‘We Are Not Those Evangelicals’
80 evangelical Christian leaders, many well known across America, have joined together to publicly denounce the “morally unacceptable” candidacy of Donald Trump.Â
Saying they “simply will not tolerate the racial, religious, and gender bigotry that Donald Trump has consistently and deliberately fueled,” the faith leaders note Trump “has fueled white American nationalism with xenophobic appeals and religious intolerance at the expense of gospel values, democratic principles, and important international relationships.”
“No matter what other issues we also care about, we have to make it publicly clear that Mr. Trump’s racial and religious bigotry and treatment of women is morally unacceptable to us as evangelical Christians, as we attempt to model Jesus’ command to ‘love your neighbors as yourself.'”
The evangelicals say they “believe that racism strikes at the heart of the gospel,” and “racial justice and reconciliation is at the core of the message of Jesus.”
ThinkProgress notes the signatories “include Rachel Held Evans, a blogger and best-selling author; Tony Campolo, a left-leaning evangelical author and activist; Lisa Sharon Harper, Chief Church Engagement Officer of Jim Wallis’ advocacy group Sojourners; and Shane Claiborne, author and founder of the Christian community the Simple Way.”Â
The faith leaders write that Trump “mocks women and the sanctity of marriage vows, disregards facts and the accountability to truth, and worships wealth and shameful materialism, while taking our weakening culture of civility to nearly unprecedented levels with continuing personal attacks on others.”
The billionaire real estate magnate, they continue, “has given voice to a movement that affirms racist elements in white culture—both explicit and implicit,” “spread racist ‘birther’ falsehoods for five years trying to delegitimize and humiliate our first African-American president, characterizing him as ‘the other’ and not a real American citizen,” and “uses fear to demonize and degrade immigrants, foreigners, and people from different racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds.”
They also take the media to task, saying a “significant mistake in American politics is the media’s continued identification of ‘evangelical’ with mostly white, politically conservative, older men. We are not those evangelicals. The media’s narrow labels of our community perpetuate stereotypes, ignore our diversity, and fail to accurately represent views expressed by the full body of evangelical Christians.”
But despite their important stance, Christian evangelical leaders have often been slow to publicly denounce those who claim to speak for their community, including the Franklin Grahams, Tony Perkins, and Brian Browns of the anti-LGBT movement.
Their letter and the list of signatories appears in a Change.org petition.
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Image by Darron Birgenheier via Flickr and a CC license