Make America Great Again. So be it. Now, what do we mean when we say ‘Great America’? And when we say “Again”, to what period are we referring?

For the man who now resides in the White House, America’s greatness takes its cue from pagan empires such as the Roman Empire. That is why he celebrates with a gladiatorial contest in which a barbarian achieves glory by striking and humiliating another barbarian: a wonderful paradigm for relations between people and nations.

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And, like a Caesar, Donald Trump associates the 250th anniversary of US independence with his own birthday. He emulates the Stone of Augustus in the Forum on which he declared himself a god, something Trump portrays in a well-known, ridiculous painting.

 Trump views international relations like an unscrupulous businessman, who sells out heroic Ukraine and leaves Delcy Rodríguez to govern Venezuela

Trump’s Great America is that of an immature child who wields the power of a giant, who follows the principle of always attacking, lying when necessary and imposing his own narrative of undisputed victory.

He is the capricious figure who views international relations like an unscrupulous businessman, who sells out heroic Ukraine and leaves Delcy Rodríguez to govern Venezuela on his behalf, who launches a hostile takeover bid for Greenland and dishes out threats of tariffs to friends and foes alike.

By constantly presenting and withdrawing these threats, he has been undermining his credibility. But the worst thing is that along the way it is Trumps’ own nation that loses credibility, having gradually squandered its role as a benchmark of moral authority.

A country may seem great because of its economic or military power, but it is truly great when it achieves moral authority. The ‘Great America’ that Trump peddles looks more like the Roman Empire and ignores the fact that its founders rose up precisely against an empire to create the Great America that was born on 4 July 1776.

 

Greatness in the past, based on Christian principles

America was once great. The president who sends ICE to tear immigrant parents away from their families, who detains and deports children, forgets that America was once great.

It is the Great America that drafted its founding documents as the world’s first true democracy by reading the Bible, whose Constitution does not begin with “I, the President”, but with “We, the People”

America was great when it had the courage to remember that its founding fathers were immigrants, pilgrims fleeing intolerance; it was when it humbly—that word forbidden to Trump—embraced the commandment of Deuteronomy 26:1 and 5: “When you have entered the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and you have taken possession of it and settled in it… Then you shall speak and say before the Lord your God: ‘A Aramean on the verge of perishing was my father, who went down to Egypt and dwelt there with a few men, and there he grew and became a great, strong and numerous nation’.” Therein lies the Great America that Trump is utterly incapable of understanding.

It is the Great America that drafted its founding documents as the world’s first true democracy by reading the Bible, whose Constitution does not begin with “I, the President”, but with “We, the People”, which established in Rhode Island a model of statehood in which everyone, including the Native Americans, had equal rights, which adopted the First Amendment to prevent any dogma from being imposed as official. The Great America which established, based on biblical principles, a democratic system of checks and balances that Trump wishes to flout, the one that enshrined the inviolability of the home based on Deuteronomy 24:10–13, the one that abolished slavery, the one that, under Jimmy Carter, promoted respect for human rights as the foundation of international policy…

That is the America that is Great not only because of its GDP, but because it is a benchmark for the world in terms of moral authority. It is the America that Trump ignores.

 

The power of evangelicals

Evangelicals have real power in today’s America. To whom are they handing it over? They are repeating the blunder of their brothers and sisters in other countries, who, when a leader presents them with a sound policy on Life and Family – such as dismantling the power of Planned Parenthood’s abortion business – swallow the rest of the agenda and the leader’s appalling biography whole.

I continue to pray for an evangelical candidate (Republican or Democrat) with impeccable personal morals and solid biblical convictions, a role model who will restore the country to the best of its identity

I have met some evangelicals who have held posts in the Trump administration. Any one of them is worth more than the president, any one of them would have been a far better candidate and would be better able to restore America to greatness.

But they cower before a buffoon like Trump and hand everything over to him. I don’t understand it. I continue to pray that American evangelicals will identify an evangelical candidate (it makes no difference to me whether they are Republican or Democrat) who, with impeccable personal morals and solid biblical convictions, will be a role model of whom they need not be ashamed, and who will restore their country to the best of its identity, its values, and its moral authority, to make it great again.

In the meantime, my prayer is that the American people put into practice what they declared 250 years ago: “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles”.

X. Manuel Suárez, medical doctor, Deputy Secretary General for the International Area of the Spanish Evangelical Alliance.