faith and authoritarianism that uses faith for its anti-gospel ends.

“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven”, Jesus would say (Matthew 5:16).

If the Christian message is good news, now is a good time to demonstrate it.

Joel Forster, director of Evangelical Focus.

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