Thursday, January 05, 2017

"Faith Leaders" Dear President Trump, You Are A Terrible Person And We Demand You Meet With Us So We Can Tell You That In Person

So a group of "interfaith" religious leaders and "moral activists" who seem to be notable mostly for their insistence on the pompous religious title of "Reverend Doctor" and wearing religious sashes penned an open letter to President-elect Donald Trump. Apparently these folks think they are some sort of prophets and authorities on morality. Here is a sample:

Since your election, our communities have been fractured by harassment and intimidation. People of color and religious minorities are afraid. Poor working people who you appealed to in your campaign are disappointed that you have attacked their union leaders while appointing Wall Street elites who use them to your Cabinet.

We are deeply concerned by the policy vision that your Cabinet selections suggest. After inviting Steve Bannon’s white nationalism into the Oval Office, you nominated Jeff Sessions to head the Justice Department—a man who did not receive Senate approval for a federal judgeship in 1986 because of his long history of racial discrimination in Alabama. If he maintains his past positions on civil rights and voting rights, he could overturn and undermine years of victories and protections secured and signed in the blood of the martyrs. Equally insulting to African-Americans is your nomination of Ben Carson, a black man with no experience in government or housing, to head HUD.

Except that this is not happening and the fake hate crimes proven to be hoaxes seem a whole lot more common than actual harassment and intimidation. Steve Bannon is not a white nationalist. Make no mistake, the perceived insult of nominating Ben Carson's is that he is the wrong kind of black man. I am guessing they had no problem supporting Barack Obama, a man who was a "community organizer" and in his very brief legislative career was known mostly for voting present as perfectly qualified to hold the highest office in the land. I think we can that, to use their phrase: "Our sacred text honored by Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike" also speaks out against bearing false witness which is on display in their letter.

So what is prophetic, moral issues that they are concerned with?

Both this nation and the rest of the world desperately need your heart to grow into a source of courage, so you might work with all people of goodwill to uphold the most sacred moral principles of our faith and constitutional values, which are:

1. Protecting and expanding voting rights and ending voter suppression and unconstitutional  gerrymandering. We must also pursue women’s rights, immigrant rights, LGBTQ rights, labor rights, religious freedom rights, all with a commitment to the fundamental principle of equal protection under the law.

Since when did asking for ID before people vote to ensure they are actually eligible to vote and supporting the special treatment of homosexuals become a "sacred moral principle" of our faith and constitutional values? The rest of their demands is a predictable laundry list of liberal agenda items like the mythical "living wage", free college, unfettered "immigration", stealing from wage earners to benefit people who don't work "direct cash transfers and other support for all families struggling to get by", universal socialized health care, "protecting women's health" which is code for abortion on demand, without restriction and preferably paid for by the tax-payers.

Good stuff without a shred of support from the Scriptures, which makes sense since so many of the "pastors" are women which also has no support from Scripture. But wait, there is more! From the Christian Post:

A representative of Repairers of the Breach directed The Christian Post to a press release from Wednesday regarding the open letter, wherein Repairers of the Breach President The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II called the letter a response to the "the theological malpractice of the so-called white evangelicals and others who placed themselves as the moral support of Mr. Trump."

Can you imagine if Hillary had won and a group of conservative and mostly white evangelicals had demanded a meeting with her to harangue her about her slavish devotion to abortion "rights" and with the stated goal of counteracting the pernicious influence of black religious leaders? The media would go nuts and rightly so.

I am pretty sure Trump won't ever hear of this and won't go. Nor should he. This is an apparent empty gesture that probably in reality serves to make a public show to drive traffic to their website where you of course can donate to help them "fight Trump". It is always a good idea to follow the money.

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