You Must Stand Against Racism, Even Trump’s
I don’t play the “priest card” very much on social media, but today’s an exception.
There are ridiculing and insulting memes and images posted on social media every single day. Many of those in recent years have focused on Donald Trump, and it’s a sad commentary on our shared lack of decorum and inability to imagine reconciliation. I don’t post those kinds of images and memes, though I’m very clear on my moral and ethical objections to Donald Trump’s words and actions. I’m unequivocally opposed to his policies and politics. I take his moral and ethical failures as an elected leader far too seriously to play insult games, and as a priest of God I’m held to a higher standard of behavior. I’m not perfect by any stretch, but I am given high expectations and aspirational values with which to guide my words and actions.
It’s indefensible for Donald Trump to post such a racist trope of Barak and Michelle Obama. It is irrefutable proof of Donald Trump’s unfitness to lead anything, much less our nation. As a priest, I condemn that posting and I condemn that racism. We have a word in church circles for that kind of racism and moral failure: sin. And sin calls for repentance and atonement.
If you’re a Christian, claiming to follow Christ, then I ask you to consider the timing; in the middle of Black History Month and just a matter of days before the penitential Season of Lent begins, our elected president makes a mockery of both with this public display of racism. This isn’t just someone on the street being a racist, but the person in the highest office of our nation. This man’s time and energy is spent pulling our nation down and trapping us in his moral and ethical failures. We must all repudiate those words and actions immediately, and begin holding him accountable. He’s not been held accountable so far, and it’s destroying us. It’s also doing terrible damage to the credibility of our Christian faith as so many refuse to hold him accountable and to repudiate his moral and ethical failures. To date, as of the time I’m writing, he refuses to apologize for or to repent of that racist post in any way, just as he has dodged the moral and ethical implications of his other questionable social media posts, his continued lying about voter fraud, his felony convictions, his notable appearances in the Epstein files and his words which will forever haunt his legacy and our entire nation, “You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
No, you cannot. You cannot do anything. You cannot continue to perpetuate racism from our highest office. You cannot drag our country into this kind of constant moral and ethical failure, even if too many citizens fear to call you out and hold you responsible. For the dignity of and value of all our neighbors of color, for the sake and safety of all women, especially the young and vulnerable, and for the defense of what is right and good, we call for you to be held accountable for your words and actions.
Our faith has earned a bad reputation for talking too much about sin, mostly because we fail to talk as seriously about the other great words we have like repentance, atonement and transformation. The story of our faith doesn’t begin and end with sin, but it is filled with invitations and opportunities to be transformed, with wisdom about making up for and fixing the injuries we have caused, and the strength to grow into the good human beings we are intended to be. That transformed life begins with a recognition of failure and a choice to change, a choice to be better.
As a priest of God, I must condemn that racist post and his choice to share it, as I condemn the message it sends and the license it grants to others to also perpetuate such racism. I must call for accountability and for change. The highest office of our land must not be the purveyor of such moral and ethical decay. Donald Trump needs to change and we need to change our national dialogue. Donald Trump needs to be held accountable and he needs to resign.
Humbly, Reverend Larry Todd Thomas
toddthomas.net 