White Evangelicals and Trump’s recent racism

Fri Aug 2nd 2019 by abagond

Photo: Rondall via Orca Beacon.

To keep this post within bounds, it only concerns racist remarks made by Trump over the last 19 days, from July 14th to August 1st 2019.

On July 14th Donald Trump, the US president in this alternate universe, went after the Squad, four Congresswomen of colour, telling them to go back to the countries they came from – even though only one was born outside the US, and all four were US citizens. (See my post “The term racism in 2019” if you want to read his words.)

On July 27th President Trump went after Elijah Cummings, a Black Congressman representing Maryland’s 7th, a district that is 59% Black, saying in part:

“Rep, Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA […] a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. […] If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place […] No human being would want to live there.”

Note: In terms of median household income, his district is better than most, even for Black people. But where it is off the charts is gun violence – something Trump has done nothing about.

Here is what White evangelical Christian leaders have been saying about all of this, as of August 1st:

Rev. Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham:

“The left has weaponized it [the word ‘racism’] and uses it against their opponents. The president is not afraid to go after anyone – their color has nothing to do with it. It’s the person’s ideology and politics.”

Simply not true. Congresswoman Madeleine Dean, for example, has been decrying conditions at the border camps too. Trump never brings her up. She is White:

Do you see what is happening?

Rev. Robert Jeffress, megachurch pastor at First Baptist Dallas and talking head on Fox News:

“He does not judge people by the color of their skin. He judges people on whether they support him. If you embrace him, he’ll embrace you. If you attack him, he’ll attack you. That’s the definition of colorblind.”

Jerry Falwell Jr, the head of Liberty University, one of the largest Christian universities in the world, retweeted Trump’s tweets on the Squad, without comment.

James Dobson, of Focus on the Family, seems far more concerned about the threat of socialism.

The Southern Baptist Convention: *crickets*.

The National Association of Evangelicals did not openly condemn Trump by name, but on July 24th it said:

“At a time of painful racial polarization, when persons of color face attacks on their dignity and right to belong, and even threats of violence and death, the National Association of Evangelicals offers the following chapter excerpted from ‘For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility.'”

The rank and file: On July 30th, according to a Quinnipiac poll, only 21% of White evangelicals think Trump is racist.

– Abagond, 2019.

Sources: mainly AP, NAE, Quinnipiac, James Dobson, Twitter.

See also:

561

Posted in stuff | 19 Comments

19 Responses

on Sat Aug 3rd 2019 at 06:33:35 Glenn (freedom of movement) Robinson @glncv

Disgusting

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Sat Aug 3rd 2019 at 06:58:25 Cherry Boy

When did white Evangelicals become the moral center with which we determine how racist one is?

I’m sick of folks’ befuddlement at how racist they are.

This is America, they are white, that alone should let you know that things like religion, class, gender, etc are NOT the determining factors in how racist they are.

Their white skin is.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Sat Aug 3rd 2019 at 09:41:02 iamvistinginstructoreric

Reblogged this on Helping the Crippled 2 God Community Organization.

LikeLike
on Sat Aug 3rd 2019 at 12:49:15 Mary Burrell

This is beyond disgusting but this is America. Where being white is right.

LikeLike
on Sat Aug 3rd 2019 at 16:04:53 Mary Burrell

Donald Trump used racist rhetoric to describe the city of Baltimore while attacking Elijah Cummings, I read Trump’s son in-law Jared Kushner owns much of the real estate that many of those poor people live in. So that means Kushner is a slum lord. I am sure as in any large city there are rat infestations.

LikeLike
on Sat Aug 3rd 2019 at 16:05:53 Mary Burrell

I read there is rat and roach infestation at Trump’s Mara Largo estate.

LikeLike
on Sat Aug 3rd 2019 at 17:53:54 abagond

@ Mary

New York City, Trump’s home town, has 2 million rats according to latest estimates. They are hardly uncommon. I have seen plenty of them. Trump Tower itself probably has some.

LikeLiked by 2 people
on Sat Aug 3rd 2019 at 18:02:55 Mary Burrell

And if Trump is the POTUS why doesn’t he help clean up the infestation of these major cities. Isn’t Ben Carson the Secretary Of Urban Housing and Development? Why isn’t he doing his job to fix these run down apartment buildings. Oh, I forgot he’s doesn’t know how to do his job, just like the whole administration is unqualified and inept.

LikeLiked by 2 people
on Sat Aug 3rd 2019 at 18:27:28 Solitaire

This isn’t the main point of Abagond’s post, but something else jumped out at me. These two statements:

“The president is not afraid to go after anyone”

“If you attack him, he’ll attack you.”

Since when is that how Christians are supposed to behave? Since when should Christian ministers and leaders be defending such behavior?

And not only defending it, but trying to use it to justify Trump’s actions.

The argument they’re trying to make, that he isn’t racist because he’ll attack anyone, begs the question of why they as Christian leaders aren’t condemning the fact that he attacks anyone and everyone instead of practicing Christian forgiveness and the Golden Rule.

LikeLiked by 2 people
on Sat Aug 3rd 2019 at 18:30:51 Mary Burrell

@ Solitaire: See my post on the John Fea; Believe Me thread.

LikeLike
on Sat Aug 3rd 2019 at 18:34:39 Mary Burrell

@ Solitaire: Because this is just white nationalism masquerading as Christianity. These are secular Christians. Faith and spirituality has nothing to do with this.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Sat Aug 3rd 2019 at 18:42:16 Solitaire

@ Mary Burrell

Yes, that’s pretty much my point. These aren’t true Christians.

They are bending over backwards to deny the obvious — that Trump is racist — and in the process they are violating the very core of Christianity.

I wish some of the interviewers or talking heads would call them out on this.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Sat Aug 3rd 2019 at 20:44:15 Mary Burrell

I noticed that Trump uses words like “infestation” when referencing black and brown people and disparaging their humanity. But these white Evangelicals that claim to follow Jesus are okay with Trump disgusting remarks and his vile character.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Sat Aug 3rd 2019 at 21:58:17 Herneith

Praise the lord and pass the dough is their motto!

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Sat Aug 3rd 2019 at 22:25:48 Mary Burrell

@Herneith: Yes, politics and lots of money are what the Religious Right (Wrong) is all about. This is not a poor man’s game.

LikeLike
on Sat Aug 3rd 2019 at 23:18:34 tankermottind

@Solitaire

Religion is a reflection of the believers. Imperialists, colonizers, and racists will worship an imperialist, colonizing, racist Jesus. Christ is whoever and whatever the particular Christian believer or church needs him to be, has always been, and always will be. The actual rabbi and rebel leader Yeshua ben Yosef of Nazareth, and the things he believed, said, and did, are really rather irrelevant to Christianity itself, even if the lack of reliable information about his life and the stories’ cultural currency makes him a tantalizing mystery.

You do not get morality from religion, your religion gets its morality from you. Of course white racist con men born to wealth, given spiritual authority, would sanctify a white racist con man born to wealth. How could a witless, useless grifter like Franklin Graham not acknowledge and honor another so perfectly of his own kind? How could these humongous asshole not see Christ’s very being, his very hole, in the asshole of Donald Trump, the paragon and champion of all assholes?

Don’t look at Jesus, look at the guy in the pulpit. HE is the spiritual father of the church and the embodiment of its sense of holiness, not an abstraction like God. ESPECIALLY “spiritual fathers” like Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell Jr, who are just one step removed from thinking they are God.

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Sun Aug 4th 2019 at 00:17:58 abagond

Reza Aslan, a scholar of religion who has written books on both Jesus and Islam:

“Scripture without interpretation is just words on a page. It requires someone to interact with that scripture for it to have any meaning whatsoever. As I always remind people, in our own history in the United States, 200 years ago, both slave owners and abolitionists not only use the same scripture to justify their different viewpoints, they use the exact same verses to do so. That is the power of scripture: It’s infinitely malleable. You go into it with your own values and prejudices and biases and then you can withdraw from scripture anything you need in order to justify those views.”

(https://www.salon.com/2018/04/30/fired-cnn-host-reza-aslan-its-time-to-treat-donald-trump-as-an-enemy-of-the-state/)

LikeLiked by 1 person
on Sun Aug 4th 2019 at 01:31:08 Solitaire

@ tankermottind

Well said.

And no offense to the devout Christians among us here, including our gracious host, but this type of self-serving hypocrisy from church leaders is one of the things that caused me to walk away a long time ago, and to shake the dust off my feet as I went.

But the hypocrisy still infuriates me.

LikeLiked by 2 people
on Sun Aug 4th 2019 at 01:47:38 Allen Shaw

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=_cPII2l-K4s)

The above may be interesting

LikeLike