Editor’s Note: This week’s guest author courageously raises a challenging question for white Christians particularly and for all others committed to a world based on love and justice. My friend, anti-racist educator and activist A. Adar Ayira, decries the lack of response to the widespread Christian support for Donald Trump and his racist, oppressive policies. Adar is a founding member of Baltimore Racial Justice Action and the founder of Ayira Core Concepts LLC. Adar and her colleague Rebecca Pobee will join Racial Justice Conversations on Wednesday, May 1 at 5pm eastern time on Zoom to discuss this blog. For info on this session and the Zoom link, email me at [email protected].

First, let me say: it is hard. 

It is hard to keep faith with a white America in which a man who has done everything to devalue and sacrifice lives who are not white, straight, abled, and male, is a leading presidential candidate. A man who tried to overthrow an election. A man who is transparent about his authoritarianism. A man noted for not paying his bills. A man who spits on veterans, calling those who were captured or who died “losers,” and “suckers.” 

A man who hawks “God Bless the USA” Bibles at $59.99 a pop to shore up his political war chest.

A man whom society allows to get away with all these things because he is white, and rich –and because America admires these things — while his Black predecessor was excoriated because he wore a tan suit and because his middle name was Hussein.  

But THIS BLOG POST IS NOT ABOUT HIM.

This Blog post is about the more than 77 million white people — most of them identifying as white “Christians” — who support him.

Much of America worships a white God of their imagination: A God of authoritarian power. A God who wants people who are not white and not straight and not “abled” to bow down and take their (inferior) positions. 

White Christians have made no bones about their worship of power: Supreme Court picks, “taking back” the country, “anti-DEI,” supporting “trad wife” (“traditional wife”) marriage, denying colonialist-settler history in favor of a Manifest Destiny view with benign “slaveowners” and happy “slaves.”

Those views make very clear the societal place to which these “Christians” would assign me and mine. 

It would be easy to relegate religious support for Trump as ONLY white Evangelicals.  However, “Roughly half of white Catholics express positive views of Trump, as do 47% white nonevangelical Protestants and 45% of Hispanic (race not specified) Protestants.” (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/15/5-facts-about-religion-and-americans-views-of-donald-trump/) What these groups have in common is that they all identify as Christian, and they are – with the exception of Hispanic religious whose races are not identified — white.

So, who are white Christians worshiping in this Age of Trump? Their racially disproportionate support of Trump and his messages of crass avarice, racial resentment, and retribution in no way reflect Jesus’ message of feeding the poor and sick; loving your “enemies”; sheltering the poor and those in need. (Luke 14:12-14 BSB)

It is difficult, In this Age of Trump, to have faith in white Christians, many of whom are apt to justify their support of Trump by saying variations of “I don’t like EVERYTHING he says, but I like his policies,” or “I understand that SOME people might be negatively impacted, but..,” or “But the Bible says..”

If Trump’s messages of avarice, racial resentment, and retribution – not to mention trying to overthrow an election — are not dealbreakers for white Christians, then what is?

Jesus said, “Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” (John 13:35)

What do the messages that Christians supporting this Age of Trump prove?

Many Christians, regardless of race, view faith as separate from decisions they make, decisions that help “..prove to the world..” whose disciples they are. 

We disassociate decisions such as whether to buy food for a stranger in need, or whether to vote for those who support people and communities in need, from our faith. We do not recognize that our thoughts about helping those in need or whether we view that help as a “hand-out” or a “hand-up” – and for what groups we characterize that view — speak volumes about who we are in our faith, about whom and what we worship.

In sum, we are in the Age of Trump because Christians – the majority of them white — support him.  Nothing that he has said or done – not any of the toxic rhetoric that he has spewed denigrating and denying the humanity of fellow human beings – has been a dealbreaker for them. Nor has there been a white Christian “movement” that has countered – with similar power and influence – that support of him. The message that fact sends to Christians of color is clear.  And chilling.

As hard as it is, I will continue to keep the faith; not because I have faith in Christians who tolerate racism, anti-Blackness, and support white entitlement, but because I believe in God.

In Black Christian tradition, we often say “You’d better stop playing with God.”