WASHINGTON (RNS) — A group of nearly 400 prominent Christian leaders called President Donald Trump’s administration “cruel and oppressive” and accused the government of being corrupted by an aberrant form of Christianity, in an Ash Wednesday (Feb. 18) statement.
The statement, provided exclusively to Religion News Service in advance, has a list of signers that includes a mix of denominational leaders, seminary presidents, scholars and leaders of prominent congregations. In it, they urged fellow faithful to commit to “greater acts of courage to resist.”
“We are facing a cruel and oppressive government; citizens and immigrants being demonized, disappeared, and even killed; the erosion of hard-won rights and freedoms; and a calculated effort to reverse America’s growing racial and ethnic diversity — all of which are pushing us toward authoritarian and imperial rule,” reads the letter, which organizers said was spearheaded by a group of Christian leaders who have been meeting regularly to discuss how to respond to the administration.
The document raises concerns about “an endangered democracy and the rise of tyranny” and warns of a crisis born out of a “Christian faith corrupted by the heretical ideology of white Christian nationalism, and a church that has often failed to equip its members to model Jesus’s teachings and fulfill its prophetic calling …