The Hypocrisy and Cowardice of Progressive Christian Calls for "Civility" and "Prayers for Trump"
Dear White Progressive Christians,
Your calls for civility in the face of injustice and inequality demonstrates your hypocrisy and cowardice. Your calls for members of marginalized groups to “pray for Trump” and to demonstrate empathy and compassion to a person that has actively sought to kill us, imprison us, deport us, take away our rights, and strip us of healthcare is tone deaf and demonstrates that your desire to be an ally is shallow and superficial. Let me say this as kindly as possible: BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of color), disabled people, members of the LGBTQ+ community are not ignorant. We have enough lived experience to know when so called allies are engaging in performative activism. In other words, we have been watching you for years and we want to say that we have found you lacking.
We have watched as you have insisted that the marginalized “take the high road” when it comes to advocating for justice while you timidly (or outright refuse to) engage with your racist family members, friends, and congregations. You don’t want to be “divisive” or you "have to show compassion and empathy to you friends, family, and congregations, so that they can change.” After all you have family, friends, and congregation members that are police officers, Republicans, or don't agree with the "homosexual lifestyle" and you don’t want to alienate them. Otherwise how will they “learn.” Fine, but know that while you continue to remain silent and excuse your loved one’s bigotry, we continue to be shot by police and vigilantes, trapped in cages, denied our rights, and stripped of adequate healthcare. While you are giving your racist, ableist, homophobic/biphobia/transphobic loved ones a pass, we continue to die, lose loved ones, lose our livelihoods, etc.
We have watched you as you have offered tepid support for policies and protests that are meant to push back against the centuries of violence and oppression that the US has engaged in. Your support always seems to come with stipulations. “I support Black Lives Matter protests but only when they remain “peaceful.” Or “yes, I support calls for equality and justice, but the way some of you go about making your demands is alienating. You need to understand the positions of those who disagree with you and be willing to listen and engage in dialogue.”
As if Black and brown people, disabled people, members of the LGBTQ+ haven’t been begging, pleading, protesting, and fighting for years, decades, and in some cases centuries for the right to be viewed as human beings. As if we haven’t been holding conversations, protesting nonviolently, forming coalitions, and educating dominant about the ways in which the injustice and oppression ingrained in American society has killed us, harmed us, and oppressed us.
As if we haven’t tried to work with police departments, congregations, Wall Street, nonprofits, k-12 schools, and academia to create a world where we don’t have to worry if we are going to be killed because of our skin color or who we love, or because our disability makes some people “scared” of us. As if these very institutions haven't killed us or driven us out because their desire to maintain the status quo overrode any short-lived desire to create lasting sustainable change.
White Progressive Christians, you insist that you are so much better than your Fundamentalist/Evangelical/Conservative peers but the reality is that you benefit from a white supremacist, ableist, system and instead of acknowledging how deeply you benefit from the oppression of marginalized groups you engage in performative activism.
Oh, you're committed to ending racism in your denomination? I’m sure the five Black leaders that you have managed to promote will be so grateful. But you do know in order to end racism, you need to be willing to open and honest about how racist your congregations truly are? Oh, you are working on becoming “Open and affirming” but that’s going to be hard when your denomination isn’t even sure if members of the LGBTQ+ community should be ordained.
White Progressive Christians, you use the language of “empathy” and “compassion” to justify your demands that marginalized groups tone down their demands or act “civil” but such language is meant to silence us. We know that. Because if we push back, then we come across as hateful or as “bad Christians.” Jesus wants us to be compassionate but it is amazing how according to you, Jesus’ definition of compassion and empathy looks remarkably similar to white, middle class notions of civility. It is amazing how Jesus’ call for compassion and empathy seems to only apply to members of marginalized communities while those in power can continue to terrorize us.
Your calls to marginalized communities to “rise above” and to show “empathy and compassion” (as if many of us haven’t already been doing that) to those who continue to kill us and stripe us of our rights because our expressions of relief when our oppressors get a tiny taste of what we have experienced or our anger over the United States’ continued disregard for our lives gets a little too loud for your preferences, demonstrates that your support for us is conditional.
You want to support us? Stop tone policing our grief and anger. Stop claiming a moral superiority that does not exist. No, insisting that marginalized groups pray for their oppressors doesn’t demonstrate how superior and holy you are. Nor are you preaching a God of empathy and compassion. The God that you believe in is a God that tells members of marginalized groups that their pain and suffering means nothing. The God you preach isn’t a God of liberation and freedom but of superficial norms and respectability. You have twisted the words empathy and compassion to mean civility and you use those words as a weapon to silence members of marginalized groups.
You want to support us? Learn that we don’t always need your hot takes. You aren’t saying anything new and revolutionary. Learn the value of staying quiet and listening to those of us who are at the receiving end of violent policies and actions.
