One of the more baffling aspects of Donald Trump’s popularity (though, honestly, all of it seems baffling) is how he was able to convince evangelical voters to overwhelmingly vote for him—especially given his consistently immoral behavior. Yet vote for him they did (at a rate of nearly 80 percent among white evangelicals) and they still think he’s doing a good job. However, there is also a rapidly-growing group of radical faith leaders who are determined to fight against the threat his administration poses to social and racial justice. This group doesn’t care about being polite. They are ready to hold him accountable and they are using spirituality as a vehicle for political change.
[More than 350 faith leaders from across the country] gathered in late October as part of a three-day Prophetic Resistance Summit convened by the People Improving Communities through Organizing (PICO) Network, a massive, nationwide web of interfaith coalitions that regularly campaign to change local, state, and national laws in ways that benefit underserved communities.
But for many in the crowd, being a person of faith means there are some things they refuse to be “nice” about. White supremacy, voter suppression, and the unjust treatment of Muslims, Jews, and immigrants are just a few of them. And unlike figureheads of the conservative Religious Right who often grab headlines for vociferously defending Donald Trump, this group had little (if anything) “nice” to say about the president or his administration. [...]
For them, “resistance” isn’t just a political slogan. It’s a spiritual edict.
A few things immediately stand out about this coalition of faith leaders. Unlike the nearly all-white group of conservative religious leaders who blindly go along with everything Trump does, PICO (as well as the attendees at its summit) is comprised of a racially and spiritually diverse group—especially blacks and Latinos, and they represent all kinds of beliefs including Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, and Indigenous traditions. There are also women represented, something their conservative counterparts sorely lack. Additionally, it seems like the only time white Trump-supporting evangelicals want to get political is when it comes to their obsession with abortion and controlling women’s bodies. Of course, because we live political lives by the nature of our social identities, the truth is that everything we (and they) do is political—and what they choose to remain silent about has just as much impact, if not more, than what they advocate for.
The fact is they are willing to lend unquestioned support to a man who has been married three times, is an admitted sexual predator, wants to take health care away from millions of Americans, wants to rid the country of its brown immigrants, routinely disrespects women and people of color, wants to start a nuclear war with North Korea, and is allowing millions of people in Puerto Rico to suffer because he’s incompetent and can’t stand that a local mayor is telling about their true commitment to empathy, human suffering, and Christian values. And this isn’t even a comprehensive list. Trump is a truly reprehensible human being. And people of faith should be the first ones to say so.
However, among PICO’s summit attendees, most admit that their activism came before Trump announced his run for the presidency.
Most attendees pointed to August 2014—not November 2016—as the catalyst for their renewed advocacy. That’s when protests and riots broke out in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri after police shot and killed unarmed teenager Michael Brown—an event many said altered their political consciousness. It was then that PICO officials began lifting up the term “resistance”—long before it became a staple of 2017 political parlance—and created a Prophetic Resistance Podcast.
“Many of us saw the dragon of white supremacy and empire [in Ferguson] in ways we had never seen before, and we realized we needed to draw on something much deeper to be able to face that dragon,” Mathews told ThinkProgress in an interview. “It begged this question: are we chaplains to the empire or prophets to the resistance?”
This is a progressive coalition that we really need on the ground and in action, both morally and politically. They have the ability to unite differing and diverse groups of people around important social issues and can help change hearts and minds and facilitate progress. They’ve been at the forefront of protests on health care, immigration, racial justice, and LGBTQ rights. While lots has changed since the Civil Rights Movement, clergy were certainly an integral part of organizing people around protest and change. While they didn’t do it alone, a movement without them would not have been nearly as impactful or successful. But this movement is also bigger than those who are formally part of any one church or belief system. As the Rev. Traci Blackmon said, “responding to injustice with action or resistance is a holy calling.”
“Let me be perfectly clear for you: The Democrats and Republicans have jammed our people up,” [Bishop Dwayne] Royster said in a speech. “Donald Trump did not win on November 8. White supremacy and institutional racism won on November 8…We are spending so much time focusing on Donald Trump. We are battling something that is bigger than Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan.”
Trump is certainly a danger to our democracy and all that we value and hold dear, but this doesn’t begin and end with him. We have much work to do to create a country and world that is just, treats everyone with dignity, and affirms their humanity. For many of us, our starting place and finish line is the political system. That’s necessary, of course, but we can’t forget that what we are fighting for is also about values. We don’t have to share the same religion (or even have one at all) to see that this fight is for the soul of our nation. It’s heartening to see these religious leaders come together across political party, faith, and ethnicity to engage on these issues and try to move the country to a different place than it is now. Hopefully, progressives and the Democratic Party can do the same thing.