Op-Ed Under Trump, evangelicals show their true racist colors
Randall Balmer, LA Times
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-balmer-evangelical-trump-racism-20170823-story.html
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To my knowledge, only one member of the president’s 25-person Evangelical Advisory Board, A.R. Bernard of Brooklyn’s Christian Cultural Center, has stepped down — and that was several days after Trump’s equivocation. By way of contrast, several business executives immediately resigned from economic advisory boards in protest against Trump’s equivocation.
What does it tell us when businessmen demonstrate a greater moral resolve than ministers?
In fairness, several evangelical leaders have spoken out, but their responses could hardly be characterized as denunciations of white supremacy. Franklin Graham cried “shame” on those who were trying to blame Trump for what happened in Charlottesville. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, who recently disclosed that God had authorized Trump to assassinate North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, said that “racism comes in all shapes, all sizes and, yes, all colors.” Jerry Falwell Jr., son of the founder of Moral Majority and his father’s successor as president of Liberty University, applauded Trump’s “bold truthful statement about Charlottesville tragedy.”
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, evangelicals took the part of those on the margins of society — women, the poor, workers, people of color. The 2016 election, coupled with the religious right’s anemic response to racism and white supremacy, suggests that this once proud and noble tradition is morally bankrupt.
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