Can Deplorables Be Redeemed?

Casting a Wide Net

What is the value of a monotheistic organized religion like Christianity?

For some people, there is no value to such a belief system. They’ll dismiss it as superstitious, prejudiced, flawed, worthless, or even worse than worthless because religion can be used to drive conflict, or to elevate the allegedly saved (or “elect”) while casting the damned into eternal hellfire.

Yes, there’s that. But at their best belief systems like Christianity can inspire hope. They can serve to actuate the better angels of our nature. They are aspirational as well as inspirational. They can even be redemptive.

Michelangelo’s “Lost Crucifix,” Augustinian Community of Santo Spirito, Florence (NYT Photo)

That no one is beyond redemption is a fundamental message of the New Testament in Christianity. Christ, after all, didn’t hang out with the elect of his day, the richest, the powerbrokers. Christ hung out with the sinners, with tax collectors and prostitutes, with ordinary workers and poor folk. He healed the sick and helped the poor, and in Christian teachings, he offered his own body up to be crucified as an atonement for humanity’s sins.

This has been on my mind prompted by a small pamphlet left by my mailbox that cited John 6:37, that “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” And what a reassuring message that is! How many of us, in the depths of despair, believe that we are alone, that others, even if we reach out to them, will reject or ignore us? Christ says he won’t do that. He says he is there for all and that no one is beyond help. Is there a purer form of love?

The prodigal son will be forgiven. The adulterer deserves another chance. Even a thief on the cross may be saved if he comes to Christ.

Now of course all this is a matter of faith and belief. There’s no scientific proof of it. Raised Catholic, the message resonates with me, even though I’m not a church-goer now and more agnostic than anything else.

Still, this message of generosity, of grace is fundamental to Christianity, which was why Hillary Clinton’s message to her followers in 2016 was so ungenerous and graceless. She spoke of Trump and his MAGA followers as occupying a “basket of deplorables,” going a big step further by dismissing some of them as “irredeemable.” In so doing she effectively cast them out of heaven, rejected them, spurned them. It wasn’t just unchristian—it was unwise, politically,

You’d think a politician would know to cast the widest possible net to secure votes. But Clinton was so confident in her victory, and so contemptuous of her opponent, that she cast the “deplorables” aside. She said, essentially, either you’re with me or you’re nothing. And so it was easy for fence-straddling voters to decide that they really didn’t want to be with her.

Christ’s message is far different: deplorables, however those are defined, are redeemable. You will not be spurned. You will not be rejected. There is a better way ahead for you, a way of love, and it’s open to all, irrespective of one’s past.

It’s a message as powerful as it is enticing, and it’s one that Democrats, assuming they ever want to win the presidency again, should embrace now and in the future.