Mordecai Schreiber
Most of Donald Trump’s supporters consider themselves good Christians. Yet they follow a leader who has no problem reminding us day after day he is energized by hate, not love, particularly towards anyone whose skin is not orange like his, but a different color.
I have heard Christian clergy say that this paragon of virtue has put Christ back in Christmas. This is an insult to the man who said, “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers you do to me.” It is an insult to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who taught us to judge people “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” It is an insult to Abraham Lincoln, who talked of “government by the people, for the people.”
Back in the sixties and seventies we had Christian spiritual leaders in this country who fought for civil rights, for justice, for women’s rights, and so on. Where are they now? Why don’t we hear anything from them or their followers? What are they waiting for?
Where is the new generation of Kings and Berrigans and all the rest?
Who speaks for people of color in America today, and what has become of “peace on earth and good will toward men?”
I am calling on all people of color, black and brown and others, to come forth and teach America again about Christian love, because many White Americans have forgotten what it is all about. What made America great was not signs of “Whites Only” on public facilities which I remember well from the fifties. It was not the America that did not let my Jewish brothers and sisters in when Hitler was mass murdering them in Europe. It was not the white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan who lynched African Americans. It was the America that let people from all over the planet come here and contribute their best efforts and their greatest talents to make this the great country it has been. Without them, America would have remained a backwater third-rate country. Let us all get together and reclaim America’s true greatness and let us all practice the teachings of our respective faiths.
Mordecai Schreiber is the author of the book Why People Pray.