Where Is Our National Comfort When We Need it the Most?

By Rev. Steve Edington

[This is the text of an op-ed piece that appeared in the December 30, 2025, issue of the New Hampshire Union Leader.]

Our Constitution is clear on the matter: “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” That’s Article VI, Clause 3.

There’s an irony in that clause. While we quite rightly prohibit the adherence to a specific religion as a qualification for “any Office [President included] under the United States” there are times when we also, quite rightly, look to The President for spiritual leadership and nurture.

By “spiritual leadership and nurture” I mean those times when we need to be called to a higher place of common ground and to a unifying purpose, especially in a time of widely felt tragedy or deep division. It’s the kind of leadership Abraham Lincoln offered in his Second Inaugural Address following the Civil War when he said: “With malice toward none, with charity for all…let us bind up the nation’s wounds.” I don’t believe those wounds have been fully bound up even to this day, but Lincoln knew those words needed to be spoken at the time.

Over a century later, the best moment of Ronald Reagan’s presidency was the eloquent and moving words he offered in the wake of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, and the deaths of the astronauts on board, in January of 1986. In that moment politics didn’t matter. We were a nation united in grief, and we needed unifying words of comfort and assurance from the President. And Mr. Reagan delivered.

In June of 2015 President Barack Obama stood in the pulpit of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina and sang “Amazing Grace.” The occasion was a memorial service for the church’s pastor, and several of its members who had been shot dead by a hate-filled white racist who, after being invited into the church’s prayer meeting, opened fire. In the service that followed the President sang a hymn for America itself.

We have completed a Holiday season with its themes of love, peace, hope and joy: Four pillars of the Christian Advent that transcend the bounds of any one faith. They are among the themes the aforementioned Presidents sought to hold up when their times called for the spiritual leadership and care that was needed of them.

My gratitude for this kind of leadership is greatly tempered these days by my grief and anger over a President who is giving us the very antithesis of any kind of spiritual leadership and nurture when we need it. What we’re getting instead is a mockery of the whole idea.

USA Today called Trump’s response to the horrific murders of Robert and Michele Reiner a “vile new low.” I agree. These two beloved American figures from the film world were killed at the hand of their terribly mentally damaged son. Rather than follow the examples of his predecessors at a time like this, and offer some words of sympathy and care, Trump disgustingly blamed the victims due to their perpetuation of so-called “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

This incident took place just days after the shootings, that included two deaths, of students at Brown University. While sending his regards to the families of the victims and the wounded, his closing words on the subject were disturbingly dismissive: “things can happen.”

Earlier in the fall, at the memorial service for Charlie Kirk, and after Mr. Kirk’s wife had expressed words of love and forgiveness for her husband’s killer, Donald Trump came back with this: “He [Kirk] did not hate his opponents…That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.” Read those words while knowing that in Trump’s mind an “opponent” is anyone who takes issue with him, or in any way speaks ill of him, under any kind of circumstances.

And then there are the matters of Trump calling Governor Tim Walz “retarded” and Somali’s (Some of whom are American citizens, and one—Rep. Ilan Omar–a member of Congress) “human garbage.”

To return to my larger topic: All of our past Presidents sought to meet the challenge of offering spiritual leadership and comfort when their times called for it. Some did a better job of it than others; some came up way short of the mark. But no President until now has made such a mockery of the whole idea of spiritual nurture itself. Instead, he gives us the opposite.

I’ll end with a question for those who identify with Trump’s MAGA movement, including his political supporters in the US Congress: Do you have a tipping point? Will his degradation of the Presidential office ever reach a point where you’ll say, “enough is enough?” Or will you continue to follow him on his downward spiral?

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Rev. Steve Edington is the Minister Emeritus of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua. He is a 30 year member, and a past President, of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac.