“In the “lynching era,” between 1880 and 1940, white Christians lynched nearly five thousand black men and women in a manner with obvious echoes of the Roman crucifixion of Jesus. Yet these “Christians” did not see the irony or contradiction in their actions,” James H. Cone wrote in “The Cross and the Lynching Tree.”
Christian conservatives have historically fused their belief in Christ with their patriotism. The Christian right sees Jesus from a place of privilege.
They see him as a nationalistic, patriarchal mascot, Aryan, and not a reformed Jewish rabbi. Therein lies a question: Would they recognize Jesus if he walked through their church doors?
The Christian right does not see Jesus as a dark-skin, curly-haired Palestinian Jew who liberated the poor and stood up to religious and Roman leaders.
In 2016, Donald J. Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States of America. This shocked some people but for some of us, it did not.
The reason we were not surprised is that Trump simply added more coal to an already burning fire rooted in racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and pigmentocracy. It is the basic foundation of conservative social theology and American society as a whole. This, then, sets the precedent for the conservative view of President Trump in 21st-century American politics.
In his first 100 days in office, President Trump not only deemed himself an evangelical Christian. He also created an anti-Christian manifesto, leading to the construction of a wall along the Mexican border with a concentration of immigrants who are of Latinx descent. This was followed by a travel ban that focused on West African, North African and Middle Eastern countries that are predominantly Muslim.
With anti-Latinx and anti-Muslim rhetoric, the rise of conservative nationalism reveals the American view of terrorism, ignoring the fact that xenophobia is its own type of terrorism. This xenophobic ideology propelled itself into conservative theology. Its most “profound” voices, including Franklin Graham and Pat Robertson, spoke highly of Trump’s Armed Forces trans ban and immigrant detention centers.
Reading the gospel of Christ calls us to be rooted in love across religion, orientation, sex, gender and skin color. Jesus expanded his ministry by engaging people deemed unfit for his time. Trump, if he is truly a Christian and student of Christ, should destroy walls, not construct them.
When Trump called Haiti, El Salvador, and an assortment of African nations “Sh**thole countries,’’ he radicalized, tribalized and verbally recolonized these places. This allowed his followers to re-assert their whiteness in everyday life. Whether telling Spanish-speaking folks to speak English or Black people to go back to their country, these types of behaviors are cruel and rooted in whiteness.
In the book of Genesis, God told Cain that his brother’s blood cried out to them from the ground and asked him if he realized what he did by killing him. This leads us to question if Donald Trump and his conservative cronies realize the impact of their legislation and usage of biblical philosophy.
According to the Rev. Dr. Ottis Moss III, when we look critically at the gospel, we see that it is a political manifesto of liberation and change. When Jesus tells Peter to drop his fishing net and follow him, Rome, the oppressor, goes without fish; Jesus placed the power back into the hands of oppressed people under the rule of the Roman government.
I have been basing my critiques of this movement as a Presbyterian pastor and African-American man. It is safe to say that Donald Trump has appropriated a neo-slavocracy in America, with rhetoric to be rooted in Jacksonian philosophy regarding people of color.
This is problematic because the appropriation of Jesus Christ as a capitalist is false. Jesus Christ is a socialist because his whole work centered on taking from Caesar to restore life to Lazarus— not just in the form of liberation and the gospel, but alms for survival.
For America to be cleansed of its past, it must realize that racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and the establishment of a pigmentocracy is demonic. America must define itself once and for all as either an Anglo-Saxon nation or a melting pot for all people.
Only then will this land be “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
The Rev. K. Mekhi Jackson is a Presbyterian Minister and serves as the Associate of African American Churches for the Presbyterian Church U.S.A
