FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Michael Mershon | mmershon@sojo.net
Jazmine Steele | jsteele@sojo.net
“Falwell’s ‘dream president’ is a nightmare for Christians of color”
Sojourners President Jim Wallis today strongly challenged those conservative white evangelical leaders who continue to support President Donald Trump with no moral accountability for Trump on issues of racial and economic justice and the protection of the poor and vulnerable; and how their uncritical support for Trump has led to racial divides with evangelicals of color in the U.S. and has “astonished” the body of Christ internationally which is the most multi-racial community in the world.
In particular, Wallis called out Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. for his recent comments on Fox News that “evangelicals have found their dream president.”
“Falwell calls Donald Trump a ‘dream president,'" Wallis said. “But many African American, Hispanic, and Asian American evangelicals are experiencing Trump’s presidency as a nightmare; and the body of Christ around the world—which is overwhelmingly Christians of color—is utterly astonished that 81% of white American evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. That 81% number has become a dramatic international symbol representing a betrayal of the body of Christ and its commitment to racial reconciliation and justice.”
“Falwell means a president like Trump is a dream for white evangelicals like him, not evangelicals of all races, not the wonderfully multiracial global body of Christ,” Wallis said. “Falwell is speaking to and for an American white evangelical bubble in our world and changing country—a bubble whose morality is about to burst. Other white evangelicals in American must speak to the moral hypocrisy and racial idolatry of the white evangelicals of America’s religious right who fail to see racism, poverty, hunger, health, the treatment of refugees and immigrants, and a biblical commitment to social justice as gospel issues.”
In another stark example of the Administration’s betrayal of gospel values, Trump had a beer party yesterday in the Rose Garden to celebrate a health care bill that would strip health insurance away from millions of people. In a profoundly moral contrast, the bill would take health care from the poor, the sick, the elderly, and the disabled to pay for tax cuts for the richest people in the country.
“President Trump savored his victory surrounded by white men, and was reportedly ‘radiant’ the rest of the day,” Wallis said. “The picture of politicians at a beer party celebrating cutting millions of people off their health care to give a tax cuts to the wealthy will be a picture that Christians will remember for a long time.”