(RNS) — On Saturday (June 14), President Trump will spend more than $45 million of taxpayer funds to throw himself a big, brash military parade in Washington. It’s a display of vanity and hubris, an authoritarian spectacle that unfairly politicizes and exploits the armed services.
The parade will take place as National Guard units have been sent to crack down on protesters in Los Angeles County, where thousands are rallying to protect families and neighbors from abduction by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Mobilizing the National Guard — while preparing to deploy U.S. Marines without justification or a request from California’s governor — is a clear sign that the Trump administration seeks to incite and provoke escalation to further justify the use of military force and authoritarian abuses of power against American citizens.
Both the escalatory crackdown on dissent in Los Angeles and the military spectacle in Washington are meant to intimidate the president’s opponents — distract from the many ways Trump and his cronies are eroding our liberties and strip mining key social services, programs and government agencies that serve the people.
These aren’t the actions of a democratic leader serving the people, constrained by checks and balances. They’re the aggressive steps of a would-be dictator who has even referred to himself as a king. On the same day as Trump’s parade, therefore, a vast, peaceful pro-democracy movement is organizing to push back with major protests — declaring it “No Kings Day.”
These protests will be a display of democracy in action, bringing together a vast spectrum of organizations, activists and identities, with religious communities playing a critical part.
For many people of faith, protest against authoritarianism and lavish displays of power comes naturally. Many faith traditions have a long record of rejecting monarchs and authoritarian leaders who aggrandize themselves while abandoning or even mocking a commitment to justice, mercy, charity and respect for human dignity.
America’s commitment to religious freedom and its status as a refuge for religious groups results from the American people’s insistence that no leader should put themselves above the law and basic moral values. For centuries, many religious communities have come to this country fleeing kings and dictators who took on the power to persecute their political opponents and to repress religious or national minorities.
My Jewish great-great-grandparents fled Europe nearly 200 years ago after participating in the great anti-monarchical uprisings of 1848, when kings and princes in capitals across the continent were nearly toppled from their thrones. When royalists regained control, my forebears fled rather than live any longer at the whims of absolute monarchs who forced conformity and persecuting non-Christian faiths.
Their son, my great-grandfather, Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jewish justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, later gave a famous oration on “True Americanism,” in which he said:
Democracy rests upon two pillars: one, the principle that all men are equally entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and the other, the conviction that such equal opportunity will most advance civilization. Aristocracy, on the other hand, denies both these postulates. It rests upon the principle of the superman. It willingly subordinates the many to the few, and seeks to justify sacrificing the individual by insisting that civilization will be advanced by such sacrifices.
Today, authoritarians such as Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán make religion a tool of state power, using it to persecute those who advocate for human rights and equality. In establishing his “Task Force on Anti-Christian Bias” and a domestic “Religious Liberty Commission,” President Trump has taken clear steps in this direction, too.
If demagogues commonly convert religion to their own use, the world’s great traditions — Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism — have come to reject temporal leaders who assume a godlike absolute rule or who present themselves as objects of veneration and fear. They teach that blind allegiance to a human leader claiming to be divinely ordained is an act of idolatry. They celebrate instead all people as creatures of God’s creation. Reverence belongs to the sacred, not the self-appointed.
As a result, would-be authoritarians find most religious people deeply threatening, because they sense they cannot control them. The Trump administration has repeatedly shown itself to be hostile to religious organizations that don’t perfectly align with its own repressive agenda.
In its few months’ tenure, the administration has mocked religious leaders and defunded faith-based charitable agencies, reversed an order preventing immigration law enforcement from violating the sanctity of places of worship, and targeted diversity and equity initiatives designed to respect the dignity of all religious minorities.
It has promoted a narrowly Christian nationalist ideology at the expense of other traditions and viewpoints; suppressed reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights and other freedoms important to people of faith. They have co-opted the National Guard and armed forces to threaten First Amendment rights to free speech and freedom of assembly, cracking down on dissent.
For all these reasons, religious communities nationwide are motivated to take to the streets and uplift the message of “NO KINGS.” We can say no to false idols, false prophets and displays of power. No to leaders who wrap themselves in the cloak of religion while oppressing religious communities and terrorizing immigrants.
My great-grandfather, Justice Brandeis, said that “the most important political office is that of the private citizen.” We the people must refuse to be intimidated and show that we will always be more important than any politician. We must stand up for participatory democracy, for our fellow Americans and for the fundamental religious teachings across many faiths that celebrate justice, equality and human dignity.
(The Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush is president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
