Heartlessness

If you examine the words “America First,” you have to go back to the times before and after World War I. Leaders, from purported liberal humanist Woodrow Wilson to conservative hardliner Warren Harding, to understand that this phrase and those leaders particularly stood for one thing: white supremacy. “America First” has a very clear and unambiguous meaning throughout modern American history.

The Ku Klux Klan has pretty much faded from existence until in 1915/16, when the film Birth of a Nation glorified the Klan, and both Democrats and Republicans then began their quest to reverse the slow movement post-Civil War assimilation of African-Americans into mainstream America. It was never easy for black Americans. Jim Crow laws abounded. Blacks who pressed their rights were often found hanging from nearby trees (right on up to the middle of the 20^th century), the perpetrators never pursued. Wilson reversed the policy of allowing African-Americans to hold federal civil service jobs. By 1925, a reinvigorated Klan marched proudly and openly down Constitution Avenue in our nation’s capital (see above).

The white evangelical movement that stands solidly behind Donald Trump today knows exactly what those words mean. Under a misguided view of “law and order,” they stand behind numerous blue on black “shoot first” killings of black Americans, have no problem with ICE’s rounding up undocumented “brown” aliens regardless of any criminal activity, separating them from their children, all detained separately waiting for heavily backlogged immigration courts, most for months on end (some for years) under AG Jeff Sessions’ “zero tolerance” policy.

Some evangelical pastors have called for their flock to bring their guns to worship services, telling them that God intended for them to use those weapons to protect themselves and their way of life. Indeed, the zeal of these evangelicals’ mistaken belief in an expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment borders on a religious experience, many also believing that their right to bear arms is a God-given right reflected in our Constitution. So what if the Bible bans the elevation of icons – like guns – to effective worship.

Having been raised as a white protestant myself, Episcopal not evangelical, I continue to be aghast at any person who believes themselves to be a good “Christian” holding any of the above values, much less believing that they are God-ordained or supported. The New Testament, which is reflective of values in many other faiths, was a reaction to the harsh “eye for an eye” proscriptive message of the Old Testament. Effectively a “book of Jesus,” the New Testament is a rather deep and passionate cry for tolerance, brotherly love, forgiveness, charity and peace.

There is no cry to take up the sword. There is no free pass for those who inflict cruelty for any reason. There is no mandate to exclude. There is no requirement that charity can only be extended to those who share the same beliefs. There are no walls to be built to protect selfish interests and deny those in desperate need. Instead, Christians are admonished to forgive, help those in need, “turn the other cheek” and not sit in judgment of others. Nothing brings home the notion of forgiveness and tolerance like this New Testament passage from John 8:1-11:

Early in the morning He came again to the temple. All the people came to Him, and He sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to Him, ‘Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery.  Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?’ This they said to test Him, that they might have some charge to bring against Him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.  And as they continued to ask Him, He stood up and said to them, ‘Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.’ And once more He bent down and wrote on the ground.  But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before Him.

I am deeply disappointed in those evangelical pastors (and of course their followers), championing candidates and public officials with rather clear moral short-comings (ranging from inappropriate sexual contact with minors, serial adultery to abusing the public trust through lying and corruption), believing that God has anything to do with any purported right to bear arms, preaching intolerance, bigotry and commanding their flocks to act as judge, jury and themselves charged to mete out punishment. Hiding behind a sacred text to stand for what seems to me to be the direct opposite of the message of the New Testament is incomprehensible to me.

I am not sure how this can be accomplished, but for each and every American – whether Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, any other faith or those with their own spiritual or non-religiously based moral code – I ask them to reach deep within and explain to themselves how their own beliefs and actions fare under a true interpretation of their own moral dictates. I do not believe that the majority of those guided by such a moral code can justify any of the above intolerant beliefs upon such a personal inquiry.

I’m Peter Dekom, and aside from the moral questions raised above, I am not sure how the American form of democracy (majority rule while protecting minority rights) can sustain with the growing notion that heartlessness is the new, Trump-sanctioned core American value.