I’m writing this note after reading a New York Times piece about Trump’s recent suggestion to combat coronavirus by “injecting” a form of bleach as a sort of “cleansing.” (Later he walked it back to supposedly being “sarcastic,” which seems worse than sincerity).
If this matters--and I will explain why it could-- I noticed on cable TV as the story was breaking, and again today in the Times, confusion about whether the idea was to “ingest” or “inject” bleach. That is, was Trump floating a vision of cleansing the bloodstream, the lungs, or the digestive tract?
Although we've already gone with Alice through the looking glass by pursuing this question at all, I think I have the answer! You're welcome!
The Guardian reported that Trump's idea might have come from an obscure church called Genesis II. Maybe we should put “church” in scare quotes, but at least it's a business that seems to be registered as a church.
Since I study and teach on US religion, I clicked over to Genesis II (which was new to me). I must say I’m amazed that so few reporters seem to have undertaken this (to me obvious) exploration, nor followed up on the Guardian's reporting. (That's based on a search today; here is an exception). Perhaps this is just the sort of geek that I am.
What One Finds at Genesis II
The Genesis II site is mainly about selling their cures. These center on a “sacrament” that involves drinking a small amount of special bleach mixed in water.
For other geeks who flock with me, here is an impassioned sermon posted yesterday from the self-declared bishop of Genesis II. He insists on his absolute religious freedom to promote his "sacrament."
(Speaking about this freedom, he apparently thinks there was only a minuscule difference in concept and time between the two things he compares to his noble cause: a quest of Pilgrims for religious freedom in the early 1600s and Constitutional language about religious freedom in late 1700s. Sorry, bishop, that was a concept gap between theocracy and witch trials versus Deists who didn’t believe in miracles—with a time gap comparable to the one between science today and science before Einstein and Darwin.)
It seems, also, that Genesis II folks are anti-vaxxers — so as not to inject bad things into their blood — while at the same time bullish about their bleach sacrament.
Ingest or Inject? A Snap Diagnosis
Although I am no expert on Genesis II and don’t have time to become one today, I think I know enough about US religion to be be like a doctor who (with due disclaimers) can make a fairly sound snap diagnosis– pending confirmation by blood tests.
Did Trump really suggest ingesting this sacrament? Or might this this something less embarrassing like some high-tech injection in the bloodstream. Maybe Trump was clumsily leaking classified knowledge of some advanced chemotherapy, as posited by various apologists for Trump in the New York Times? Maybe this, in turn, could be analogous to serpent handlers who deliberately show their faith by risking deadly snake bites and drinking strychnine because they think Mark 16:18 commands it?
All these are doubtful, while the Guardian hypothesis leading toward Genesis II passes the smell test with flying colors. By extension, I believe we can hypothesize “ingest.”
Trump as Prosperity Gospel Quack
This shows all the marks of positive thinking and/or prosperity gospel quackery—the tradition of selling either New Age or ultra-consumerist-neo-Pentecostal healing oils, blessed prayer fetishes, healing crystals, mantras, etc.
Insofar as Trump has a credible claim to having any religious or moral orientation whatsoever—although yesterday Lucinda Williams released a song denying this—this is rooted in the positive thinking and/or prosperity gospel tradition. Trump got there less through his current Pentecostal bedmates or the New Age, and more from a famous New York preacher, Norman Vincent Peale, who self-identified as a mainstream Presbyterian.
But all these are fingers on the same hand. Genesis II is like a strange experiment in decorating one of the fingernails. Sadly, in this Alice through the looking glass world, this all does “make perfect sense” to me.
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