My fellow white Evangelical Christians like to talk about how President Donald Trump has been a "wake up call" these painful, past four years.
But way too few appear inclined to answer that call.
An overwhelming majority of white Evangelicals instrumental in Trump's winning the White House in 2016, still insist the President is their man in 2020, according to a Pew Research Center poll earlier this month.
Though the President's support slipped several points among white Evangelicals from a summertime poll, 83% to 78%, a solid majority remained in Trump's camp this fall.
How long will white Evangelical Christians advocate for the leader of the Free World who has all the character traits of an anti-Christ?
In Proverbs 6:16-19 it is written:
"These six things the Lord hates, Yes seven are an abomination to him: A proud look, a lying tongue, Hands that shed innocent blood, A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that are swift in running to evil, A false witness who speaks lies, And one who sows discord among brethren."
Now that Trump's gross indifference and negligence has facilitated the deaths of more than 230,000 people in America from Covid-19, the President arguably qualifies as guilty of each one of those abominations, including shedding “innocent blood.”
The facts are undeniable and well known. While the Coronavirus incubated death across the homeland, President Trump blew it off as inconsequential. He assured that the virus would just "go away," that it was "totally under control" and labeled it a Democratic "hoax.”
Instead of alerting the American citizenry to the lethality of a pending pandemic, which we know from Bob Woodward’s audio-taped conversations with Trump that the President was unequivocally aware, Trump intentionally misled and lied to Americans. No surprise there.
"Let no man deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience," the Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:6.
A few verses later, Paul warned: "And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.”
In allowing Trump to consistently and obviously bamboozle them, do not God’s “very elect" risk the same judgement of the "sons of disobedience"?
Further, how can Christians seriously expect to "win souls for Christ" while again endorsing the devil's advocate for another -- even more hellish -- four years in the Oval Office?
Instead of marshalling all the forces of government to prepare and compassionately warning the citizenry of Covid’s indiscriminate death march across the nation, Trump instead, served as a deadly conspiring agent of the disease by picking political fights, sowing discord, shirking blame, actually bragging about the “great” job his administration was doing while lying the whole time about testing, personal protective equipment and contact tracing.
While Americans became infected, their lungs slowly ravaged, Trump focused on touting the stock market numbers, golfing at his own properties on the taxpayer’s dime, holding “Keep America Great” campaign rallies and seeking vengeance against patriots who testified to the President’s malfeasance during his impeachment.
Consider: In Hebrew, “Satan” is translated as “liar” or “adversary.” And Jesus Christ described the Devil as the “father of lies.”
A recent study by a group of disaster preparedness experts found that between 130,000 and 210,00 lives could have been saved in America if President Trump had acted with more urgency in dealing with the virus.
But still, criminally, President Trump won’t take the deadly contagion seriously. Even now, as Covid-19 cases surge in many states across the country foreboding a dark winter, on the eve of a monumental presidential election – which the President (as any despotic leader would) suggests he won't acknowledge if he loses – Trump delusionally declares that we are “rounding the bend” in the fight against the Coronavirus and again insists “it will go away.”
In Matthew 10:16-17, Jesus instructed his Apostles to "be as wise as serpents, and harmless as doves" and to "beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves."
So, where's the wisdom among Evangelicals who should be calling out Trump's blatant carnival barker act?
In Proverbs 17:15, it is written:
"He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the just, both of them alike are an abomination to the LORD."
Trump and his abetting congressional Republican loyalists have become the ruthless ruling pigs in George Orwell's Animal Farm -- disingenuously declaring equality for all, while hoarding all the “milk and apples” (like tax breaks for the wealthiest) for themselves and treating the American people like a bunch of dim-witted barnyard animals.
Yet, a strong majority of white Evangelicals remain firmly rooted in Trump’s camp.
Trump is the 5,000-lb., pink-polka-dotted elephant sitting in the church pew, cracking wise, snacking on peanuts and tossing his peanut shells at the pastor while a complacent congregation sits silently by, pretending nothing's amiss.
Sure Jesus said “judge not lest, you be judged.” But he went on to say: “Judge with righteous judgement.”
Where is Evangelicals “righteous judgement” – their basic sense of right and wrong, of justice?
When will we all get the "eyes to see," -- as Isaiah and Jesus referenced -- the vast, long-engrained economic inequalities and racial disparities in our country -- which Republican policy has long exacerbated and which the Covid-19 pandemic and George Floyd's merciless killing excruciatingly has laid bare?
Jesus Christ, in Matthew, commanded his followers to look out for the "least of these" -- the hungry, the thirsty, the foreigner and the imprisoned, the oppressed. For when we do, we look out for Jesus, himself.
In the Gospels, Jesus instructed us that the “greatest gift” is love (or “charity.”) Where is the Christian love in Republican policy?
Christians have been bribed, in effect, to ignore the desperation in America that Republican policy has long fueled, based predominantly on the single issue of abortion.
While the Christian right champions itself as "pro-life," it ignores the plight of literally millions of children who go to bed hungry in this nation, or the tens of thousands of poor citizens, mostly of color, who die prematurely because they lack adequate healthcare, or the millions more who are without jobs and healthcare due to the fallout from the Coronavirus epidemic. And on it goes.
Even before the pandemic hit and racial tensions were stoked in the wake of Floyd's death, an estimated 140 million Americans were living in or near the cusp of poverty, according to The Southern Poverty Law Center, an American nonprofit legal advocacy organization.
Meanwhile, congressional hardliners from that same "pro-life" party rush through billions of dollars in tax cuts for the richest, while opposing universal healthcare, maternity care and the raising of the national minimum wage so that a single mother wouldn't have to work two or three jobs at slave labor.
In Isaiah 5:20, it is written:
"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter."
For decades, Christians have lacked the “eyes to see” the hypocrisy of endorsing indifferent, cruel Conservative policy that exacerbates dire living conditions for tens of millions of Americans and arguably increases the instances of unplanned pregnancies and abortions.
Pro-lifers impulsively have long opposed easy, widespread access to contraception and frown on sex education – the former of which, studies have shown, is primarily responsible for the fortunate steady decline in the annual number of abortions in America since the 1990’s.
Additionally, once a woman is contending with the formidable life choice of raising a child, typical Republican “pro-life” policy historically has done little to ease that life choice, by vehemently opposing affordable healthcare and a decent living wage that a new mother desperately needs.
Over the decades, one of the consistent reasons women give for choosing to have an abortion is that they can’t afford to raise a child.
In 2014, some 75% of abortion patients, the majority in their 20’s, were classified as poor (with an income below the federal poverty level of $15,730 for a family of two) or low income, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Yet, while states in recent years have raised their minimum wages, U.S. Congressional Republicans led by the likes of sheer political animal and present Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, steadily have opposed raising the national minimum wage from a pathetic $7.25 an hour.
In the meantime, the Trump administration is still chomping at the bit to carve up Medicaid and privatize social security, just as the Tea Party Republicans, led by Texas Senator Ted Cruz, pushed for earlier this decade while the country was still struggling to rebound from the George W. Bush-instigated Great Depression of 2008.
The Trump administration presently has designs to cut food stamps from nearly 700,000 American at this year’s end.
Studies suggest that women will seek and have an abortion whether it’s legal or not. If Christian Republicans truly want to further diminish unwanted pregnancies that lead to abortion why don’t they back widely accessible contraception, sex education, as well as, abstaining from sexual relations?
Hypocritical congressional Republicans may proclaim themselves defenders of the unborn.
But as soon as that precious life makes it through the birth canal, Conservative policy virtually dictates that it's on its own. Time to lift itself up by the booty straps and get a job.
Christians should show some Christian love and fight for universal healthcare as a right, for fully funded maternity care if they really want to lower the number of abortions. They should get behind a mandated $15/hr national minimum wage, to bolster that “family life” they purport to care so much about.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has orphaned some 545 immigrant children, separating them from their parents after they crossed the Mexican border.
Excusing, endorsing and re-electing Trump is the very last thing this nation needs if it's going survive, let alone thrive again.
Christians should finally heed the father of modern day Evangelicalism, Revered Billy Graham's words from a 1981 Parade Magazine article.
"I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form," said Graham in 1981. "It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it."
Four decades later, Evangelicals remain hoodwinked in a cult-like relationship with a manipulative, money-grubbing, power-hungry Republican Party.
And it's all come to a head under the leadership of a President with the moral compass of a garden snake. God's been calling, indeed. But far too few Evangelicals seem to be home.
(Kevin McKinney is a Christian and former daily newspaper journalist whose political essays have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Hill, Counter Punch and McClatchy Newspapers.)
* A shorter version of this essay appeared online in the Cape May County Herald last week:
https://www.capemaycountyherald.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/article_b6f9a9d8-19f3-11eb-9399-6f4431ededbe.html
