The January 1969 issue of Playboy magazine included an essay from a prominent American theologian that contained the following haunting words.
Why is the issue of equality still so far from solution in America, a nation that professes itself to be democratic, inventive, hospitable to new ideas, rich, productive and awesomely powerful? The problem is so tenacious because, despite its virtues and attributes, America is deeply racist, and its democracy is flawed both economically and socially. … Today’s dissenters tell the complacent majority that the time has come when further evasion of social responsibility in a turbulent world will court disaster and death. America has not yet changed because so many think it need not change, but that is the illusion of the damned.
Those words of Martin Luther King Jr. were published almost a year after he was murdered, under this title: “A Testament of Hope.” The entire essay is republished in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., edited by James Melvin Washington and published by HarperOne.
Wendell Griffen
A month ago, I ended a blog titled “Questions for the Hiring Committee” with these words:
You and I are on the CEO hiring committee. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are the most prominent candidates.
Why would we select Trump over Harris?
Why would we select a swindler, sex offender and commercial cheat over a prosecutor?
Why would we select a convicted felon who refuses to show remorse, contrition or accept responsibility for his crimes over someone who has spent her career trying to protect people from being swindled, abused and tormented?
Why would we entrust the enterprise and the lives, futures and hopes of everyone who is part of it to the most dishonest, incompetent and irresponsible sociopath who ever sought and was elected its CEO, after we fired him at the end of his first term in office?
We fired Donald Trump four years ago.
He’s more dishonest, incompetent and irresponsible now than when we fired him.
And he’s proud about it.
If we rehire him, our neighbors will not save us from that folly and its consequences.
Our enemies will celebrate and exploit our folly.
No deity will excuse or forgive it.
History will record that we were fools.
Our children and their descendants will curse our folly.
And Trump will go to his grave bragging about it.
On Nov. 5, Donald Trump was re-hired as president and JD Vance was hired as vice president.
“I accept their election. That does not require me to comply with their fascist intentions.”
I accept their election. That does not require me to comply with their fascist intentions.
That does not compel me to obey their plans to treat our immigrant neighbors as threats; demonize our transgender neighbors as predators; view our neighbors who voted differently from them as mortal enemies; and treat women, girls and people who are LGBTQ as socially and politically inferior, incompetent or inappropriate.
So, count me among the people who will disobey and actively resist the dictates, policies and practices of the coming Trump-Vance administration that promise to be hateful, unjust and oppressive.
Count me among the people who will openly denounce those dictates, policies and practices as cruel, vicious, and foolish.
Count the congregation I serve, New Millennium Church in Little Rock, Ark., as a community that will continue to welcome and respect the inherent dignity of all people in God’s love. We will do so because we live for God, in every breath and heartbeat, by the power of the Holy Spirit as followers of Jesus Christ, together.
I accept that Donald Trump and JD Vance have been elected president and vice president of the United States. I reject any suggestion that our congregation should comply with their hateful, unjust and oppressive dictates, policies and practices.
So, I will tell the people of New Millennium Church that we have a moral duty as followers of Jesus and a constitutional right under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to resist and disobey those hateful, unjust and oppressive dictates, policies and practices. Like Dr. King, I am a follower of Jesus who does not suffer from “the illusion of the damned.”
Will you, your pastor and your congregation “go along and get along?” Will you celebrate the Trump-Vance administration or condemn it? Will you seek its favor or sound the alarm about its fascism?
“Will you, your pastor and your congregation ‘go along and get along?’”
What will you, your pastor and your congregation do?
Will your local and state elected officials “go along to get along” with fascist dictates, policies and practices of the Trump-Vance administration? Will they help snatch undocumented men, women and children who are working, studying and living as our neighbors, and deport them? Will they criminalize women and girls who make reproductive health care decisions? Will they prosecute health care workers who help those women and girls?
What will your local and state elected officials do?
Donald Trump and JD Vance will be tyrants. Will we submit to their tyranny? Or will we condemn and resist it? Will we surrender to fascism? Or will we defy it? What will you do?
If you will not condemn, resist and defy Trump-Vance fascism, what excuses will you make for your willing complicity with it? Whatever those excuses may be for that complicity, your descendants will curse your folly.
Donald Trump and JD Vance will go to their graves bragging about it.
And no deity will excuse it.
Wendell Griffen is a retired circuit court judge in Arkansas and serves as pastor of New Millennium Baptist Church in Little Rock.
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