Professional Documents
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u r i n g e l e c t i o n s , r e l i g i o u s l e a d e r s h av e a n o b l i g at i o n t o
li up the moral values of their faith traditions that oer instruction and
guidance on issuesof public consequence. When entering into the public sphere,
faith leaders must take care to avoid being used by politics or politicians, or to
allow their faith to be exploited for partisan causes or their faith communities
turned into mere political constituencies.
As Martin Luther King Jr. put it, The church must be reminded that it is not the
master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be
the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool.
The right questions, for Christians, include: What does the Bible say? What does
Jesus teach? How can those convictions best be applied to the complex
andimperfect choices of political elections? Various Christians will reach dierent
conclusions on these questions and vote dierently and thosedierences must
But while Donald Trump certainly did not start these long-standing American
racial sins, he is bringing our nations worst instincts to the political surface,
making overt what is oen covert, explicit what is oen implicit.
Trumps highly visible and vulgar racial and religious demagoguery presents a
danger but also an opportunityto publicly expose and resist the worst of
American values. By confronting a message so contrary to our Christian values,
our religious voices can help provide a powerful way to put our true faith and our
better American values forward in the midst of national moral confusion and
crisis.
There is understandable anger across the country. The failures of both Washington
and Wall Street have created legitimate citizen anger and alienation across the
political spectrum, and many of us are empathetic to the many people who feel
marginalized and unheard by economic, political, and media elites that dont serve
their needs. Faith leaders and our communities need to reach out to all of those in
marginalized communities even across racial and ideological linesto listen,
learn, and serve.
But Donald Trump, a celebrity from the worlds of real estate and reality television,
is manipulating this anger for his own political advantage at the expense of the
common good. Trump is shamelessly using racial resentment, fear, and hatred
welcomed by those who believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, and embraced by those
who call themselves the body of Christ. Instead, Donald Trump is condoning the
politics of race and hate, and now even justifying political violence. His divisive
rhetoric, laced with racist, bigoted, and hateful attitudes and wrapped in
nationalistic xenophobia, is being enthusiastically embraced by millions
including many self-identied Christians, who are allowing their racial identity to
trump their faith. This stands against the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Painfully, the politics of race and violence have been used repeatedly against
people of color in our history indeed, since our nations founding. But instead of
repenting from Americas original sin of racism, Donald Trump is exploiting the
legitimate economic grievances of marginalized white Americans with false and
ugly racial blame.
Trumps personal attacks on Americas rst black president as illegitimate and not
one of us, his false accusations against African Americans, his vicious attacks
against Mexicans and inaming the fear of immigrants more broadly, his claim
that most Muslims hate America and his call to ban them from our country, his
advocacy of torture and the killing of terrorists families and children are all of
deep concern to many of us as religious leaders. To all that falsehood, hatred, and
violence we must say no, in defense of all of Gods diverse children.
violence, are gospel issues, not merely partisan political matters. Confessional
resistance to that message is now required by faithful Christians. This is not merely
an electoral debate in which Christians hold legitimately diering policy views
from one another. Rather, it is a public test of Christian truth and discipleship.
History records other moments that beckoned churches to publicly confess the
truths of faith in order to confront political movements that represented a
deceitful and dangerous attack on the gospelto try to clarify faithful Christian
witness in a time of crisis.
Inammatory messages of racial, religious, and nationalist bigotry compel
confessional resistance from faithful Christians who believe that the image of God
is equally within every human being. We hold up the call to love Christ in the
encounter with one another, and we believe social justice is an integral component
of the way of Jesus, leading inevitably to speaking up for our neighbor against
political attacks, especially by oppressive leaders and governments. Racism is a sin
against the Holy Spirit; it overtly opposes the work of God in the world; and we
Christians are called to stand up for our neighbors. We must always uphold the
principle, in both our personal and public lives, of reciprocity the Golden Rule
that we should treat others in the ways we want to be treated ourselves.
When we face dangerous and demagogic messages of racial fear, hate, xenophobia,
gender disrespect, and nationalist ideology, it is incumbent upon Christians to lead
comments, images, and lies related to African Americans, and refused to quickly
and clearly disavow the support of the KKK and other white supremacists for his
candidacy.
* He began his candidacy and has deployed his national platform with false,
incendiary, insulting, and racist attacks on Mexicans and other immigrants,
thereby endangering not only all Latinos in America but other people of color now
targeted even by bullying school children. Along with others, he has proposed a
cruel mass deportation of every undocumented immigrant in the United States,
which would separate and destroy millions of families.
* He has oered a blanket condemnation of Islam as a religion and has proposed
an unprecedented and unconstitutional ban on all immigration of Muslims to the
United States; he has falsely accused U.S. Muslims of many things, including
supposedly cheering the attacks of Sept. 11, thus impugning the national loyalty of
millions of our fellow citizens which undermines our national security by
alienating and marginalizing our Muslim neighbors.
* He has made numerous objectifying and degrading comments about women,
disrespecting both their dignity and equality including mocking the appearances
of female candidates and the wives of candidates who opposed him and issuing
sexist attacks on female reporters who challenge him. His own sexual boasting and
cheating on multiple wives oend both men and women and serve as a negative
role model for our children.
* He mocked a disabled reporter, creating an environment that leads to further
mockery of disabled persons.
* He has threatened to open up libel laws in order to punish those who criticize
him, a chilling threat to free speech and freedom of the press, and, along with his
continuous hostile words and actions against the media, he has created a
threatening environment for reporters covering his campaign. Trumps harshly
negative statements and actions toward a free and critical press is discomforting
for many of us. Without apology, he has expressed his support for strong dictators
and their crackdowns on dissent, thus sending a signal.
* His rallies have become frightening settings that both threaten and at times enact
violence in word and deed. By implicitly and explicitly encouraging violence and
physical attacks on those protesting at his rallies, he has endangered public
discussion, and even exploited such incidents for his political advantage. Not only
has he failed to clearly and emphatically denounce his supporters for violent
behavior, he has actually called for such practices and, when people engage in
them, has oered to subsidize their legal expenses.
* He has several times threatened to deploy torture techniques far worse than
waterboarding against national enemies, and has threatened to kill family
members, including the children, of suspected terrorists all in contradiction to
U.S. and international law.
* He has coarsened political discourse through threats, vulgarity, and vile personal
attacks on his opponents giving justication for many of his followers to engage
in similar vitriol. He has lied repeatedly, seemingly pathologically, about many
matters when directly questioned about the facts. Instead of deepening civil
discussion, he inames angry feelings at home and has already worsened relations
with other nations who have become targets of his verbal attacks.
* He denes leadership only in terms of strength, toughness, winning, and
making deals, rather than the ethic of public service, nding common ground,
or serving the common good. With him, politics is reduced to win/lose battles,
with leaders as the winners against the losers. He oers to be the authoritarian
strong man, instead of the servant leader, and in his distorted denition of
leadership, the Christian virtues of humility, compassion, empathy, mutuality, and
integrity disappear.
Instead of learning from his mistakes, the list of Donald Trumps moral oenses
keeps growing. Its time to say enough.