Dear friends,
For the past year or so, a group of MPC folks have been meeting to talk about formulating some kind or faith-based response to the Trump presidency. One of the results of that conversation was an open letter to Donald Trump, which is copied below. At its summer meeting the Session of MPC voted to sign letter as a body. We hope eventually to see the letter published in a newspaper somewhere, but in the meantime, it is here for you to read and to pass along to your friends.
Dear President Trump,
We write to you because we, like you, are Presbyterians. Your immigrant mother had you baptized into our tradition, which values truth, honesty, a commitment to education and to the common good. We trust you will take time to listen to us because we are Americans, and Presbyterians. You are our president and our co-religionist, and we are gravely concerned about the direction your leadership is taking us.
We are speaking up now because we feel no pride when we remember the recent silence of many congregations in the face of America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are troubled in particular when we consider that many Christians were quiet during such important historical moments as the Viet Nam war, the Civil Rights movement, McCarthyism, the internment of Japanese Americans, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the genocide of Native Americans, or the American enslavement of Africans.
Conversely, the brave Christians who did speak out in these important moments of history inspire us, especially when speaking up came at the cost of public respect and institutional health. The great saints who called the American people to a greater righteousness give us the confidence to raise our voices in creative, prophetic dissent while living in these troubled times.
Mr. Trump, upon your inauguration, you swore to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, to uphold its vision of domestic tranquility in a more perfect union, to preserve its doctrine of the separation of powers, and to ensure its protection of free speech, including freedom of the press. We call on you to fulfill this oath at a time when white nationalism is on the rise, bringing with it a flourishing of racism, sexism, homophobia, and anti-immigrant hysteria.
You need to do more than tweet out intemperate rhetoric, which degrades public discourse—sometimes with deadly consequences. We invite you to join us as we speak words of tenacious love in response to the hatred that is infesting America—hatred that separates immigrant children from their parents at our border, hatred that seeks to silence protesting athletes, hatred that attempts to roll back hard-earned access to equal rights and opportunities.
Even before you took office, the United States was spending more on its military than the next eight nations combined, yet you have described the U.S. military as “depleted” and have called for a massive spending increase. No just society can expend such capital on the machinations of death. As President Eisenhower said,
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” We will stand for peace rather than put our hope in bloodshed and war, and we hope you will join us.
Under the leadership of your administration, the United States is evading the necessary work of caring for creation. Despite the fact that American carbon emissions are a leading cause of global climate change, you have initiated our withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. On your watch, the pillars of environmental protection are being systematically dismantled. Even as the extraction of coal is destroying American watersheds, your proposal to open coastal waters to oil extraction threatens the health of our seas. For the sake of all our children we have, with all the physical, moral, and spiritual strength we can muster, joined with countless allies in defending the well-being of God’s creation. We call upon you to make this work your work as well.
Mr. President, like us, you are a Presbyterian. For that reason it is our responsibility to call upon you to live up to the tradition with which you, through your mother, are aligned. If we cannot convince you to realign yourself with the best parts of our shared tradition, we will continue working without you to protect children, defend creation, and preserve American democracy.
In Faith,
The Montclair Presbyterian Church Session