Friend:

Our communities and our own hearts are hurting as we reckon with how the aspirations for racial justice in this country are not enough. And taking good care during this pandemic continues to be a strain on our mental and physical health. I hope you and your loved ones are healthy and safe. Our collective response at this moment should be to raise ourselves up to match our ideals, not to lower ourselves – as President Trump would have it – to a new level of cynicism and brutality.

Sadly, Trump’s most visible response this week was a blatant display of Christian nationalism in an effort to pander to his voting base. His decision to brutalize peaceful protesters so he could have a photo op waving an upside-down Bible in the air in front of a church was appalling. He followed that up the next day with another photo op at a Catholic shrine. Along with faith leaders of every stripe, Americans United condemns these exploitative and dangerous stunts.

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington bemoaned, “The President just used the Bible for the backdrop of a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. I am outraged.” Archbishop Wilton Gregory of the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., echoed, “I find it baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles.”

We should all be outraged by Trump’s abuse of religious symbols. Regardless of what we believe, or don’t believe, about religion, the separation of church and state exists in part to protect faith communities from having their sacred symbols co-opted for political purposes.

Next week’s course in AU’s Summer Speaker Series couldn’t be more timely. Author and researcher Katherine Stewart will join us to discuss her book, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Christian Nationalism. Stewart does an excellent job of unearthing the toxic effects of Christian nationalism on our politics. Please click here to RSVP for this hour-long course on Tuesday, June 9, 2020, at 3 pm ET.

Friend, as I said earlier this week, the urgency of this moment can be summed up by Maya Angelou’s words that no one of us can be free until everybody is free. At AU, we take pride in defending the Constitution. But we also acknowledge that those who wrote it compromised their legacy by condoning the enslavement of millions of Black people, and that legacy tragically lives on today in many forms. As advocates for freedom, we must do all we can to advance justice and freedom for everyone.

In solidarity,