“What, pray tell, will Americans be hearing from the pulpit this weekend? What will be the message of the morning? Will religious leaders, credited with high moral standing, address the matter of a president who lies, disrespects cherished institutions and now stands accused by a subordinate in a court of law of having directed the subordinate to break a federal law?”
Those questions were asked by Colbert King, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and editor at the Washington Post on Saturday, August 24th.
He concluded his column with a stirring challenge: “In the name of all that is ethical and moral, call him out, and from the pulpits.”
Colbert King is not a preacher or a pastor. He is a journalist who apparently decided it was time to call out America’s Christian preachers who either support Donald Trump or have refused to address the moral travesty his presidency represents.
We know, of course, that not all evangelical preachers support Trump, and some progressive ministers have used the pulpit to address the moral, political, and religious crisis his presidency has created since he took office.
Yet, we also know most evangelical preachers support Trump, and it is likely that many progressive preachers have chosen to remain silent.
They are alike in that both groups are failing themselves, the Christian message, and the life and teachings of Jesus.
Partisan evangelicals lost their moral bearings a long time ago so it is quite likely that when Trump asked them to support him openly from the pulpit in a secret meeting this week, they will do so.
No surprise there, but what about progressive clergy? What will they say this coming Sunday, or the Sunday after? Have they already spoken out or are they too afraid to speak prophetically?
I want to believe they are not, that the integrity of their calling has weighed on them enough to convince them they cannot remain silent and live with themselves.
I say this knowing first hand how difficult this kind of preaching can be. It inevitably upsets some church members who don’t want to be confronted with sermons that call them to re-examine their attitudes and actions.
For many reasons they still attend church, but for some of them it has virtually nothing to do with wanting to move out of the comfortable pew they sit in to being Christian in how they think and what they do.
They are the kind who will criticize their minister for “bringing politics into the pulpit.” One or more of them will probably write an anonymous letter claiming to speak for “a lot of people” who didn’t like the sermon in question.
Thank God not all church members are like this. In fact, it is easy for minsters to underestimate just how Christian many of their church members are, and, frankly, I think Colbert King’s challenge can be understood as being for them as well as their minister.
Are they ready to support their pastor when he or she preaches the gospel and is criticized for it?
Are they ready to support their pastor in asking how any Christian can stay silent when children are brutalized by a President who directs his people to separate them from their parents?
Are they ready to support her for asking if any Christian can stay silent when the President of the United States says there are good people who in KKK rallies?
Are they ready to support him for refusing to stay silent when the President promotes the lie that truth is not really truth, integrity is in the eye of the beholder, and that character doesn’t count?
So, yes, I think the call to speak truth to power, to expose moral corruption and the absence of common decency is for church members as well as pastors.
It is not a new challenge, of course. Every generation of ministers and church members has faced it.
My generation faced it because of segregation and the Viet Nam War, especially for those of us living in the South at the time. In recent years it has been civil rights for GLBTQ persons and how we treat strangers called immigrants. In every generation it has been challenging the second class role in which men have tried to place women.
But even if it is not a unique challenge to be a prophetic voice in the age of Trump, it is a call nonetheless that puts all Christians on the spot, a call that is testing just how “Christian” we are at this moment.
I can only hope we pass it.
linnposts.com 
Missing the prophetic voice of Gordon Cosby. Colbert King, a regular guest speaker who brought politics to our pulpit. The response of the Church terrifies me more than Trump ever could
We all are, Dixcy. The great and faithful voices are all gone, it seems. It takes a journalist with integrity to call on churches to stop being institutions and start being church. I count it a privilege to join Colbert King as one whose life and ministry was shaped by Gordon and Mary. It was the fall of 1973 when I got saved from the church! Love to you and Nolan.
Thank you, Jan, for your mention of Mr Colbert King. He’s the man who, in an article in the Washington Post back in 2001, introduced me to the story of those five dear sisters who were killed in Liberia in 1992 during that country’s civil war, because they wouldn’t desert the people they were serving in their hour of greatest need.
In two weeks’ time, I shall be going to the city of Luebeck in northern Germany, where three Roman Catholic Priests and a Lutheran Pastor were sentenced to die in 1943 for their steadfast refusal to be silent in that time of national degradation for Germany. The Lutheran Pastor, Karl Friedrich Stellbrink, is of interest to me, for before his execution he was excommunicated and degraded by the official body of his church. His only comfort was that shared with his three co-accused. But in degrading this true man of God, the Lutheran church authorites merely degraded themselves. The incredible saga of what Donald Trump is doing to your country gives the story of the four martyrs of Luebeck a contemporary ring.
Thank you, Nigel, for putting the current hour of reckoning for American Christians in historical perspective. We will not escape this crisis unscathed by the wounds we have inflicted upon ourselves, much like the German Christian Movement that sold its soul to Hitler. Light a prayer candle for us while you are in Luebeck.
Thanks Jan, The Christian Right is getting what they want so it appears nothing will weaken their support. They’re making a mockery of the life of Christ.
And bringing shame, Wilbur, to all American Christians, even those of us who oppose them with every fiber of our being.