Donald Trump
A report released on Oct. 19 by the Anti-Defamation League does not directly indict Trump for this upswing in anti-Semitism. But it explicitly connects some of his supporters to the hate speech.
“The spike in hate we’ve seen online this election season is extremely troubling and unlike anything we have seen in modern politics,” said ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.
A student editor at the Liberty Champion, Liberty University's student newspaper, is crying foul after his column was axed by university president Jerry Falwell Jr. The piece — part of a weekly column by sports editor Joel Schmieg — took aim at Donald Trump's so-called "locker room talk" in which the Republican presidential candidate bragged about being able to get away with sexual assault.
The Utah Republican is on 11 state ballots. He has no major-party backing, and he’s little known outside of the Beehive State.
But Mormon disaffection with Donald Trump is offering the Provo-born graduate of Brigham Young University a chance to disrupt the outcome in this reliably red state, which has not gone to the Democrats since 1964.
It is not just in the courtroom where women are not always believed. If you have been following the news over the last few weeks, you have seen and heard and read about so many vivid and horrifying examples, whether it be sexual assault or domestic violence.
Let’s try to put aside the political ramifications of all this. The feelings and emotions that have been unleashed reach far beyond any single candidate. They get to the core of our lives — how we treat one another, how we stand up for those who are under assault, how we live as men and women in our society.
“I think it took a comment from Trump that personally affected a majority of evangelicals for there to be a tipping point,” said Katelyn Beaty, editor at large of Christianity Today, and author of A Woman’s Place: A Christian Vision for Your Calling in the Office, the Home, and the World.
“More than half of every church is women, and all those women are affected by comments about sexual assault.”
Trump’s comments about women and sexual assault, Muslims, minorities, etc., are difficult to hear because they’re coming from a man running for president — but also because it forces us to confront our own worst tendencies. Trump is able to do and say these things with little or no consequence because of his privilege as a wealthy, white man. And before you think he’s different from you, before you distance yourself from his actions, consider your own privilege and how you’ve used it to say and do things that are insensitive and inappropriate.
On Oct. 13, Lou Dobbs, an anchor for Fox Business Network, helped circulate the address and phone number of Jessica Leeds, one of the women who have recently come forward to accuse Donald Trump of inappropriate sexual contact. Dobbs tweeted a link to a news site that published Leeds’ address and phone number taken from public records and also quoted a tweet that included Leeds’ contact information. Dobbs has 794,000 followers.
This semester I’m teaching a course called “Faith and Politics” at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. It’s been a fascinating class for me, and I’m blessed to have very bright students who are required to volunteer for an actual political campaign and keep a journal of their experience.
Their final assignment is to write a paper proposing strategies for healing our divided nation. Our assumption is that all of the major faith traditions have important resources to bring to conflict transformation and reconciling opponents.
There are a few lessons from my class that might be useful for politicians and for the entire nation as we move toward the election.
Of course this it is not “just talk” as he and his defenders have claimed. But also concerning is the response from some Republican and religious leaders who had previously supported Trump now saying they can't anymore because of the women in their lives — daughters, wives, and mothers — who they want to protect. Women don’t need protection from men; women need men to stop being predators, enablers, and bystanders. Women are human beings made in the image of God regardless of their relationship to a man. This isn’t a woman’s issue; it’s a human issue.
But even after a weekend spent huddling in Manhattan plotting strategy, a crucial question for the Republican nominee was whether this latest outrage would finally repel conservative Christians who are key to the GOP’s hopes for recapturing the White House.
So far the verdict appears mixed.
During the second U.S. presidential debate on Oct. 9, Donald Trump said, when asked about Islamophobia, that Muslims in the U.S. need to “report when they see something going on.”
“In San Bernardino, many people saw the bombs all over the apartment of the two people that killed 14 and wounded many, many people. Muslims have to report the problems when they see them.”
In response Muslims began to tweet using the hashtag #MuslimsReportStuff:
Grist’s Emma Merchant recently crunched the numbers on how frequently climate change has been discussed in the debates of the past five presidential election cycles (2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016).
She found that, out of 1,500 minutes of presidential and vice-presidential debate, climate change got a paltry 37 minutes of discussion. In 2012, of course, climate change got a whopping zero minutes of debate time.
“The vast majority of evangelicals support Donald Trump.” We’ve heard that statement so often during this election season that it’s all but assumed fact. But there’s a problem with that line and with how we talk about “evangelicals” in this election.
(RNS) Dozens of conservative evangelicals and Catholics have signed an open letter urging their progressive counterparts to “repent of their work that often advances a destructive liberal political agenda.”
The letter, posted online six weeks before Election Day by an alliance called the American Association of Evangelicals, includes criticism of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“The presidential nominees will share the dais with Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, and they will deliver the evening’s speeches in the spirit of collegiality and good-humor that has become a hallmark of the gala,” said a statement issued Sept. 27 by the New York Archdiocese and the foundation that runs the event.
The Oct. 20 dinner “honors a cause that transcends the polarizing political rhetoric of the day and exemplifies the vision of Gov. Alfred E. Smith, known as ‘The Happy Warrior,’ for his ability to maintain his positive outlook even as he tackled the pressing social issues of his day,” the statement said.
The man who led police to the bombing suspect in New York and New Jersey was [also] an Asian immigrant.
Harinder Singh Bains, a native of India who practices the Sikh faith, said he saw Ahmad Khan Rahami “right in front of my face” and made a call to the police after matching the man’s image with the one Bains saw on TV.
Rahami, who is accused of placing the bombs that exploded Sept. 17 in the Chelsea section of Manhattan and in Seaside Park, N.J., was sleeping in the doorway of Bains’ bar in Linden, N.J., when Bains spotted him.
After a year of verbal brutality, racially charged speeches, and regressive policy proposals, Trump attended a black church in an effort to convince African Americans he is not racist. His trip to Detroit with Ben Carson was the photo op that such an effort demands. Though he was shrewd enough not to say the words, the whole spectacle was designed to say, “some of my best friends are black.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Michael Mershon, Director of Advocacy and Communications
Phone: 202-745-4654
Email: mmershon@sojo.net
September 2, 2016
Faith leaders from different traditions condemn Trump’s immigration platform as immoral and an affront to the values of sacred texts
As voters debate which political candidate is most qualified to be the future leader of our nation, more than 170 faith and community leaders from across the country will conclude an 11-day walking pilgrimage to urge lawmakers in California and throughout the nation to fix our country’s broken immigration system.
This journey for justice, which began at the Tijuana border and will conclude at a Los Angeles detention center, is not merely an exercise in civil disobedience for the disaffected. We are not jaded, nor have we lost hope. We are walking because we understand that our feet can fuel progress, our voices can reunite families, and our sweat can change history.
A year later, many evangelical voters have grown to love the Donald’s roller coaster. Just as Trump divided and conquered the Republican Party, so also he has divided and conquered the religious right, the voting bloc of white conservative Christians that has been a cornerstone of the Republican Party’s outreach for decades.