In what might be considered a mild rebuke of President Donald Trump’s posting of a racist video last week, Al Mohler spins out 1,500 words before he mentions the president by name. And then he says Bill Clinton was worse.
This includes 1,300 words of bellowing about the British monarchy.
Mohler is one of the most influential interpreters of theology and orthodoxy in the Southern Baptist Convention, which has no pope and few other leaders willing to speak out on big issues of the day. As I have written before, the current president of the SBC has fallen mute on several recent issues worthy of comment, and the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission has been rendered impotent.
Mark Wingfield
That leaves Mohler with the loudest microphone, which he uses freely through his podcast called “The Briefing.”
It took several days, but Mohler eventually came around to discuss that racist video that includes images of Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. In typical Mohlerian grandiosity, he titled the opening segment of Monday’s podcast, “A Crisis of Dignity: Leaders Must See Dignity As Vital and Essential.”
And how did he introduce the topic? Well, of course by talking about the British. For 1,300 words — literally half the words of this segment. I’ll spare you the recap of that because it remains irrelevant to the fact that Mohler and his allies campaigned for and elected the most unfit president in American history.
Let’s fast forward to where he talks about the American presidency — again, 1,300 words later.
He gently opines: “The president of the United States is to represent the nation. When there is a tragedy, it is the president who speaks to it. When there is a major formal announcement to make on behalf of the country, when there is some kind of national trial or moment of national meaning one way or the other, it is the president within the dignity of his office, within the dignity often of the White House, even of the Oval Office. It’s with the dignity of the presidency as a whole in our constitutional order that the president of the United States operates.”
“When a president spins down dignity, he undermines his efficiency,” Mohler says. “There is no greater example of that than Bill Clinton.”
And who is Mohler’s great example of loss of dignity in the White House? Not Donald Trump but Bill Clinton.
“When a president spins down dignity, he undermines his efficiency,” Mohler says. “There is no greater example of that than Bill Clinton. When in the midst of his administration, his indignity robbed his own administration of so much moral authority, it complicated the politics for him as well, and furthermore, his place in history.”
So let’s get this straight. In Mohler’s view, Bill Clinton’s single known sexual indiscretion in the White House — and yes, he did lie about it — is somehow more damaging to the presidency than the mile-long rap sheet Trump has accumulated and the innumerable lies he spews daily.
Mohler then trips on himself while saying portraying any Black person as an ape is an immoral and racist trope but — and you knew there had to be a but coming — he carefully excuses Trump by reciting the White House’s unbelievable assertions that Trump didn’t know what was in the video, didn’t post it himself and — get this — “condemned” it.
The president of Southern Seminary must have some news source the rest of us don’t have because in the real world Trump not only didn’t condemn the video, he refused to apologize for it.
Mohler’s primary concern is that Trump ultimately is in charge and has to bear responsibility for what’s done on his watch. And events like these are distractions from the president’s glorious agenda of ripping children from their parents and sending Storm Troopers to terrorize Democratic cities and taking away HIV medicine and food and water from people around the world.
God forbid Donald Trump lose his dignity.
‘This is one of those situations in which what we need is a very comprehensive statement of presidential dignity,” he says. “I really do want to see President Trump accomplish so many of his goals. I’m thankful for so many of his actions and proposals. And quite honestly, a lot of this is just in the cacophony of politics, but one of the rules of politics is you ought not to hand your enemies a weapon to use against you. And in this case, that’s exactly what this is.”
Mohler really ought to compete in the Olympics if only they had a category for mental gymnastics. The torture he goes through to almost but not quite admit Donald Trump is a racist is exhausting.
Perhaps the SBC’s self-appointed chief spokesman should take lessons from former SBC President J.D. Greear, who wins the prize among Southern Baptist pastors for speaking truth about the video: “The images posted on our president’s social media account this week were deeply offensive. Regardless of the context, we should lament anytime we see something that denigrates the humanity of any member of our society. God’s word teaches us that each of us is made in the image of God and that God has made us all from one man and of equal value in his sight. That shared humanity is core to our understanding of the gospel. We not only want to model that kind of ethnic unity in our church, we also long to see it reflected in our society. I pray that God would heal our land of our brokenness and make us a testimony of the unity that the gospel of Jesus Christ brings.”
Greear said more in 128 words than Mohler said in 2,600 words.
As a famous Brit once quipped: “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global. He is the author of Honestly: Telling the Truth About the Bible and Ourselves.