Stick a Fork in Me, I’m Done!

As more than half of this country is still reeling from the blow of last week’s election, I wonder just what the church has become. Trump could not have won without the help of white evangelicals, 80% of whom voted for him. All I can ask is, “Who are these people, really, and what do they want with us?”

One thing I keep hearing lately, from white people, is “Thank God it’s over!” What a selfish thing to say, but oh so revealing! Sure. It’s over for you. You’re white, and you probably voted for that guy, which means you really don’t give a tinker’s damn about the people of color in this country, or the immigrants, who are scared right now, really very scared. It’s not over for them, not by a long shot. In fact, the nightmare is just beginning. You have no idea what you have done.

No, you voted for a candidate who hates just about everything Jesus loves. You cast your vote for a guy who is openly racist, who was endorsed by the freaking KKK, for goodness sake (which, incidentally, held a victory celebration in Raleigh this past weekend)! What does that say about him? Moreover, what does that say about you and what you value? You voted for an unabashed racist, so what does that make you?

Yes, it sickened me that, living in a battleground state, I was forced to vote for someone like her just to keep someone like him out of the White House. But no matter how poor and corrupt a candidate Hillary Clinton was, and I agree she had major flaws, huuuuuge, please don’t set up that false equivalency, comparing her with that man. And please don’t use any religious language or the Lord’s name to cover up what you’ve done, stabbing your African-American and Latino and Muslim brothers and sisters in the back. A massive betrayal of everything Jesus has taught us, to love the poor, the oppressed, the stranger.

Abortion, Roe v. Wade? If you really cared about the unborn, you would see clearly that abortion rates have never declined under Republican administrations: they rose under Reagan and Bush 1, declined under Clinton, sort of flatlined under Bush 2, and resumed their decline under Obama. That’s not an endorsement of the Democratic party (I’m not a member of either), but it shows us that if we really want to curtail abortion, we need to strengthen programs that address the underlying issues, like poverty, education, and health care, not gut them. But in the end, it’s never really been about abortion, has it? All along, it’s been about white power: you’re losing it and you’re mad.

I’m sorry, there is just no excuse for this, ever. No, at the end of the day it was that old American racism that won the day. That and the promise of power. Although if you’d read your history, you’d know that outcome is never good. The church should never seek political power. It ought to content itself with having influence, a voice. Seeking power only makes us more hated (if that were now possible).

It’s been happening gradually, O white evangelicalism, this parting of the ways between you and me. Now here is the final rupture. Like many Americans, I spent 30 minutes last Wednesday morning vomiting the remains of my breakfast into the sink. Perhaps I was eliminating the last vestiges of you in my system. The mask has fallen and the world can now see your true face. You have chosen your path; I have chosen mine. May God forgive you and grant you repentance and peace. No, none of us is perfect, and yes, we’re all hypocrites in some way, but I cannot worship nor raise my biracial child in a church that is so apostate, one that worships power and cruelty, war and wealth, selfishness and…well… whiteness.

No, I’m not abandoning Jesus Christ or Christianity or the church as a whole, just one expression of it, one that I find painfully, inexpressibly horrid. So I am embarking on a journey to find something of real Christianity and real Christians, if they exist. Who knows what I may find.

But as for now, stick a fork in me, I’m done.