A sermon for the Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist Church, Adelphi, Maryland November 27, 2016
The Rev. Evan Keely, Interim Minister
We gathered in this space on the evening of Wednesday, November 9th, the night after election day, for worship and reflection and fellowship. It was good for us to be together. At that time I offered, and offer again in humility my apologies to this congregation for the ironclad assertions I made from this very pulpit weeks before the election that Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine would be elected President and Vice-President of the United States. It was a conviction from which I never wavered for a moment: whatever opinions I may have of those two candidates, I was convinced by the widely held view based on numerous polls that that would be the outcome, and my feeling was that we should be prepared to support the new Clinton administration where it represented views and policies that are in harmony with our religious faith, and that we should likewise be prepared to oppose those views and policies that our faith calls us to defy. It never once occurred to me that the unlikely candidacy of Donald J. Trump would win the day. I maintain that we must be prepared to support what the new administration will do when it squares with our collective conscience as Unitarian Universalists, and to oppose those actions this government will take when our faith demands it of us, but what that will mean in a Trump administration is, and ought to be, of urgent concern to adherents of our religion. The ascendency of Trump is a signal event in our lifetimes that demands a thoughtful and determined response from people of conscience throughout the republic and all over the world.
Whatever embarrassment I may feel in having been totally unprepared for this outcome, I take cold comfort in knowing that I am not alone. Many have been surprised by what has happened, and in the wake of this shock, narratives have been emerging in an effort to make sense of this most unconventional presidential election.
One such narrative is that many voters chose Trump over Clinton because they are weary of business as usual in Washington and wanted an outsider to lead a “revolution.” What has this “revolution” looked like? Well, we all know that in every even-numbered year there are elections for all 435 seats in the US House of Representatives. In 2016, 393 of those Representatives were seeking re-election; 380 of them won another term — a 96.7% incumbency rate.1 In the US Senate, of the 29 incumbents seeking re-election this year, only two were voted out of office.2 These are among the figures that make it difficult for me to embrace the narrative that this was a “change election,” but the figure that most casts doubt in my mind about this “revolution” is 2,228,114: as of yesterday, according to the Cook Political Report,3 that is how many more votes the Clinton/Kaine ticket received than Trump/Pence. If the ardent yearning of the electorate were a throw-the-bums-out sea change, it is difficult to understand these figures, and more difficult still to understand how the likes of Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Reince Priebus and Mitt Romney are going to usher in this supposed revolution. I retain the right to be skeptical of this “drain the swamp” narrative.
But what has drawn my attention most ardently is the national conversation concerning the role of working-class white people, particularly in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, who are now regarded as key to Mr. Trump’s victory. We have all heard the narrative that asserts that Mr. Trump won the day in the Electoral College because his message resonated with these voters in a way that other candidates’ rhetoric and proposals did not. We’ve all been hearing these voters talked about as angry and frustrated that globalization has left them disenfranchised, and that Mr. Trump heard their anger and responded compellingly to it with his promises to bring back manufacturing jobs and coal mining and to undo or significantly modify trade agreements like NAFTA. This is an intriguing narrative. It does make me wonder how this rage and despair has manifested itself in years of elections in those states for governor or state legislative seats; I ask this not only because I think state governments are often more likely than Washington to have a direct impact upon state economies, but because I remain curious about something that I don’t notice a lot of other people inquiring about: where was all this supposed voter anger in, say, the elections of 2014 or 2012, or, for that matter, in the last few decades as wages have remained stagnant? Why haven’t we seen all this voter anger sooner, even though for years manufacturing has felt the impact not only of globalization and trade agreements which may, in some instances, have motivated US-based companies to outsource jobs abroad, but of automation, which has caused many manufacturing jobs to vanish altogether? How did Donald Trump persuade these voters to support him? Am I the only person who wonders what Donald Trump has ever done in all his seventy years on this earth to support and advocate for working people? Am I the only person who wonders why, all of a sudden in 2016, this passionate resentment and anger against Washington of a supposedly unheard and ignored class of the electorate finally found its champion in a New York City real estate mogul who claims to be a business genius, despite his having declared bankruptcy on six of his businesses and his claims to be a billionaire while refusing to disclose his tax returns to prove it — aside from the mysteriously unearthed 1995 tax filing in which he reported a loss of nearly $916 million? All of this has been rehashed endlessly. My point is: I would like us as a nation to have an honest conversation about what has actually been going on. This narrative of the angry, working-class, Rust Belt white voter who supposedly played such a crucial role in Trump’s victory raises more questions in my mind than it answers.
I am truly concerned if anyone in this great country is disaffected. We all deserve a chance at prosperity and security and happiness. We should all be troubled if anyone feels cheated and invisible and ignored. I admit it seems a bit strange to me to hear the suggestion that people like me are apparently part of the problem: here I am, a middle-class voter who lives near a major coastal city, and in my case, I’m not only educated, I have a graduate degree from Harvard: I make no effort to deny that I therefore belong to an elite. I also don’t deny that I’m proud of my education — though to be honest, I feel, far more than pride, a tremendous sense of obligation to a society from which I have benefitted enormously: and so I have attempted, in my bumbling way, to live a life of service. It seems odd that I am now supposedly part of some sort of condescending “liberal bubble” because I have the audacity to believe that racism is wrong, that women shouldn’t be treated like objects and that they deserve equal pay for equal work, that Muslims are as entitled to freedom of religion as anybody else in the land, or that we can have both renewable energy and a thriving economy. It seems odd to me that somehow these views should be regarded as elitist and out of touch. It’s odder still to me that there is now this national narrative of feeling very badly for white people. I am sincerely concerned if anyone — I don’t care where they live, what religion they practice, or what color they are — is being treated unfairly. But I have to admit that when I hear about all these angry white voters, my first reaction is not to say, “Oh, let’s hear them out; I’m sorry I haven’t been more attentive to their plight.” I’m just being honest: when I hear of a group of angry white people acting en masse, my first reaction, my gut reaction, is to say: “Uh oh.” What else should I say? “Oh, angry white folks acting in concert out of their anger and fear — what could go wrong?” More to the point: an avowedly racist candidate has won the presidency, purportedly with the support of angry white people; my first impulse is not therefore to feel worried about white people. Our nation, like many nations in the world over the last few centuries, has done a reasonably good job of providing security, stability and prosperity for white people, deliberately and with malice aforethought at the expense of people of color. Our nation, like many nations in the world over the millennia, has done a pretty good job of providing positions of power and influence for men, deliberately and with malice aforethought at the expense of women. Our nation, like countless nations on earth, has done a reasonably good job of providing luxury and continuity for human beings at the expense of the well-being of the planet Earth. Shouldn’t we also care about the generations of angry, disaffected voters who have been harmed by racism and sexism and the destruction of the ecosystem?
It appears that people like me are now being encouraged to reach out to these angry, disaffected, non-college educated, white, working-class Trump supporters. Well, to be honest, I do want to do that. What a hypocrite I would be as a Unitarian Universalist if I didn’t believe in dialogue and in human beings trying to genuinely understand one another. Here’s the problem: a vote for an unabashed racist, is a vote for racism; a vote for a sexist is a vote for sexism; a vote for an Islamophobe is a vote for Islamophobia. Those things are not just wrong and offensive (though they are that): one thing that makes them wrong and offensive is that they are a threat. If Trump supporters want to have dialogue, by voting for Trump they are coming to the table wielding a metaphorical baseball bat. If someone wants to talk to me under those circumstances, my first response will be: Put down the bat, and then we can talk. Apologize for your threats and your intentional mean-spiritedness, and then we can have dialogue. And then — and only then — my first contribution to the conversation just might be to ask: Why is a vote for Donald Trump a vote against elitism, when Donald Trump’s entire life exemplifies the worst excesses of the most heinous, callous elitism?
Politicians for countless generations have made grandiose promises on the campaign trail; the proverbial “chicken in every pot” is just the way democracy works. Candidates vie for office slinging barbs at the other side — “My opponent is a crook, my opponent is incompetent, look at my opponent’s scandals and bad decisions,” etc., etc., etc. That’s par for the course. Democracy is messy. These things are often disagreeable spectacles, but this is how things work in what Winston Churchill rightly called “the worst form of government except for all the others.” Human relationships and institutions are messy, and the free exchange of ideas can’t always be polite, and sometimes truthfulness is a casualty. But this year was different; this campaign for the White House was different. Of all the narratives that have emerged analyzing this campaign, there’s one that has not prompted skepticism on my part: that this was an exceptionally bruising, brutal, bitter campaign. Why? What happened, what precisely was different about this hard- fought campaign? My answer: it was exceptionally ugly and mean-spirited and foul because of one person, and that one person was Donald J. Trump. “Hillary for prison” was one of the more polite phrases that appeared routinely at Trump rallies. Other statements were regularly featured on t-shirts and buttons that were so sexist, so disrespectful, so outlandishly and outrageously vicious and cruel that even a crass oaf like myself cannot stoop to repeating them from the pulpit of a church. How did this happen? It either happened because Mr. Trump and his inner circle were ignorant of such unacceptable behavior, in which case, shame on you, Mr. Trump, for not paying attention to what was going on in your name, or it happened because Trump and his coterie either looked the other way, or actively encouraged such vileness — in which case, double shame on you, Mr. Trump, for degrading and debasing and making a mockery of our democracy though this inexcusable incitement of the worst impulses of people who deserve better. Your supporters deserved better, sir. But as much as these evils should sicken and outrage us, should we be surprised? Trump made it clear through his whole sordid campaign that in Trumpworld, every problem is someone else’s fault, rather than demanding of all of us the hard work of coming up with often imperfect solutions to complex problems. Should we be surprised that a loathsome sexism was glaringly discernible among the supporters of a presidential candidate who said of his opponent, “when she walked in front of me, believe me, I wasn’t impressed.”?4 And no, Mr. Trump, it’s not “locker room talk”; it’s evil. Bragging and joking about assaulting women is evil. This man, who makes such contemptible and inexcusable comments routinely, will be the most visible representative of our people and our military’s Commander in Chief. This man, who habitually refers to a United States Senator derisively as “Pocahontas,” who sustained and lead the absurd and absurdly racist “birther” calumny for years against President Obama, who took out a full-page ad in New York City newspapers in 1989 in response to the accusations against the Central Park Five of a brutal attack — an attack for which all five of those men, all men of color, served prison sentences before being exonerated, though Donald Trump has steadfastly maintained his belief in their guilt. The elevation of the alt-right white supremacist supporter Steve Bannon to a key White House position should disgust and appall us, but it should not surprise us. We ought to be bitterly disappointed by the Electoral College victory of an arrogant, greedy, vindictive, cruel man like Donald Trump. But we ought to lament as a moral catastrophe that he has also demonstrated over and over again his racism, his sexism, his xenophobia, and his stubborn denial of science, and that in doing so, he has been honored by the American people instead of condemned and ignored. An analysis has emerged that Trump won because he understood the anger and anxiety of disaffected white people. I am more inclined to believe, though I pray that I am wrong, that what actually happened is that that anger and fear were already present for years, but Trump deliberately inflamed and increased that anger and fear in order to attain political power — and, God help us! it actually worked.
It is my personal opinion, a view held by many, that Donald Trump is an inveterate huckster, a self-serving charlatan who, in decades of living in the public eye, has demonstrated again and again his venality, his vainglory, his recklessness, his immaturity, capriciousness, small- mindedness, vindictiveness, mendacity, lustfulness, thoughtlessness and malice. I believe, as many do, that he is probably afflicted with narcissistic personality disorder, a serious mental illness, and that his is very likely a terribly insecure, lonely, and miserable existence, and I honestly feel compassion for him; I feel sorry for him and what must be a very empty and painful life, driven as it is by an apparently insatiable need for attention, adulation and one-upmanship. But he will be the forty-fifth President of the United States, and he must now answer to the American people and indeed, to the whole human race for who he is, what he has done, and what he stands for. And we know, without any doubt, without any need for debate or questioning, that he has demonstrated again and again his support for ideas, actions and policies that are racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, sexist and anti-scientific. No Unitarian Universalist worthy the name, no person who thinks that this religious faith is anything beyond pleasant words and pretty chalices can regard the political empowerment of this man with anything other than dismay, sorrow and horror.
I can hardly doubt that some who hear my voice today will feel an urge to protest these words, prompted by the wise understanding that pastors should not be politically partisan. I completely agree that clergy shouldn’t support political parties or candidates from the pulpit. But this is not about political parties; this is much bigger and more important than any partisan issue. For one thing, we all know there are plenty of Republicans, including quite a few members of both houses of Congress, who are, to say the very least, quite ambivalent about Trump. However, all of that is beside the point. The point is that the coming presidency of Donald Trump raises a question that not one person in this room can escape or avoid: can a Unitarian Universalist support President Trump? Can a member of Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist Church support this presidency? And the answer from this pulpit, from this minister, is unapologetically and unequivocally: no.
There is no need for us to debate this or discuss it. We don’t need to wonder what this church should do, or take a vote on whether or not we should oppose President Trump’s policies and positions. We don’t need to vote for a very simple reason: we already have — and I’m not talking about November 8th. I’m talking about the vote this church made years ago to be a Welcoming Congregation, openly welcoming lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons and advocating for their rights, such as in this church’s active support for marriage equality in Maryland. I’m talking about the vote this congregation took years ago to be a Green Sanctuary, committing ourselves to education about environmentalism, to actively supporting policies and legislation that protects the planet, and striving to make our stewardship of the earth a spiritual practice in all we do. I’m talking about our vote last June to witness for black lives, a first step of which is visible in the sign in front of the church that says, proudly and unapologetically, BLACK LIVES MATTER.
We already know what we must do: we are not going to give President Trump a chance. Give him a chance to do what? To deport eleven million people? To place American mosques under government surveillance and put all American Muslims in a government registry? Should we give him a chance to instruct his Attorney General to pursue an investigation of a political opponent? Are we supposed to give him a chance to build a two-thousand mile border wall that will cost tens of billions of dollars instead of making sensible investments in border security? Should we give him a chance to change libel laws so he can sue people who say or print things that he doesn’t like? Give him a chance to pull our country out of the Paris climate agreement, a very modest set of goals that some scientists fear may already be too little, too late? Give him a chance to appoint to the EPA Myron Ebell, a known climate-change denier who currently heads an organization funded by the coal industry? Should we give Vice-President Pence a chance to continue to oppose marriage equality and to continue to support “gay conversion therapy”? Oh, we will give President Trump a chance: a chance to be on the receiving end of the mightiest barrage of principled opposition, obstruction, defiance and resistance any government in this country has ever seen. We will give him a chance to be resoundingly rebuked by the electorate in the 2018 Congressional elections. We will give him a chance to not run for re-election, or we will give him a chance to be utterly vanquished in a re-election bid. We will even give him a chance to apologize for the innumerable mean-spirited, sexist, racist, xenophobic, anti- immigrant, Islamophobic remarks he has made and polices he has proposed, and to show that he is truly sorry by following a very different path. We would rejoice to see that happen. What possible reason has he given any of us to hope for such a thing? He has shown the world who he is in his decades in the public eye. Give him a chance? He already had one: it’s called a presidential campaign. During that campaign, he made himself very clear. Now it is time for us to be very clear: we will join with all Americans of good will to support racial justice, religious freedom, gender equality, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, and the protection of the planet Earth. President Trump is more than welcome to join us; Trump voters and supporters are more than welcome to come on over to the winning side that is now ever more steadfast in bending the moral arc of the universe toward justice. If President Trump fails to do so, but instead promotes the kind of agenda that he has proclaimed repeatedly in his campaign and supported his whole life, he had better be ready to fight hard for that agenda, because we are going to fight against it harder.
I repeat, unequivocally and unapologetically, that this is not a partisan issue. In this church, we are Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, Independents, and non-voters who won’t vote or who can’t vote. Americans of good will, regardless of party affiliation or ideology, support climate justice and gender rights and LGBT rights and racial equity and freedom of religion and just and sensible immigration policies. I don’t care what someone’s political affiliation is; I care about justice and freedom and kindness and the future of the planet earth.
I am well aware that my efforts to predict the future should not inspire confidence. It is not altogether impossible that the future will not be as dire as I fear. If President Trump governs wisely and justly, if his policies and actions genuinely help people who are suffering, none will be gladder than I. However: I was caught totally unprepared for him to be President; I do not intend to be unready again. I intend to take him at his word, and his word is not a word of freedom and justice and wisdom and prudence and kindness. I am well aware that since the election, he has made statements that appear to be backtracking from some of his campaign pronouncements. Let us hope he moderates his views once faced with the terrible and sacred responsibilities of governing, but let’s not assume that he will. Let’s not forget that for decades, he has shown the whole world who he is. Perhaps he can change. I don’t plan to be caught off guard if he doesn’t.
These are challenging times, my beloved people! Yet we need not panic: we have had many racist presidents before. It would be more honest to say that US presidents who have not been overtly racist are more the exception, and more honest still to admit that no president, no leader has really done enough to undo the centuries-old curse of systemic injustices. But it is one thing to say that someone could do more, and quite another thing altogether to recognize that a blatantly racist, misogynistic, xenophobic individual like Mr. Trump is very likely to try to usher in tremendous setbacks to whatever progress has been made toward healing ancient wounds and making our society more just. And while his Electoral College victory is a triumph of racism, sexism and xenophobia, it’s not as if these ills are anything new. They have been with us always. If Trump had lost the election, we would still be a Welcoming Congregation and a Green Sanctuary and we would still have a Black Lives Matter banner in front of the church; we’ve got work to do, and we are going to keep at it regardless of who is in the White House or any other position of power. What’s noteworthy about Trump’s victory is that it means that forces in our culture and our body politic that are harmful, forces that have always been with us, are now newly emboldened. That means that we also must be newly emboldened. We don’t actually need to change very much in terms of what we will do; what we do need to change is our sense of urgency around our calling as a people of faith. What that will look like for this congregation is that we will continue to do all the more devotedly what this church has been doing for decades: we will love, we will organize, and we will resist.
We will love. We will love those who face oppression and injustice by standing in solidarity with them, advocating for them, protesting against that which harms them and supporting that which promotes human dignity and freedom. If the government tries to implement a registry for all American Muslims, we will adamantly protest it and ardently obstruct it; if that fails, we’ll register ourselves and everyone we can persuade as Muslims until tens of millions of us drown the system in its own wickedness. We will love those with whom we disagree, opposing actions and behaviors, words and policies that are hurtful and hateful, but never denigrating or seeking to harm those who engage in those evils. We will even love President Trump — we will not wish harm and suffering to him or his family or his supporters. I am well aware I have said some harsh things about Mr. Trump today. I don’t take them back — I can’t. Maybe I haven’t yet figured out how to love. Or maybe I am just condemning the behavior of a person rather than seeking to harm that person. If I object to Trump supporters chanting “Lock her up!”, may I never chant “Lock him up!”, but may I join with those who will not rest until true justice is done, in whatever form it must take. We will love.
We will organize. We have relationships with people of good will all over the county, all over the state, all over the country and even throughout the world. As individual congregants and as a church, we are part of coalitions of organizations that are doing the work of justice in our communities. Just the week before last there was an interfaith gathering of activists in the Kelley Room. I myself have reached out to the Prince George’s Muslim Association and the Prince George’s People’s Coalition, asking them how this church can continue to be part of the work for justice and understanding in our neighborhoods. A few weeks ago, leaders of this congregation and I met with the Prince George’s Police Chief and had an honest and very productive conversation about how this church can work with the police department to support police officers and to promote greater trust in the community. We are a congregation of climate justice activists, racial justice advocates, LGBT supporters, and we have made a core part of our communal spiritual practice every week a Spanish-language chalice lighting and the singing of “Fuente de Amor” as a reminder to ourselves that we are blessed to live in a corner of the world that is a place of different languages and cultures, different colors and religions, different ways of being human, and that we are called as a people of faith to not only love and respect our neighbors, but to work with others for the common good. We have organizing to do this for years, and we will continue.
We will resist. When we see evil being actively promoted by our government, we will speak out against it. We will not shirk the challenges and necessary risk-taking of advocating for the oppressed and for all life on earth. We will use nonviolent means at all times, but we will fight fiercely in the courts and in the legislatures, in living rooms and church sanctuaries and on the streets — we will fight not with fists or bats or guns, but with ideas, with principles, with the commitment of our time and our energy and our love. We love, and we therefore commit ourselves to an unrelenting noncompliance with evil. Where evil appears, we will resist.
Donald J. Trump and Michael Pence will be sworn in on January 20th. May God help them to govern wisely, compassionately and justly. But if they are getting ready to hate, divide and oppress, then we are already ready to love, organize, and resist.
1 https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_2016
2 http://www.270towin.com/2016-senate-election/
3 http://cookpolitical.com/story/10174
4 http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/trump-clinton-debate-walk-not-impressed-229810