Dear Non-White Evangelicals,
I’ve been a pastor in the local church for the past 24 years, much of that in megachurches in the Bible Belt. I’ve been shoulder to shoulder in ministry and in life with white Evangelicals, I’ve sat in Bible studies with them, served alongside them in staff meetings, attended hundreds of pastoral gatherings and heard how they think and what drives them.
I need you to understand something:
Conservative white Evangelicals need to be stopped.
They need to be defeated.
They need to be voted into oblivion.
You might agree with me as a simple reflex—but I want you to know precisely why; to comprehend the specific danger they present and the historic urgency of the moment.
In vast numbers these people have lost the plot, to the point that they now pose a human rights emergency to the rest of us. This not hyperbole or exaggeration, it’s the sobering, grim reality about what they believe and what they’re capable of doing, now that they have this unprecedented opportunity. As far as religious extremists go, they’re unmatched in their fervor and ferocity.
The wholesale moral failure white Evangelicals have been guilty of over the past few years, has been precipitous and grievous and alarming—but you haven’t seen anything yet. It will get exponentially worse if the next election falls in their favor.
You see, the story here isn’t only the fact that they’ve betrayed the compassion, honesty, and goodness of the life and ministry of Jesus in order to seize power—it’s the rate at which they’ve drifted, the corruption they’re now capable of, and the prospects of how far they’ll go given a greater space within which to work.
Prior to the 2016 Presidential campaign, it would have been unthinkable that professed followers of Jesus would align themselves in any way with a human being like Donald Trump; the disconnect between them so profound, the gap in decency so wide, it wouldn’t even have been a discussion. He modeled the life Christ spent his entire time on the planet warning against and the kind of person he protected people from.
But these folks soon realized something critical: Donald Trump is amoral. He lacks personal convictions of any kind, choosing to take on the shape of the highest available bidder—and that they had the deepest of pockets. He could simply be an empty but singularly powerful vessel through which they could legislate their theologically-distorted agenda—which is happening in the moments I’m typing these words and you reading them. They are building their caucasian theocracy within this vacant shell of a human being.
Their violence has been swift and steady: the vilifying of foreigners and non-white Americans, the incendiary rhetoric regarding Muslims, the appointment of a Supreme Court justice sharing their contempt for women, a disregarding of the natural resources of the planet, phony wars on Christianity, the suggestion of erasing the Transgender community.
And now, like Great Whites around wounded prey, they taste blood in the water; eyes rolled fully back in their heads and in a frenzy to devour whatever is within reach. They are not thinking at this moment, they are merely acting on the predatory instinct encoded into them by decades of misogyny, nationalism, homophobia, and a theology of white privilege. That is why reasoning with them at this point is fruitless. They’ve convinced themselves God anointed Trump and gives them carte blanche—even if any God in his or her right mind would be horrified to be associated with such bigotry, such contempt for the marginalized, such cruelty toward the most vulnerable. If there is a God—this is what God exists to oppose.
There is only one opportunity to save the rest of us who are not blinded by a perverted version of faith in a deity that is made out of malice.
It isn’t in Robert Mueller.
It isn’t in rallies and protests and petitions.
It’s isn’t in praying for their mass re-conversion back to something resembling Jesus.
The sole option we have to save ourselves and generations of diverse, decent, vital human beings—is for all of us; progressive Christians and humanists and Muslims and Atheists and Jews and Agnostics to vote next November; in vast numbers, in unwavering unity, and unreservedly Blue.
You might feel a knee-jerk response to that statement, a bristling at the notion that you might have to vote in a way you might never have before.
Get over it.
This is about the country we leave our children. It’s about women having autonomy over their own bodies. It’s about protecting people of color and sick people and the poor and the LGBTQ community. It’s about our Constitution. It’s about the most elemental freedoms we have, and deserve to keep.
Your hurt feelings and your pride aren’t important.
What’s important right now, is using the only weapon at our disposal in the only time left we have to use it—and we have to use it.
A couple special mentions:
To third-party voters: I fully believe in votes of conscience, and there will be plenty of time for you to create an alternative to the system we currently have in place—but now isn’t that time. A protest vote now isn’t a protest, it’s reckless and wasteful, and it will cost you any future opportunity you’re hoping for. You will lose the voice you have.
To Millennials: We need you. We need you to step out of whatever laziness or apathy or pessimism has kept you disengaged—and into the voting booth. Your voice could be the difference in the day. The hour it will take you to make your voice heard, will be far worth the decades you help define.
This is a pivot point in our history, and the Religious Right cannot be allowed to determine the path we take forward. These cultists are sold-out for their prophet of enmity. They will show up at the polls.
As a pastor and a father and a Christian and a citizen of the planet and a lover of humanity—I can’t make this any clearer:
If you want the beautiful, expansive diverse humanity of this world to be equally protected and respected and cared for, Conservative white Evangelicals need to be stopped.
