Danforth calls for churches to denounce Trump
The following op-ed article was published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Dec. 4, 2022
John C. Danforth is an Episcopal priest and former Republican senator from Missouri.
America’s clergy must denounce Donald Trump and antisemitism
By Matt Malone and John C. Danforth
December 4, 2022
In the 1930s, Christian churches were largely silent and even complicit as Nazism rose in Germany. Never Again!
What started as rants and grew into brutal assaults ended in gas chambers and the murder of 6 million Jews. There’s no such thing as non-dangerous antisemitism. It’s a metastatic cancer that spreads throughout the system until eliminated by radical surgery.
Earlier this year, a friend told us that a serious subject of discussion among him and other Jews was where they would go should America become too dangerous for them. They considered Canada and Costa Rica and Israel. To us, this seemed like over-the- top alarmism. Surely nothing so grotesque as to cause that level of fear could ever happen in our country.
Then we learned of Donald Trump’s dinner at Mar-a-Lago with the infamous antisemites Kanye West and Nick Fuentes. We were not familiar with Fuentes, so we checked out internet clips of his performances. They reminded us of old films of Munich beer halls and Nazi youth rallies with Fuentes leading chants of “America First” and “Putin, Putin” after favorably comparing the Russian tyrant to Hitler. Then there was his statement that, “Jews had better start being nice to people like us.”
Of course, we can’t know what was in Trump’s mind when he dined with the two. Perhaps this was more political opportunism than ideological belief, pleasing antisemitic elements of his right-wing base as he did with torch-bearing white supremacists in Charlottesville and Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But whatever his motivation, the consequences metastasized beyond himself as they did when, after Trump incited the Jan. 6 mob, the Republican National Committee took the official position that the assault on the Capitol was “legitimate political discourse.” Certainly, antisemitism predates Trump by thousands of years, but he is today’s spreader of the disease, and he must be the focal point for attacking it.
Much of today’s Republican Party is a personality cult, and its election aspirants, afraid of alienating the Trump base, have failed to stand up to him. His supporters would dismiss Democratic critics as partisans and TV pundits as elitists, so if there is to be an effective challenge to Trump’s dalliance with antisemitism, from whom should it come?
We propose that our churches and their clergy take the lead. We can never make up for the churches’ 20th century omissions, but we should not repeat them in 21st century America. This is our chance to put in practice what our faith professes that antisemitism is opposed to what Christians believe.
Our faith teaches that all people are made in the image of God and deserve our respect. Antisemitism treats Jews as objects of derision and abuse.
Our faith commands us to love our neighbors and to do justice to them. Antisemitism is the practice of hate and injustice.
Our faith tells us to shine Christ’s light in a world of darkness. Antisemitism is the heart of darkness.
For better reasons than preserving their tax-exempt status, churches have generally refrained from participating in politics. Politics and religion are very different realms, a truth honored both in our Constitution and in the practice of religion. Faithful people hold a wide variety of opinions on parties, platforms and candidates, and we honor our differences. But when politics marches beyond the range of what is debatable, when it presents itself in direct opposition to what faith teaches us to be, then it is our obligation to stand for what we believe.
This is what we failed to do in Germany 90 years ago. It’s what we must do in America today.
The time has come for our churches to denounce Donald Trump from the pulpit.
Matt Malone is a Roman Catholic priest and editor in chief of the Jesuit magazine America.
John C. Danforth is a former Republican senator from Missouri and an Episcopal priest.
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