In the aftermath of Vietnam, Congress passed the War Powers Act in 1973, over the veto of President Nixon. It stipulates that the president should inform Congress 48 hours after initiating the military in any hostile action, and then limits the president for 60 days in carrying out such actions before Congress declares war or passes a proper authorizing action. It was an attempt to find a compromise between Congress’ power to declare war and a president’s need to take immediate military action in certain situations. Nearly ever president since, Republican and Democrat, has bristled under its provisions. Further, Congress has largely abdicated its responsibilities to enforce the War Powers Act provisions.

Christianity Today, a magazine founded by the late evangelist Billy Graham, published an op-ed Thursday calling for President Donald Trump to be removed from office and urging evangelicals not to support him.

Trump’s latest executive order is yet another chapter in the spiritual story created by evangelicals. 

Partisans use Romans 13 to baptize their politics as being “ordained by God.” But Christians who reference Romans 13 typically do so using an us vs. government relationship. But unlike the first century when Roman rulers were mainly determined by heredity, lineage, or brute force, today we are the government. There is no us vs. them because we play an active role in how our government works and is run.

Unfortunately, Romans 13 is often interpreted by those who favor obedience to the status quo as saying that God demands that we always submit to the authorities, because their power comes from God. The most egregious example of this position in recent months is when children were being torn away from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called family separation “biblical,” citing Romans 13.

Autocrats and strongmen all over the world attack the free press and the idea of objective truth because they want you only to be able to listen to their truth. As Trump always puts it, “Believe me.” It's a way of governing that holds people captive because they depend on the strongman to tell them what the truth is. So when you take away the truth, you are purposely trying to take away people’s freedom.

Anti-Christ is a very big word, very evocative of our deepest spiritual realties and feelings, and is seldom invoked without controversy. It’s been abused by those promoting bad “end times” and “left behind” theology. But it’s also a profoundly biblical concept, one we must take as seriously in our day as Jesus did in his. Jesus warned his followers to be on the lookout for “pseudo-christs,” those that claimed his name but were far from the true heart of God, and said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

Some Latinx people have known — and others have suspected — this land is not safe for us, but the extent to which that suspicion has been confirmed in El Paso is terrifying. The perpetrator in this massacre was deliberate in his plan to counter the “Hispanic invasion.” It’s tempting to believe all this has been incited by the current president’s violent rhetoric. But while that rhetoric has added much fuel to the fire, the fire has been burning for a long time. 

The president of the United States has recently unleashed a barrage of racist and anti-immigrant tweets that are, in my opinion, in perfect alignment with who we have known him to be. While outrage is the appropriate societal response to such childish and harmful behavior, I do not believe that focusing our attention on tweets and xenophobic rhetoric is what will move us forward as a nation. What will move us forward as a nation is for everyone in this country to begin to understand the role that race plays in our white-dominated society, and the many ways in which most of us are complicit with this system of domination.