Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. Photo by Gage Skidmore.

Donald Trump has an election message that faith leaders can reasonably say is incompatible with Christianity.

“President Trump has settled on a strategy of fear — laced with falsehoods and racially tinged rhetoric — to help lift his party to victory in the coming midterms,” wrote Ashley Parker, Philip Rucker and Josh Dawsey in The Washington Post(Trump and Republicans settle on fear — and falsehoods — as a midterm strategy, Oct. 22, 2018).

That fear has encouraged violence: mail bombs to national political leaders and the largest anti-Semitic act of violence in U.S. history when a gunman armed with an assault rifle opened fire on a synagogue in Pittsburgh.   

We see racism and bigotry in many forms coming out of the Trump White House.  The president has called Stacey Abrams, the first African-American major party nominee to become governor of Georgia, “crime loving”in one of his many dog-whistle Tweets.

The latest example was his openly racist campaign video release on Twitter.

There are the president’s latest attacks on immigrants. He has charged that immigrants, mostly families, and children fleeing violence and poverty in Central America, are actually violent gang members and “unknown Middle Easterners” without any evidence.

Finally, at a rally this week in Texas, Trump claimed the title of a nationalist.

"A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly, not caring about our country so much. And you know what? We can't have that. You know, they have a word. It sort of became old-fashioned. It's called a nationalist. And I say, really, we're not supposed to use that word. You know what I am? I'm a nationalist, OK? I'm a nationalist.”

Few would disagree with the president, his is plainly a nationalist, but Christians, along with other people of faith, should reject Trump’s racism and nationalism. 

The late Rev. William Sloane Coffin, the long-time Yale University Chaplain, once said:

“For Christians to render everything to Caesar—their minds, their consciences—is to become evangelical nationalists. That’s not a distortion of the gospel; that’s desertion.”[1]

Nationalism is a desertion of the faith because the Christian faith belongs to the world, not any one nation. Christians can love their country, I love mine to be sure. Our prayers and concerns, however, should be for all the world.  We must recognize that our nation can only do well if the world does well.  The impact of climate change, a global crisis, stands as Exhibit A. “It’s wonderful to love one’s country, but faith is for God. National unity too is wonderful—but not in cruelty and folly,” Coffin continued. To be sure, Trump’s agenda offers cruelty and folly in the name of nationalism. 

Racism and bigotry are debilitating sins that tear at the social fabric of the United States and moves us further away from God.  With on-going attacks on African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and LGBTQ Americans, Trump embraces hate more effectively as a political strategy than even the late George Wallace, the segregationist governor, and two-time presidential candidate.

Leaders in the United Church of Christ have noted that racism is a sin because it “destroys God’s likeness in every person and thus repudiates creation and its goodness.”Connected to the president’s racism is his misogyny and bigotry toward women, Muslims and other people of faith, including Christians, who are not part of Trump’s conservative white evangelical base. 

Hate was not opposed in November 2016 when the majority of white Christians voted for Trumpdespite his long record of racism and his campaign of division. If faith leaders do not speak out against hate, or worse endorse the rhetoric and policies that Trump advocates (as evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Franklin Graham have without apology), many will rightfully equate faith leaders today with those who stood in silence or support of the rise of nationalism in Germany during the 1930s.  Such a comparison would be apt.     

This November, all Americans should support candidates and ideas that promote justice and the common good. If a candidate supports Donald Trump, his philosophy or politics, that ought to be disqualifying for people of faith.