Good and Evil in the Garden of Democracy

Rodney Wallace Kennedy (PhD, Louisiana State University) is lead pastor of First Baptist Church in Dayton, Ohio, as well as director of the Baptist House of Studies at United Theological Seminary, also in Dayton. He is the author of several books on homiletics, including Sermons from Mind and Heart (2011).Derek C. Hatch (PhD, University of Dayton) teaches theology and ethics at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas.

Democracy faces threats from an emerging right-wing movement in democratic governments around the world. This may be even more prevalent in the United States because there is an evil that uses rhetorical tropes to undermine the anchor institutions of democracy: press, courts, universities, and Congress. This evil has a personification--former President Donald Trump. All the rhetorical critiques of Trump, that he is a demagogue, an authoritarian, a serial liar, a populist on steroids, fail to take into account the evil that is fomented by his angry and vengeful rhetoric. Pictures of evil in Scripture, philosophy, and rhetoric bear a striking resemblance to Trump. It is not enough to say that he is dangerous to democracy. Kennedy claims that he is the evil seed in democracy that is even now sprouting new versions of the Trump rhetoric as each acolyte attempts to outrage the next. Good and Evil in the Garden of Democracy screams at the evil, fights against the evil, and then attempts to sing the songs of goodness and democracy from poets, prophets, and rhapsodes. For the health of democracy these words have been written.