We’re in the early weeks of Lent, the 40 days when Christians are called to rededicate themselves to good — and the Trump administration seems to be having a good time making its war with Iran seem like a bunch of tweens playing a game of “Call of Duty.”
Where Jesus called on believers to go through life as meekly as possible, the White House keeps pumping out social media posts mixing footage of American forces blowing up the Iranian regime with everything from SpongeBob SquarePants to Iron Man to “Grand Theft Auto.” While Proverbs warned “every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — who loves to flash his bad tattoos that reference the Crusades — gives superlative-drenched speeches on the supposed glories of this war that make him sound more bloodthirsty than Count Dracula.
Even though Christ mandated that people not loudly pray in public “like the hypocrites,” President Trump gladly let a gaggle of pastors lay hands over him in the Oval Office this week as one intoned God “continue to give our President the strength that he needs to lead our nation as we come back to one nation under God.”
Which God: Yahweh or Trump?
During last month’s National Prayer Breakfast, the president bragged that because of him, “religion’s back now hotter than ever before.” Perhaps the most un-Christian man to ever serve as commander in chief has continually wrapped himself in the mantle of Jesus — and too many Christians have ignored the Good Book’s repeated warnings against false prophets and cheered him on.
Flannery O’Connor could have written an entire novel on Christian hucksters just from Year One of the second coming of the Trump administration.
As the Iran war ratchets up with no end in sight, this devotion to Trump is veering into idolatry.
Pastor Greg Laurie — most famous for holding Harvest Crusade revivals in Southern California for the past generation — wrote online that Trump’s Iran campaign “is cause for us to sit up and pay attention” because he feels it lines up with End Times prophecy about the Middle East descending into war just before the Second Coming. The nonprofit Military Religious Freedom Foundation revealed it has received hundreds of complaints from troops about their superiors claiming that what’s going on is biblically ordained.
Meanwhile, South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters that what’s happening “is a religious war” that “will set the course of the Middle East for a thousand years” — the exact time period that the Book of Revelation stated Christ will reign until Satan returns. Some Trump supporters have even compared their savior to Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who freed the Israelites from the yolk of the Babylonians and of whom the Book of Isaiah called God’s “anointed” and would “subdue nations before him and to strip kings of their armor.”
The Bible is not all kumbaya. But from the Old Testament to the New, it consistently preaches for the faithful to humble themselves, to help the poor and downtrodden. Trump’s version of Christianity instead preaches no mercy for those against him, demands followers exalt him above everything, celebrates the gaudy instead of the godly.
This Lent is magnifying his apostasy like never before.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine speak during a press briefing at the Pentagon on Wednesday in Washington.
(Konstantin Toropin / Associated Press)
It’s a time to fast from our excesses; Trump continues to push forth a White House redesign that will make the Palace of Versailles look as flashy as a mud hut. Those of us who partake in Lent are asked to repent of our sins; Trump is doubling down on them like they’re McDonald’s fries. We are supposed to reflect on our wrongdoings and ask for forgiveness from the Almighty and those we wronged — has Trump ever done that?
We’re also supposed to practice almsgiving and assist those less fortunate than ourselves as a way of honoring Christ, who pointed out that giving so it costs you is the only way to give. Trump has always brayed that he’s ultimately looking out for the common man — but instead of helping the millions of people whom his economy was already leaving behind before the Iran campaign, he’s shrugging off their woes and asking Americans to buckle up and weather price spikes and simply believe in him.
Or is that Him?
Conservative Christian leaders have continually landed on the wrong side of American history, from slavery to imperialism, Jim Crow to women’s rights. That’s why it’s not surprising — but still disappointing — that a Pew Research Center poll released earlier this year found 69% of white evangelicals think Trump has done a good job. Fifty-two percent of white Catholics feel the same, compared with just 23% of Latino Catholics, even though Pope Leo XIV has consistently decried American foreign and domestic policy.
Lent also is the time that Christians remember that the pain of Christ’s death leads to the hope that is Easter. That’s why for this Lent, may Christians repent of Trump like never before.
War has always been a time for propaganda, of demonizing the enemy and pumping up your side. It is a sad, tragic affair, with death and carnage and endless mourning. Children die. War is not a thing to be celebrated, even if it were necessary. And there’s a big if around this latest one, even if Ayatollah Ali Khamenei deserved his downfall and Iranians in their country and abroad rightfully celebrate.
But history’s greatest warriors know — to quote the conclusion of the Oscar-winning biopic “Patton” — that glory is fleeting. Trump, Hegseth and their ilk are not them. They are the men that Psalms asked God to deliver us from, the warmongers who “imagine mischiefs in their heart” and “continually” seek violence. To see how this administration and its supporters are preening right now reminds me of what Johnny Cash once sung: sooner or later, God‘s gonna cut you down.
Let’s just hope the rest of us are spared when that happens. If you pray, please do. (And not to Trump).
Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” is a grand mass for large orchestra, chorus and four vocal soloists that lasts around 80 minutes. It was written near the end of Beethoven’s life and is his most ambitious work musically and spiritually. “Coming from the heart, may it go to the heart,” he wrote on the first page of the score.
The Beethoven biographer Jan Swafford put it this way: “ ‘Missa Solemnis’ is Beethoven talking to God, man to man. And what they talked about is peace. Creation was for Beethoven’s the magnificence in the world which we inhabit; ‘Missa Solemnis’ is meant to keep it thus.”
Yet among Beethoven’s major works, “Missa Solemnis” is, by far, the least performed, and not merely because of the need for large forces. Conductors struggle to get a handle on its mysteries and intricacies. Upon turning 70 last year, Simon Rattle contended “Missa Solemnis” remains beyond him. Upon his reaching 70, Michael Tilson Thomas made a momentous meal of “Missa Solemnis” 11 years ago with a staged performance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Gustavo Dudamel, who has been conducting Beethoven since he was a teen, waited until he passed his 45th birthday last month. His first “Missa Solemnis” performances over the weekend at Disney were the centerpiece of his month-long L.A. Phil focus on Beethoven.
That venture began a week earlier with a political statement. Beethoven’s incidental music to Goethe’s drama of liberation, “Egmont,” was updated with a new text that served as an urgent call for protest in our own era of authoritarianism and militarism. Here, Beethoven exerts a compulsion for triumphant glory.
The glory in “Missa Solemnis” is that of stupefaction. By this point in his life, Beethoven has had it with weapons, the drumbeat of soldiers, the addictive emotion of trumpet calls to action. His man-to-man with God is celestial diplomacy. There is no compromise. We either care, at all costs, for our magnificent world or nothing matters.
Dudamel clearly cares. He conducted the massive mass from memory. And costs be damned. He imported from Spain two spectacular choruses — Orfeó Català and Cor de Cambra del Palau de la Música Catalana — a total of some 130 singers who sounded like they had rehearsed for months under their impressive director, Xavier Puig. The four soloists — soprano Pretty Yende, mezzo-soprano Sarah Saturnino, tenor SeokJong Baek and bass Nicholas Brownlee — were needfully robust and powerful. They were placed mid-orchestra, behind the violas and bravely in front of the timpani.
“Missa Solemnis” follows the standard mass text but doesn’t necessarily follow the liturgical narrative. It is a work of theater, dramatizing feelings, as the earlier Disney staging attempted. Director Peter Sellars and conductor Teodor Currentzis have also been promising a major staged “Missa Solemnis” for many years.
The Kyrie opens with a strong D-major chord in the large orchestra that seems an obvious downbeat but turns out to be an upbeat. Down is up. Eighty or more minutes later at the end of the Agnus Dei, when the great plea for peace reaches its ultimate transcendence, up becomes, in one of the most profoundly unsettling moments in all music, down again. We never fully know where we stand in “Missa Solemnis.” Every expectation is thwarted. Beethovenian peace is a nearly superhuman endeavor.
Gustavo Dudamel conducts L.A. Phil, vocal soloists and Catalan choruses in Beethoven’s ‘Missa Solemnis’ at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
(David Butow / For The Times)
Dudamel‘s approach is to attempt the all-encompassing. He conducted without a baton but with his body. His arms were often open and wide as if embracing the musician masses on the stage, holding the whole world in his hands. Tidiness wasn’t necessarily the issue. Grandeur was. Molding sound was. And, of course, awe.
Throughout his career, Beethoven was the overwhelming master of awe. In “Missa Solemnis,” he out-glories the Gloria. His fugues are a draftsman’s rendering of heavenly splendor. Such awe asks for the superhuman from singers, especially in this ensemble from their ravishing high notes.
But Beethoven also questions every sentiment in the Mass. Grandeur can so suddenly turn solemn that it feels almost a ceremonial sleight of hand. In the Sanctus, a solo violin sails in from nowhere (“descending like a dove from heaven,” Hugh MacDonald nicely puts it in the program note), and suddenly we’re in a violin concerto with vocal soloists of transcendent allure.
The Agnus Dei begins in glum realization that there may be no compensation for humanity’s great sins when, again astonishingly without expectation, one of Beethoven’s uniquely wondrous melodies takes over. Saber-rattling trumpet and timpani intrude and are shushed away as worthless. Peace returns but just as it is about to climax it weakens. There is no grand Beethoven ending. “Missa Solemnis” just stops.
Dudamel’s approach was not, as his Beethoven has generally become, filled with fervent intensity in the moment. That may happen as he gains more experience with Beethoven’s most exigent score. The big moments were still huge, especially with the help of his fabulous chorus. The somber moments were well of the heart. There was eloquent solo playing in the orchestra, and extravagance from the solo singers.
Most unusual was the violin solo. The L.A. Phil is in a concertmaster search, and Alan Snow, the associate concertmaster of the Minnesota Symphony, sat in. He brought silken “descending dove” tone to his solo playing, but at low tone becoming more a voice from afar than soloist. Whether that is simply his sound or what Dudamel was after is, like so much in the “Missa Solemnis,” up to question. Still, its quiet exemplified the elusive essence of peace.
When Dudamel first walked on stage, he got, as he always does and especially in his last season as music director, a strong ovation. At the end of “Missa Solemnis,” the reaction was a respectful standing ovation, unlike the de rigueur rapturous reception he always earns with Beethoven.
Dudamel earned something far more rewarding. It wasn’t a moment for cheering but reflection. True peace in “Missa Solemnis” comes not from winning but from ending conflict, be it between nations, nature or among ourselves. We have as yet too little to celebrate.
Danny, who has fond memories of his caravan holidays in the 1980s, is investing his money, time and hard work to bring back the spirit of the classic family holiday alongside daughter Dani, 29.
The father and daughter have a very close bond, having worked together on other projects such as True Love or True Lies, their hit podcast Sorted with the Dyers and travel show Absolutely Dyer: Danny and Dani do Italy.
Opening up during the show, Dani speaks about her close bond with dad Danny, where she reflects on his past time in rehab.
Danny previously told the BBC receiving a letter from his daughter Dani while at a rehab facility in 2016 was what convinced him to continue his treatment.
The father-of-three, who first met wife Jo Mas when they were both 14, managed to turn his life around with the help of rehab, therapy and meditation.
Talking about her dad’s journey on The Dyers’ Caravan Park, Dani says: “You know when your brain just doesn’t want to remember things? Like, it just blocks it out?
“He [dad Danny] went to rehab a couple of times. I remember the first time, I didn’t really remember the first time that he went and I wrote him a letter.
“I still to this day, I can’t remember what I wrote. You know, like when everything was such a bubble and everything was just so intense at the time.
“I knew he’d gone, but I knew that there was a reason. Like, if he hadn’t gone away, like, God knows where he’d be now.”
Talking about their close bond, Dani made an emotional death admission about her famous dad: “When he goes, I’ll have to stuff him, because I’ll need him in my garden forever. He can never leave me. He has to outlive us all.”
The Dyers’ Caravan Park launches 24 February on Sky and NOW.
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