A version of this essay appeared on Religion News Service on August 20, 2024.
I’m an evangelical against Trump … and genocide
Like many Christians, I find myself conflicted this election season.
This week I was invited to speak for a virtual event called “Evangelicals for Harris” which was viewed by thousands of people and featured dozens of prominent Christian leaders who will be supporting Kamala Harris. I was also invited to speak at the protests outside the Democrat National Convention, where thousands of activists are asking the DNC to support an arms embargo on Israel before they are willing to lend their support to the Harris/Walz ticket.
Like many people, and many Christians in particular, I find myself conflicted this election season. But the tension I feel is not whether to vote for Trump or for Harris. As a committed follower of Jesus, I see no way to defend Donald Trump who has made a vocation out of the seven deadly sins. Trump’s rhetoric and policies are not only un-Christlike, but they are so devoid of love and compassion and decency that my conservative friends don’t even know what to do. One of my neighbors who has voted Republican his whole life just told me he will be joining the swelling number of “Republicans Against Trump” this election.
Trump’s pro-Israel policies promise to raise the death toll in Gaza and further fan the flames of hatred when it comes to the annexation of the West Bank and a full attempt to annihilate the Palestinian people. And yet… it is my same commitment to Jesus, the Prince of Peace, that puts me at odds with Vice President Harris in her decision not to support an arms embargo on Israel. It is once again clear that we are not just voting for a President, but we are electing a Commander in Chief of the largest military in the world inside the world’s most powerful Empire. At least Christians have a history of living under the occupation of empire, which is why Palestinian theologians have so much wisdom to offer American Christians at such a time as this.
It just doesn’t seem like it’s asking too much to have a Presidential candidate who will stop funding and arming Israel as the country mercilessly slaughters women and children in revenge for the atrocious act of terror committed on October 7 by Hamas. Like many people committed to peace, I spoke out passionately against the violence of Hamas on October 7 and have continued to demand the release of hostages. And I have spoken out with that same passion against the violence of Israel since October 7 and asked that humanitarian aid be let into Gaza.
Jesus commands me to love my enemy. I’m pretty sure he meant that we shouldn’t kill them. The New Testament teaches: “Do not repay evil for evil… If your enemy is hungry, feed them. If your enemy is thirsty, give them something to drink.” That doesn’t leave much room for the forced starvation that’s happening in Gaza. No Christian can defend the evil being done by the state of Israel. Even Augustine’s “Just War Theory” created limits for times of war… and one of those is proportionality. I’m confident if Augustine was alive today he would be appalled by how folks pretending to be Christian have distorted and betrayed his own ideas with willful ignorance.
Killing children is wrong, no matter what flag you try to wrap it in. Two wrongs don’t make a right. We are not going to bomb our way to a better world. Violence only begets more violence. Or as Jesus said — If you live by the sword, you die by the sword.
It’s been over 300 days of bloodshed since October 7. With thousands still missing and buried in the rubble, and thousands more dying slow deaths from injuries and sickness, it’s impossible to get an exact number of people killed in Gaza… but we know that it is over 40,000. And more than 16,000 of those are children. New numbers estimate the death toll from both direct and indirect deaths may be closer to 200,000 (The Lancet, a British medical journal). Every day there are new horror stories like the mom and her four-day-old twins just killed in the bombing. Churches, mosques, hospitals, refugee camps have all been bombed, burned, destroyed. 85% of the schools in Gaza are now destroyed and over half the homes. And some people are still debating whether to call it a genocide or ethnic cleansing. We must continue to demand the release of hostages. But as one viral post poses the question: “If you were a hostage and someone said they could rescue you, but they’d have to kill 274 people including 64 kids and 3 other hostages, what would you say?”
I find it heartening that there are protests happening both inside and outside the DNC this year as bombs continue to fall on Gaza, and as the Biden/Harris Administration continue to send Israel more bombs. I would be worried if there were NOT protests. It’s hard for me to imagine someone like Martin Luther King supporting this war, especially as we remember our history. It was only a generation ago that thousands of protestors converged outside the DNC in Chicago in 1968 to oppose the war in Vietnam. And we know they were on the right side of history. But it’s also hard not to support the first black and South Asian and female President… and the most effective way to stop another four years, or eight years, or – heck – another 10 years of Donald Trump as President.
While there are some activists who resort to violence outside the DNC, it has become clear that there are millions of Americans who simply do not want our taxes and our government to support a genocide in Gaza. Not just outside the DNC, but all over the country this week thousands of people have marched in the streets with the message: “Not Another Bomb.”
Over and over the Biden/Harris Administration has expressed how “upset” and “outraged” they are over the human rights abuses and war crimes being committed by Israel. And then they send more weapons. Many of us simply wish they were upset enough to stop sending the bombs. You can’t be mad at the bully on the playground and still give him more rocks.
It seems pretty clear that if Kamala Harris simply said that she won’t send another bomb to Israel, the protests would likely subside. Dr. Cornel West might even lend his support. She might lose the millions of dollars of support from AIPAC, the most powerful pro-Israel lobby… but recent data shows she would not lose votes from millions of Americans who want an end to the violence in Gaza. It’s hard to imagine what is holding her back. I really don’t want to believe it is the 5.3 million dollars she received from the most powerful pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC. I just keep thinking of that quote from Robin Williams: “Politicians should wear sponsor jackets like Nascar drivers, then we know who owns them.” We want to believe a woman as strong as VP Harris would not sell out her moral conscience to the lobbyists.
It all feels so calculated and choreographed, and gross. Even as I find her joy and hope contagious, I kept waiting on her to denounce the failed policies of Biden in Gaza. Ten months of ceasefire talks as the bombs keep falling every day. If I’m honest, one of my concerns is that the Democrats may win this election but lose this generation. Young people have had enough of the excuses and accommodations and political calculations. They’ve had enough of empire and colonialism and corporate greed and capitalism.
The American experiment feels like an old beat-up car that we keep hearing will one day get fixed up and run like it’s brand new. But when you look “under the hood” of the car, the engine itself raises some concerns. There comes a point where you begin to wonder if the car will ever actually run.
For many people, and young people in particular, it is clear the American experiment in democracy is broken and has been broken for a long time… from the Supreme Court to the electoral college, the permanent two-party system, the war economy, campaign financing, and the inability of Congress to do anything meaningful on guns or immigration or stopping the genocide in Gaza.
So this election season it can feel like we are being asked to believe this car will someday run… but right now the car doesn’t even start, the transmission is broken, the tires are gone, the windows are shattered. It’s hard to stay excited about what the car could someday become. But the car seems to be getting more and more rusted every year. The American experiment is not going well.
Maybe I’m a political deconstructionist. I’m having a hard time believing in the attainability of the noble aspirations of American “democracy.” All I can see is American Empire. I cannot salute the flag or sing the anthems of Empire. I have no energy to advertise candidates on bumper stickers or buttons or yard signs if they cannot simply stand against a genocide that’s being livestreamed.
To be sure, my confidence in Jesus has not wavered at all. That is the foundation for my hope. We have that rich Christian history of feeling like resident aliens within the empire, people who are “in the world but not of the world.” My faith as a Christian has long been about subverting empires and standing with the vulnerable, the widows and orphans, and all those Christ called “the least of these.” Right now that means standing against the genocide in Gaza. As my friend Rev. Munther Isaac says, “Gaza is the moral compass of the world.”
Honestly, when I vote, I am not looking for a Savior. I have found my Savior. He is a brown-skinned, Palestinian, homeless, Jewish refugee born in a genocide… and he would get kicked out of most evangelical churches if he got a chance to preach. As a young evangelical, I was encouraged to ask: “What would Jesus do?” I am not exactly sure what he would do right now. I’m sure not voting for Trump. And it would be a lot easier to feel excited about VP Harris if she would stop giving Israel weapons. Perhaps feeling like I am not at home as a Christian in the American empire is exactly what I should be feeling right now. Dr. King once said, “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.” Whoever we elect in November will certainly need us to be their moral conscience in January. We are not electing a Savior. We are electing the person we will need to protest for the next 4-8 years.
