Leaders of religious right balk at labeling Trump a racist

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Leaders of religious right balk at labeling Trump a racist

By DAVID CRARY
August 1, 2019

NEW YORK (AP) — Many religious leaders have strongly condemned President Donald Trump’s disparaging remarks about minority members of Congress. Prominent figures on the religious right have not joined in, instead maintaining public silence or insisting that Trump’s tactics reflect hard-nosed politics rather than racism.

“He does not judge people by the color of their skin,” said the Rev. Robert Jeffress, pastor of the Southern Baptist megachurch First Baptist Dallas and a frequent guest at the White House.

“He judges people on whether they support him,” Jeffress said. “If you embrace him, he’ll embrace you. If you attack him, he’ll attack you. That’s the definition of colorblind.”

Debate over Trump’s inflammatory tweets and comments has flared over the past few weeks. He told four outspoken congresswomen of color — three of them born in the U.S.--to “go back” where they came from. He also derided two black leaders — the Rev. Al Sharpton and Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, of Maryland — and called the majority-black city of Baltimore a “rodent-infested mess.”

In response, 11 leaders of Protestant and Catholic groups in Maryland issued a public letter Tuesday imploring Trump to “stop putting people down.”

-snip-

Read more: https://apnews.com/6224548fdbb645c4b72e3bfac5476ea1

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Other religious leaders were less charitable:

This week, President Trump crossed another threshold. Not only did he insult a leader in the fight for racial justice and equality for all persons; not only did he savage the nations from which immigrants to this country have come; but now he has condemned the residents of an entire American city. Where will he go from here?

Make no mistake about it, words matter. And, Mr. Trump’s words are dangerous.

These words are more than a “dog-whistle.” When such violent dehumanizing words come from the President of the United States, they are a clarion call, and give cover, to white supremacists who consider people of color a sub-human “infestation” in America. They serve as a call to action from those people to keep America great by ridding it of such infestation. Violent words lead to violent actions.

https://cathedral.org/have-we-no-decency-a-response-to-president-trump.html

[RockRaven]

2. The religious right's origin is in the backlash to desegregation. The whole point of the movement

was to organize reactionary opposition to the civil right movement's progress. OF COURSE they aren't going to condemn Trump -- they are the same racist, bigoted trash that he is.

[Voltaire2]

9. Not entirely accurate.

Anti abortion activism has more to do with the origins of the religious right than desegregation.

[RockRaven]

10. Parts of Republican Gomorrah by Max Blumenthal and also this Politico article say different.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133

I have not read the primary source documents myself, so it *is* possible these secondary sources are misleading me. I'm willing to have my mind changed, with evidence.

[Act_of_Reparation]

11. The "Christian Right" first emerged in 1863...

...with the formation of the theocratic National Reform Association.

I suppose you could go back further than that and trace it to the tent revival movement of the early-to-mid 1800s. History rarely works like that, though. You can't typically trace phenomena to one or two antecedent events. I would argue the Christian Right is the product of American Protestantism and populist political thought, and has strengthened over the decades as the cultural rift between rural and urban America has widened.

[Thekaspervote]

3. Then they are no better than he is!

[Major Nikon]

4. Calling racists racist offends the racists

Jeffress is a rabid homophobe and Christian bigot. He is utterly unfit to judge who isn’t a racist.

[Arkansas Granny]

5. They should balk at labeling him a Christian.

[Mariana]

7. Why would they balk at that?

He's as Christian as they are.

[Arkansas Granny]

8. Point taken.

[bitterross]

6. Jeffress is a Southern Baptist. They are the racists of Baptists

Jeffress probably has a starched, white hood at home.