Rhetoric Race and Religion
Friends of R3 offered some reflections on the recent comments and actions from GOP presidential front runner Donald Trump. If you have any reflection you would like to share, please email us at rhetoricraceandreligion@gmail.com.
If there’s one thing I appreciate about Donald Trump…I know right? How crazy is it that I could appreciate anything about him…it’s that he has done more in the past 6 months to pull the cover/blindness off those who think racism doesn’t really exist anymore than anything else. He has brought that conversation front and center and shown the non-believers. He is appalling, but what’s more appalling than Donald himself, is that he has tens of thousands of followers. These are our co-workers and neighbors and they have catapulted Donald to the leading GOP contender (which is what the GOP gets for letting their party be hijacked by the Tea Party, but that’s another story). They represent a part of America. So now if you don’t see America’s racist underbelly, it’s because you don’t want to see it.-Traci D. Ellis
I read much of the Koran when I was a teenager and counted Muslims among my colleagues while in undergrad. I continue to work with Muslims as an administrator/educator. I admire their devotion to prayer, fasting, and tradition. I also disagree with them on a number of things theologically, such as how they view Yeshua/Jesus/Isa. Like many of you, I am deeply concerned about ISIL and the various other terrorist groups who employ forms of apocalyptic Islamic fundamentalism to advance their caliphate and destroy infidels. These groups are the KKK of the East, and like such domestic terrorists, they should be dealt with. But the rhetoric flying out of Mr. Donald J. Trump, the GOP’s presidential front runner, lends itself to many things that also concern me. As Russell Moore stated, “Anyone who cares an iota about religious liberty should denounce this reckless, demagogic rhetoric.” We must. Because a nation that will come for their Korans will ultimately come for our Bibles.-CJ Rhodes MDiv
Let me just say that I think it’s misguided to shrug off the Islamophobic, xenophobic, downright terrifying things we’ve been hearing as drunken, uneducated, far-fetched banter. Evil is sophisticated and counts on our underestimation of it. It masquerades as dumb and impotent and while we are sleeping it wraps around our hands and feet and throats. When we suddenly jerk awake, we are unable to move, unable to fight. It has suffocated us. People are not stupid. They are giving voice to the bile in their hearts, and we’d better take them at their word-Naomi Christine Leapheart
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