“The United States of America is NOT WHITE ANYMORE!”

The President of the United States of America has traditionally been seen as a representative of all the diverse people of the United States.  As a democratically representative of all the people, he is supposed to represent and work for “all the people!”  However, in the historically distorted and bizarre election of 2016, our current President, Donald “Harrumph” Trump, campaigned on the slogan of “Make America Great Again.”  America was and is already great.  It does not need anyone to make to make it great again.   America’s greatness, when it is great, is found in its ability to welcome and to incorporate all of us from every nation into a new and democratic nation on this earth!  President Trump is not our Savior; he can never be our Savior as he has no power to save us from anything, LEAST OF ALL OURSELVES! He could, as President, try to recognize and celebrate what are the best ideas among us, instead of the worse!

The phrase “Make America Great Again” should have instead said, “Make America WHITE Again,” as this is the message adopted by President Trump and the current Republican Party which inhabits two houses of Congress and the White House.  Whether this will still be the case after the 2018 elections remains to be seen.  With President Trumps unprecedented disapproval rating of over 50% or greater in the USA electorate, there may in fact be a change coming!  This would indeed be good for this country, and particularly for our young voters, who have been given for the past year or more a lesson in bad and corrupt politics and politicians!  Hopefully, this message will not be lost on this new generation, who are aching to assume the reins of power in the halls of our states’ and national government.

Quoting now from a statement lifted from the informative article, “How Evangelicals Became White” by Kelly Brown Douglas (Sojourners, April 2018, pp.19-22, sojo.net), she says, “By linking Anglo-Saxonism with godliness, evangelical Christianity has been complicit in promoting a “great” America that is equated with white supremacy.” (emphasis mine)  Kelly Brown Douglas begins her article with this question:  “What values were really at stake for 81 percent of while evangelicals who voted for a presidential candidate who uses crass language and admits to engaging in coarse behavior, and whose campaign was marked by vitriolic hatred of various people, particularly people of color?”

This is an insightful article, which I commend to those brave enough to read it.  Kelly Brown Douglas makes the case that in voting for Donald Trump, American evangelicals have abandoned personal virtue as a core religious value.  She remarks:  “Trump’s campaign served as a clarion call to “take back the country” from those detrimental to American exceptionalist identity, namely nonwhite people” (p.21).

The United States of America has for most of my life been presented as “a melting pot of many nations.” When I went to my 9^th Grade American Civics class, THIS  was the vision of our nation I was taught by my high school teachers.  We had just experienced the desegregation of the southern schools in the 1960S and there was a great emphasis that whites and blacks needed to work together.  We were taught to be “integrated”, which was a strong civil value for our student body of some seven hundred students.  My teachers were mostly white, with a few black teachers.  I do not recall anyone teaching us that African American, Mexican, Jewish or Muslim citizens of the United States of America were any less American than I was.  It was taught and assumed that while my family migrated to this nation from Europe, others migrated here (or were brought against their wishes) from Africa, Mexico, South America and many other places.  We had persons in our class who were of the Jewish faith and we never thought less of these than of anyone else.  We knew of Chinese who lived in the western USA and heard that New York City was a truly cosmopolitan place.  Most of us never went more than a few hundred miles from our home, but we truly believed we were part of one great nation!

Today, since the end of the Vietnam War the whole world has changed for the better and for the worse.  I have been in college classes with those from Vietnam, the so-called “boat people”, and with migrants from Mexico, from Russia and those from Ukraine.  I have studied with Japanese and Chinese students (from both the mainland of China and Taiwan.)  I have welcomed in my church students from Yemen, Singapore and Japan.  Our church has hosted visitors to our community from Zaire (now the Congo), Kenya and Uganda.  We have helped build hospitals for the people in Mwandi, Zambia and in Donkorkrom, Ghana. This part week I worked with a nursing student from the Philippines, who is now an American citizen.  Some of my professional friends in the practice of medicine are Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim. I have personally baptized persons of mixed race heritage in churches I have served and joined in a wedding of diverse cultures my brother’s daughter married a wonderful man from Ethiopia.  These are examples of how my world has changed for the better.

However, Donald Trump has made the whole world much worse for all of the friends and family I have mentioned above.  How can we live and thrive in a multi-cultural USA, when we are led by a man who espouses white supremacy?  Were this man not the President of the United States and surrounded by persons of immense wealth and power, he would, as we say be laughed at, denigrated and finally “ushered off the world stage” as a bizarre anomaly and artifact of our modern pluralistic society!  Donald Trump and those who support him are living in a world which no longer exists, except in their own distorted dreams and imagination.   In our modern, pluralistic society, there is no place for the alienated young white male, as our community is now made up mostly of persons unlike himself. Either he joins with us, or he will be left outside the community, and labeled an outsider and a terrorist, as one would call a rogue elephant.  He may do much damage to our communities, but he does not and never will belong with the rest of us, without a change of his attitudes and of his ways of fear and hatred of those not like himself.   It is my sincere hope and prayer that Donald Trump, those like him and those who support him are the “last gasp” of this obsolete, old world idea of “Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism.”   Donald Trump is behaving like the Wicked Witch of the East and West in the community of the Wizard of Oz.  One day we will soon be able to rejoice and say, “DING DONG, THE WITCH IS DEAD!  DING DONG, THE WICKED WITCH IS DEAD!” (We are referring to President Trump’s philosophy and not to his person.)

IN THE NAME OF GOD, OUR ONLY SAVIOR OF THIS WORLD AND THE NEXT, JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD, WE MAKE THIS OUR PRAYER.  MAKE US ONE BODY IN JESUS CHRIST OF EVERY TRIBE, PEOPLE, TONGUE AND NATION, IN THE NAME OF OUR GOD, FATHER, SON AND HOLY SPIRIT, WHO JOINS US TOGETHER AS ONE FAMILY IN CHRIST, IN THE BODY AND THE COMMUNION OF THE SAINTS, BOTH NOW AND FOREVERMORE, WORLD WITHOUT END.  LET US PROVIDE A WELCOME, DEAR LORD, TO ALL MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN EVERYWHERE ON THE FACE THIS EARTH, THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR SAVIOR AND OUR REDEEMER, THE BROTHER AND REDEEMER FOR ALL HUMANITY.  AMEN AND AMEN.

 Bill W.

The voice of one crying in this wilderness, “Make straight in this desert a highway for our God!”

Let all of God’s people say, “Amen!”

“Amen!  We praise you, Lord Jesus Christ!”  “To your holy name, be all praise, glory, honor and blessing.  Amen!”