Concerned Women for America’s Bizarre “Esther Moment” Rhetoric

Um guys. What is this.

This the front page of the Concerned Women for America website.

The featured image is taken from behind Trump as he sits at one end of a long table, people sitting along each end. Only three of the fourteen people sitting at the table with Trump are women, which in itself is curious for an organization named “Concerned WOMEN for America.” But it’s the text that has me boggled.

“This is our Esther moment! Now is the time to stand together and leverage this God-given influence!”

I … what.

Here is the analogy I think they are trying to make: Esther had the ear of the king and was able to influence the king’s political decisions. Today, we have the ear of the president and will be similarly able to influence the president’s political decisions.

But that ignores literally everything else about the story.

• Esther did not put Xerxes in power. Her people did not put Xerxes in power.
• Xerxes did not embrace the Jews or declare himself Jewish.
• Esther did not want to be in Xerxes’ court. It wasn’t her choice.
• Esther kept her identity under wraps until the last possible moment.
• She did not enter Xerxes court with any agenda at all.
• When she did have an agenda, it was for her people not to be killed.

The story of Esther is not the story of a political group that put a member of their own party who gushed all over them and said he loved them in office, and then sought to influence his political agenda to ensure that their action items were implemented. It is the story of a king who threatened genocide and a woman who happened to be in his court for totally unrelated reasons who threw herself before him and begged him not to kill her people, risking her own life in the process.

If evangelicals are anyone in that story, they’re Haman.

Lest you think I’m being harsh, bear in mind that Concerned Women for America praised Trump’s order rescinding Obama’s directive giving transgender students bathroom access. Indeed, Concerned Women for America repeatedly portrays transgender students a threat to other student’s safety, using rhetoric that stigmatizes them. The organization also defended Uganda’s “kill the gays” bill, and right now, Concerned Women for America is lobbying Trump to end overseas gay rights programs.

That’s right, that’s what Concerned Women for America is doing with their “Esther moment”—working to make it easier for members of a minority group to be discriminated against, isolated, and murdered.