Month: June 2019

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Politics Religion

Not Your Old-Time Religion

One of the most baffling, perplexing, even maddening questions of our time is how the “Christian right,” “the far right,” “the evangelicals” have become such a powerful political force and how on earth that movement has thrown its considerable clout behind such an unlikely standard bearer as Donald Trump. I have wrestled with this question, as have many others, for the past several years; and finally I’m ready to offer my answer: The “Christian right” has ceased to be a religious tradition and now exists only as a powerful political movement. In its current expression, evangelicalism bears no resemblance to a faith community except in its use of the Bible and religious dogma as weapons with which to clobber anyone who disagrees with them.

Let’s look at a little history which may shed some light on what has brought us to the place where we now find ourselves. Many of us would have little reason to care about the history of evangelicalism, what evangelicals believe, or whom they will vote for in the next presidential election. That all changed in 2016, when Russia and the evangelicals (the oddest of odd couples) chose our president. Evangelicals were the largest demographic group among Trump supporters in 2016, with 80-81% being the official number compiled from exit polls of self-professed evangelicals who cast their votes for Trump. Evangelicals continue to stand by their man, and a recent Public Opinion Strategies poll reports that 83% of them intend to vote for him again in 2020. Without this group’s overwhelming support, it’s highly unlikely that Donald Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office today. Therefore, I think it behooves us all to take a closer look at who these people are who can’t get enough of guns, cruelty toward refugees, and the most unfit person ever to disgrace the office of POTUS.

Two religious groups in the United States which are often conflated are fundamentalists and evangelicals. According to NPR’s Steve Waldman and John Green, these two groups are not the same but do have certain elements in common. Evangelicalism is a broader movement, of which fundamentalism is a stricter, more conservative, far less tolerant subset. So I think it’s accurate to say that all fundamentalists are evangelicals, but not all evangelicals are fundamentalists. The National Association of Evangelicals’ website quotes historian David Bebbington’s summary of four core distinctives which define evangelical belief: conversion (being “born again”), activism (missionary and reform efforts), biblicism (the Bible as the ultimate authority), and crucicentrism (Jesus’ death as redeeming humanity).

Fundamentalist evangelicals also believe these four distinctives but add to them. Whereas all evangelicals believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, fundamentalists also believe in a literal reading of the Bible; not only, in their view, is the Bible the final source of truth, but they believe every story, metaphor, and poem are literal historic records. Fundamentalists are also, among other things, far more isolationist than other evangelicals. They take literally the New Testament command to “ come out from among them and be ye separate” (II Corinthians 6:17). “Them,” by the way, fundamentalists interpret to mean “the world”–which incorporates everyone who does not share their worldview. They cannot recognize the legitimacy of Catholicism as a Christian faith because it is so different in theology and practice from their own narrow view of what constitutes Christianity. An overriding attitude of judgment against even other evangelicals who take a broader view of certain subjects further isolates fundamentalists into a tight-knit community whose primary goal in life is to avoid being “defiled” by anything which contradicts their beliefs.

The term “evangelicalism” has defied precise definition or agreement on its origin, but many see its roots in early 17th-century changes in the church. Fundamentalism is generally seen as a late 19th-, early 20th-century offshoot that arose in response to social and academic developments such as Darwinism, liberalism, and modernism. Leaders’ attempts to articulate and define the non-negotiable core Christian beliefs resulted in the 1910 publication of a multi-volume set of essays, edited by Reuben Torrey, titled The Fundamentals. Those who accepted this distillation of Christian theology came to be known as fundamentalists.

This little history is greatly over-simplified but serves to provide a general framework for the rise of the movement which has now given us a reality TV show presidency. It’s important to add that not all who call themselves Christians fall into either of these two camps, evangelicalism and fundamentalism. These two just seem to comprise the vocal, disruptive element that has co-opted the modern Republican Party.

Fundamentalists have earned the reputation of being anti-intellectual because of their rejecting  Darwin’s findings and other scientific information which doesn’t coincide with their literal reading of the Genesis creation account and the great flood story among others. Witness their current denial of climate science, and no more needs to be said.

Fundamentalist thought has been widely influenced by leaders such as Dwight Moody, Bob Jones Sr., Jerry Falwell, Jerry Falwell Jr., Tim LaHaye, James Dobson, Rick Warren, Pat Robertson, and Franklin Graham. What all of these men have in common is their belief in a literal, inerrant Bible; their disdain for anyone who deviates from their narrow view and their dismissal of such people as  not “real Christians”; and their view that the United States is a Christian nation and should therefore be ruled by Biblical precepts–or should I say, their interpretation of Biblical precepts.

When asked how a group, which professes to believe in the literal interpretation and inerrancy of the Bible and labels themselves the sole upholders and defenders of Biblical conduct and morality, can so enthusiastically embrace and defend the likes of DT–who violates every moral principle they claim to hold dear–their only answer is that “God often used imperfect instruments in events recorded in the Bible.” No argument there. The Old Testament gives us King David, who lusted after another man’s wife while she bathed on the rooftop, sent his servants to fetch her, had sex with her, impregnated her with a son, sent her military husband off to the front lines where he was sure to be killed, and then married her. In the New Testament, we learn that David was an ancestor of Christ and “a man after God’s own heart.”

David alone would make it pretty clear that, if all accounts are accurate, God’s not looking for perfection. But just to strengthen the case, we have Noah who celebrated safely landing the ark by getting passed-out drunk; Abraham who–impatient with waiting for God to fulfill the promise of giving him an heir–took the matter into his own hands and had sex with the maid; Rahab the prostitute, also in Jesus’ bloodline; Jonah who ran from God’s command to warn the people of Nineveh because they were wicked and, in his opinion, unworthy of God’s mercy; Matthew the tax collector, a profession generally thought to employ the scum of the earth; and Saul the persecutor of Christians who became Paul, the greatest missionary of his day for spreading the Christian faith. I think we get the picture.

Yet if the only thing that can be said in defense of electing a person to the office of president is that he’s no worse than a few people in the Bible, that’s some very thin ice.

What makes evangelicals tick? How can they be won over to a cause or a candidate? For one thing, they have long been conditioned to follow the rules out of fear: fear of hell (real flames here), fear of shame, fear of disapproval by bigger-than-life leaders, fear of ostracization. Donald Trump tapped into that fear in his very first speech, when he broad-brushed all Mexicans as murderers and rapists and continues to stir up fear to persuade supporters to go along with his cruel policies. Never mind that most mass shooters in this country have been white male citizens and we’ve done nothing to curtail gun violence, let’s build a giant wall to keep all of those Mexicans out because a few have committed horrible crimes. Fear is a powerful motivator.

Evangelicals have also been conditioned to accept their literal reading of the Bible over the hard evidence of science. The flood really happened, and the earth really was created in six days, just 6000 years ago–science be damned. Anything not specifically covered in the Bible can easily be  “proven” with a cherry-picked verse or two. Thus, the exclusion of LGBTQ people because . . . Leviticus. And some have validated their prejudice against black Americans with the story about the black race being descended from Noah’s son Ham, who was cursed for some not altogether clear reason and his descendants supposedly doomed to a life of servitude–to the end of time. Yeah, that really was taught.

With so much credence given to faith over fact, revelation over reason, is it such a stretch to understand why those same people would take the word of the person they’ve been told was sent by God over the words of fact finders, scientists, psychologists, journalists, and other smart people? Is it any wonder that they view all intellectuals with suspicion? With their conditioned response of separatism and superiority to those who see the world differently, of believing they’re the ones with the inside track to God, their blind loyalty to a criminal “president” shouldn’t be the least bit surprising.

Another characteristic of the modern evangelical and fundamentalist movements is their adulation of rock-star leaders. Although many outside those circles may know the names of only the most notorious–the Grahams, the Falwells, maybe the Joneses–ask any fundamentalist about Bill Hybels, Jack Hyles, Tony Perkins, Tim LaHaye, James Dobson, and there will be instant recognition. Different groups will give more or less respect to different names, but the names are known and revered by at least some subgroups. These are the gurus whose word is truth, whose pronouncements set policy, and whose approval is oxygen to  their followers. [Update: Some of these names, such as Jerry Falwell Jr. have fallen out of favor since this article was written.]

Should it then come as any surprise at all when one of those esteemed celebrities puts his arm around a man who in no way represents their stated beliefs or anything they ever learned in Sunday school and says “This person is sent by God to protect and preserve our nation,” the masses accept that pronouncement as divine truth and follow that man as fervently as they follow the leaders who anointed him? Sadly, the leader who gets lost in the process is the one they profess to believe above all others: Jesus, who never endorsed any of this baloney.

Donald Trump’s immediate predecessor, Barack Obama, gave the clearest statement of his Christian faith I’ve ever heard from a sitting president. And he backed up his words with a moral and scandal-free life, a ready knowledge of Christian belief, and even a spontaneous rendering of the hymn “Amazing Grace” at a funeral. Contrast that with Donald Trump’s mention of “Two Corinthians” as the only evidence of biblical knowledge he could muster on the spot. Yet President Obama is reviled by evangelicals as a non-citizen Muslim, and Donald Trump is hailed by “a significant portion of his supporters [as] literally . . . an answer to their prayers. He is regarded as something of a messiah, sent by God to protect a Christian nation” (Bobby Azarian, Ph.D., in Psychology Today).

The so-called “Christian Right” has ceased to be Christian. Although they claim unquestioned allegiance to the Bible, I’m going to venture a guess that most have not read much of the Bible; and the parts they have read are twisted to support preconceived beliefs. If they bothered to read the book they claim to follow, they would have run across a few passages which define what the Christian faith actually is. When your only reason for reading the Bible is to find support for what you already believe, you’re missing a lot.

If one wanted to know what the Christian faith is really all about, Micah 6:8 is a one-verse primer: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think locking children in filthy cages with no access to hygiene supplies, adequate food, human touch, or even a real blanket qualifies as justice, kindness, or a humble walk with God. Then again, these children are brown, so perhaps they’re excluded from the general rules? Somehow I can’t imagine those same fine Christian people looking the other way or sending their attorneys to court to defend such treatment of white children.

James 1:27 echoes Micah’s summary: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” “Care for the orphans and widows in their distress.” Yet allowing Puerto Rican Americans to languish in distress after a hurricane, desperate for the bare essentials of life, isn’t given a place on the “conservative” agenda. Nor are the children in the concentration camps or the families without health insurance or the minimum-wage workers who can barely exist on their paychecks and who would be wiped out by one unanticipated expense.

Then there’s Jesus’ own quick summary of what faith is meant to be. Asked by a Pharisee, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest,” Jesus responded: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:36-40). “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” In other words, the whole Old Testament is summed up in 28 words, further reduced to “Love God and love your fellow humans.”

Jesus reiterates those points a few chapters further on, in Matthew 25. There he gives a metaphorical description of a judgment of the nations, in which the nations will be divided into two groups: sheep and goats. The sole criterion for the division is the way in which the nations have treated the disadvantaged, “the least of these.” The sheep are those who have fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, cared for the sick, and visited the prisoner. The goats are the ones who have not done any of that. Those examples illustrate what it means to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

Notice the pattern here? What do all of these passages have in common? Each one defines faith as the acknowledgment of God and the loving treatment of one’s fellow humans. Nothing else. Nada. Not abortion, LGBTQ people, public bathrooms, right to bear arms. Nothing but loving God and loving each other. Anything added to those two distinctives is politics, not faith. It’s the attempt to weaponize faith as a means to gain power and control.

When fundamentalists formed not only their own churches but their own schools–pre-K through college–they made it possible to immerse a large enough population in their so-called theology to gain the numbers needed for the political clout they strove for. Today their information network has expanded to include news outlets, mainly one: Fox News. It’s like a virtual commune in which it’s possible to live and die without ever being exposed to any other ideas than those spouted by their powerful leaders. And just recently came this announcement:

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has signed legislation permitting Briarwood Presbyterian Church to establish its own police force for its church and school campuses. The law approved two weeks ago allows the Birmingham-based church to set-up a private law enforcement department to make arrests when crimes are committed on its properties. (Patheos.com)

Legitimate concerns about this move include the strong possibility that such a police force would lead to further cover-up of crimes like sexual assault, since the enforcers would be guided more by their loyalty to the church than by their loyalty to the law of the land.

It should be clear by now that the modern evangelical movement has divorced itself from every religious principle on which it was established and has devoted itself to the accumulation of political power. This phenomenon is nothing new. Theologian Richard Rohr says this:

“Christianity is a lifestyle–a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into a ‘religion’ (and all that goes with that) and avoided the lifestyle change itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain in most of Christian history, and still believe that Jesus is one’s ‘personal Lord and Savior’ . . . The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great.”

The Christian church has often stood on the wrong side of history. The church did not act to oppose either slavery or the many years of violence against the freed slaves and their descendants. Martin Luther King Jr., in a section of his well-known “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” delivers a strong rebuke against the white church in 1960s America:

I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say that as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say it as a minister of the gospel who loves the church, who was nurtured in its bosom, who has been sustained by its Spiritual blessings, and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen. I had the strange feeling when I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery several years ago that we would have the support of the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests, and rabbis of the South would be some of our strongest allies. Instead, some few have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows. In spite of my shattered dreams of the past, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and with deep moral concern serve as the channel through which our just grievances could get to the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed. I have heard numerous religious leaders of the South call upon their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers say, follow this decree because integration is morally right and the Negro is your brother.

Abuses of power in the name of religion are not new, but we must never cease to call them what they are. Today’s evangelical movement is built not on faith but on white supremacy and white nationalism. Why else would a grifting, immoral, cruel, ignorant white con man be revered while an intelligent, honest, morally upright, kind, generous black man is reviled? Why else would a pious Senate Majority Leader be allowed to get away with violating the Constitution in whatever way is necessary to continue promoting the “conservative” agenda of discrediting and destroying the legacy of our only black president?

Frank Schaeffer Jr., former evangelical leader turned reasonable person, author of numerous books and articles, offers this history of the modern evangelical-political movement:

The 1970s Evangelical anti-abortion movement that Dad (Evangelical leader Francis Schaeffer), C. Everett Koop (who would be Ronald Reagan’s surgeon general) and I helped create seduced the Republican Party. We turned it into an extremist far-right party that is fundamentally anti-American. There would have been no Tea Party without the foundation we built.

The difference between now and then is that back then we were religious fanatics knocking on the doors of normal political leaders. Today the fanatics are the political leaders.

You can’t understand why the GOP was so successful in winning back both houses of congress in 2014, and wrecking most of what Obama has tried to do, unless you understand what we did back then.

You see, in the late 1960s Dad published the first of many best-selling evangelical books. When Dad toured evangelical colleges and churches all over North America, I often accompanied him while Mom and Dad — unbeknownst to them at the time — were gradually being elevated to Evangelical Protestant sainthood. This meant that a few years later when Dad took a “stand” on the issue of abortion, a powerful movement formed almost instantly, inspired by his leadership, and the evangelical-led “pro-life” movement (and the religious right) was born.

(My Horrible Right-Wing Past: Confessions of a One-Time Religious Right Icon, published in Salon)

Opposition to abortion became the rallying cry for a group also described by Schaeffer: “Evangelical Christianity was now [in the 1980s] more about winning elections than about winning souls.”

Saving unborn babies sounded much more Christian and noble than barring black students from universities such as Bob Jones University and forbidding interracial dating. Make no mistake, though: it’s always been about white male supremacy and the fear of losing that advantage to the influx of other races. Underlying all of the noble-sounding rhetoric, the one-issue litmus tests, and the religious veneer is the belief that there were “very fine people” on both sides of the Charlottesville tragedy and the claim that the Civil War was not really about slavery.

People who follow the simple precepts of loving God and loving each other don’t defend the “right” to own arsenals of deadly weapons; don’t shrug their shoulders and say there’s nothing we can do when the owner of one of those arsenals goes on a rampage and commits mass murder; don’t condone locking children in concentration camps; don’t laugh and applaud when an orange-haired cretin mocks war heroes, women who accuse him of sexual assault, handicapped people, the press, and anyone else who gets under his very thin skin; and they sure as hell don’t vote to elect that person to yet another four-year term as president. People looking for political power and the perpetuation of white nationalism do all of those things.

Let’s call it what it is.

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The Devil We Know

You’ve heard the expression: “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.” It’s meant to explain why people choose to remain in uncomfortable, even dangerous, situations rather than free themselves, when freeing themselves means moving out into unknown territory. Will they really be better off? Will their problems really go away, or will they just be replaced by new, possibly worse, ones?

As a nation, we’re now two-and-a-half years into what is frequently being called the Age of Trump, and plenty of us find ourselves feeling like something between abused spouses and subjects of an unscrupulous autocrat. So why are so many still afraid to speak the “I” word? Why does our Congress continue to treat the subject of impeachment as if it’s something to be explored or investigated? And why, for the love of God, is there still one citizen of this country who wants to elect this disaster to a second term? Why are we so afraid to seek escape?

Sure, there are plenty of unseen and unknown devils along the path if an actual impeachment inquiry were to be launched and Articles of Impeachment filed. But here’s the devil we know: the person who currently occupies the People’s House is a pathological liar, an unscrupulous businessman, a person ignorant of every bit of knowledge necessary to be president, a person with the morals of a barnyard animal, and a “president” who every day places our democracy in greater jeopardy by his flirting with foreign adversaries and alienating allies. And those are only his most conspicuous flaws.

For over two years, our nation waited eagerly for Robert Mueller to complete his investigation and issue his report. Some anticipated the report for its proof that the investigation was, as their leader tweeted daily, a Hoax, a Witch Hunt. Others of us waited for it as evangelicals await the “rapture”–as the Jesus in the clouds who would remove us from the ugly morass in which we’ve lived for over two years, the official document which would provide the conclusive evidence that our White House squatter is a criminal who should be handcuffed and transported immediately to a maximum-security prison where he would live out his remaining days.

The long-anticipated report satisfied neither side. Although Donald Trump and his staunchest allies read “complete and total exoneration,” others read plenty of criminal activity which could not be substantiated to the level necessary to win a court case and which couldn’t be reported anyway because of the precedent that says a sitting president cannot be indicted. That’s a long, long way from exoneration but also a long way from getting our wishes of seeing this grifter fitted for an orange jumpsuit.

When Mr. Mueller did finally issue a public statement, he said, “If we had had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.” They didn’t say so. Therefore, they obviously did not see Donald Trump as an innocent person. And let us not forget these statistics reported by Time Magazine on March 24, 2019:

Along with a team of experienced prosecutors and attorneys, the former FBI director has indicted, convicted or gotten guilty pleas from 34 people and three companies, including top advisers to President Trump, Russian spies and hackers with ties to the Kremlin. The charges range from interfering with the 2016 election and hacking emails to lying to investigators and tampering with witnesses.

It’s difficult to see as innocent a person who has been surrounded by and benefited from the work of so many guilty people. My mother always said–and I bet yours did, too–“Birds of a feather flock together.”

Elizabeth Warren, who read the entire redacted version of Mueller’s 448-page report as soon as it was presented (finally!) to Congress, summed it up succinctly. She said three things are unambiguous: Russia made multiple efforts to tamper with our 2016 election for the purpose of helping Donald Trump be elected; Donald Trump welcomed that assistance; and Donald Trump has made countless efforts to shut down the investigation, to block the report’s release, and to discredit the findings. Nothing in those statements would lead a reasonable person to conclude that Donald Trump has been exonerated of all wrong-doing.

We needed the Mueller Report for its thorough investigation, its carefully chosen language, its documentation of evidence and findings which will allow both prosecutors and historians to find a more accurate picture of these events, and the proof that our “president”–though not conclusively proven a criminal himself–has surrounded himself with criminals. For all of that information, the Mueller Report is a vital legal and historical document.

We did not need the Mueller Report, however, to know who Donald Trump is. Since that iconic escalator ride on June 16, 2015, he has been telling and showing us exactly who he is. Even before the tragic night he was elected, we knew he was a racist, a misogynist, a compulsive liar, a person with shady companions, an ignorant person, a draft dodger, a sexual predator, a nonreligious person who claimed Christianity as a political tool, and the most immature person ever to take the national stage. This is the Devil We Know–and have known from the beginning. For decades before he announced his candidacy for president, we have watched him grift, con, sleaze, marry, commit adultery, boast about his sexual exploits, do TV shows, host beauty pageants, and anything else he could think of to keep his name in the tabloids. We didn’t need the Mueller Report to tell us any of this.

Most damning of all is the complete absence of any attempt on Trump’s part to find out to what extent Russia’s interference in our 2016 election was successful and to hold them accountable for their actions. Somewhat reminiscent, I’d say, of O.J. Simpson’s declaration that he would devote the rest of his life to finding the “real murderer” of his wife and her friend–except that Donald Trump hasn’t even given lip service to seeking justice and protecting our future elections. He has publicly stated his belief of Vladimir Putin’s word over the word and the evidence of our own intelligence agencies. Does that not in itself constitute treason?

In Trump’s narcissistic universe, he is the sun and everything else revolves around him. Believing the obvious and demanding its investigation might possibly incriminate him, and only he knows precisely what he is hiding; therefore, the security of all future elections must be sacrificed on the altar of his ridiculous ego and our country placed at ever-increasing risk just to avoid the inevitable revelation that his election is illegitimate.

This is the Devil We Know. Can the Devil We Don’t Know really be worse than that? What keeps otherwise seemingly intelligent people from all-out support of removing this national menace from power? Undeniably, there are risks to impeachment. Trump’s base is so rabid and so well-armed, it’s not difficult to imagine their resorting to violence. Our electorate is already so polarized, it’s easy to imagine another national split like the one which led to the civil war. At the very least, a failed impeachment could have the adverse effect of enhancing Trump’s credibility and support, which could doom us to yet another four years of hell. That’s the Devil We Don’t Know.

The core question lies in who we are as a people, who we want to be, and how we want to be remembered by future generations. Historians, guided by the ethics of their profession to record the truth and freed from the political warfare that currently engulfs us, will portray Donald Trump as a liar and a fraud. The running tally of his lies since taking office is now at almost 11,000. That’s 11,000 lies in less than three years, and Bill Clinton was impeached for one lie: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Many Americans in the 1990s said it wasn’t the infamous blow job that they resented the president for; it was the lie they just couldn’t forgive. Now we have a “president” who has told almost 10,999 lies more than that, and people just shake their heads and move along when they hear the latest. Do we want to go down in history as the people who decided honesty and facts don’t count?

Historians, with the advantage of hindsight, will present an honest record of Trump’s profound ignorance. They won’t laugh at “covfefe,” “hamberders,” or “smocking gun” or call them simple typos. They’ll probably label them what they are: evidence of an uneducated, sloppy, careless person impersonating a president. Those who excuse these should apologize to Dan Quayle, George H.W. Bush’s Vice President, for the uproar over his not knowing how to spell “potato.” Stacy Conradt reports that Quayle was embarrassed and “later wrote in his memoir Standing Firm that ‘It was more than a gaffe. It was a ‘defining moment’ of the worst imaginable kind. I can’t overstate how discouraging and exasperating the whole event was.’” No such angst for Donald Trump. For him, it’s all in a day’s tweets.

Historians, looking at the entirety of our experience as a nation, will struggle to understand how Donald Trump’s illiterate speeches fit in with those of the great orators who have held the office. They will wonder how a large percentage of our electorate could possibly have had confidence in a “president” who daily calls his opponents “losers,” who attacks the man who portrays him on Saturday Night Live, and who struggles to form coherent sentences. Those speeches we humorously call “word salad” will to future generations probably lose their humor and speak the real tragedy of this era.

Historians, with a firm knowledge of our founding documents and how our system of laws has evolved, will be challenged to explain how we for two-and-a-half years–or 4 years or 8 years–allowed a “president” to live above those laws. Knowing that America was founded as a nation where people didn’t need a king, they’ll surely wonder why–after 44 presidents who to a greater or lesser extent upheld our laws and kept their oath of office to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States”–we allowed our 45th “president” to anoint himself king, ignore the rule of law, scoff at the Constitution, and profit off the presidency–all without consequence.

Historians, with their deep reverence for the past and the lessons to be learned from it, will surely shudder when they have to record the way this “president” has cozied up to our adversaries and alienated our allies. They’ll certainly feel like weeping as they search for records of any other president who was so reviled by people in other countries, so flummoxed by Americans’ sudden loss of national pride and unity. There will be photos, I feel certain, of the giant “baby Trump” blimp that flies over London each time Trump visits, the toilet tweeter inflatable also on display, and the vast crowds of protesters carrying the most unflattering placards. Do we really want the history of the era during which we were responsible for our nation’s welfare to be represented by a photo of a diaper-clad, pacifier-holding baby? God help us!

Historians, I think, will also be hard-pressed to explain how a religion turned into a political movement and then abandoned its founding theology. Perhaps this is the area in which hindsight will lend insight to the trail which led to the weaponization of theology and explain that the election of Donald Trump is the effect, not the cause.

We have a “president” who says things like “Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest–and you all know it” and “This [Puerto Rico] is an island surrounded by water, big water, ocean water.” Of course, it takes a person with an extremely high IQ to recognize that islands are surrounded by water and to know that the moon is part of Mars. We have a “president” who insults other Americans while he stands on foreign soil. We have a “president” who sat for an interview with the gravestones of our fallen D-Day troops as backdrop and insulted and attacked the Speaker of the House of Representatives. We have a “president” who mocks the fact that Russia interfered in our most recent presidential election and has done nothing to ensure they won’t do it again.

Worse than all of that, we have a political party and a lot of citizens who support, promote, and plan to reelect the person described above. We have millions of voters who can’t understand anything beyond winning and losing elections, who think those of us who are appalled by the current state of affairs are just “sore losers.”

Remember the often-quoted words of President Lincoln:

A house divided against itself, cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.

We–the adults who are alive right now–are the ones who get to decide which way we’re going to go. Will we become a whole nation of liars, bigots, misogynists, people with no regard for truth, hypocrites using religion as a political tool? Or will we heed some other words of President Lincoln:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

In the more recent words of Representative Elijah Cummings, current Chair of the House Oversight Committee, “Republicans need to stop circling the wagons around Trump and start circling the wagons around this country.”

It’s too late to erase the ugliness and division of the last three years; our portrait in history is already well underway. What we can do, however, is acknowledge the Devil We Know and stop being afraid of the Devil We Don’t Know. Donald Trump is at little risk of being removed from office because of the evil leadership in the Senate, but that shouldn’t stop the House from placing their stamp of disapproval on him, pinning on him the scarlet letter so that at least we’ve asserted our moral stance as a people and condemned the corruption that’s happening right before our eyes.

Since neither Donald Trump nor any of his cohorts (yeah, I’m looking at you, Mitch McConnell) has any sense of shame, the scarlet letter may not have the desired effect on them. But failing to impeach Trump means that WE wear the scarlet letter, the symbol of our moral failure to stand against the destruction of our democracy. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne wore a scarlet “A” for adulteress. We will wear a “C” for coward, or maybe a “D” for derelict of duty, or maybe an “H” for hypocrite.

We didn’t need Robert Mueller to tell us any of this. We all knew what we were electing–even those who elected him. The only remaining question is what we’re going to do about it.

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The Immokalee Story

Located on the edge of the Florida Everglades, Collier County is home to a diverse demographic, including Naples business people, Immokalee farm workers, and Seminole Native Americans who were forced to move south during North Florida’s Seminole Wars of the early 1800s. Collier County sits at the southern end of Florida’s Gulf Coast and includes Naples, Immokalee, and Marco Island. The county was formed from Lee County in 1923 and named after New York City advertising mogul and real estate developer Baron Collier, who relocated to Southwest Florida and built the Tamiami Trail (a section of State Route 41) to connect Naples to Fort Myers and Tampa in exchange for having the newly-formed county bear his name. Between Collier County and Broward County on Florida’s East Coast lies about 110 miles of Everglades, including the Big Cypress National Preserve. Travelers are well advised to fill their gas tanks and be sure they have plenty to eat before departing the eastern limits of Collier County.

The county covers a total of 2,305 square miles, making it the largest in Florida for land area and fourth-largest for total area (including water). The 2000 census shows a population of 251,377; but because of rapid growth in all of Southwest Florida, the 2019 population is estimated at 372,880.

Between Naples and Immokalee is Ave Maria, a planned community founded in 2005, built around Ave Maria University and the large Ave Maria Catholic Church. Established by the Ave Maria Development Company, led by Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, it calls itself “the fastest-growing community in Southwest Florida.”

Immokalee is an unincorporated area, about 40 miles northwest of the Everglades, 50 miles southwest of Lake Okeechobee, and 45 miles northeast of Naples. Its name comes from the Seminole tongue, the Miccosukee word for “my home.”  Immokalee’s year-round population is about 25,000, with a harvest-season count of about 40,000. The influx of migrants who arrive to assist in planting, picking, processing, and pricing the tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, eggplant, cantaloupe, and watermelon are predominantly from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Haiti. When picking slows down in Immokalee, these workers  follow the harvest, leading them into northern Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and as far north as Michigan, New Jersey, and New York.

Although Immokalee, Florida, might seem an unlikely tourist destination, the area has much to offer in recreation and natural wonders. The Seminole Casino is known as one of Florida’s most elegant casinos (there are five in other areas), comparable, in the estimation of some, to Las Vegas establishments. With its more than 1300 slot machines, 38 live game tables, gourmet grill where local produce is turned into tantalizing feasts, and hotel featuring 19 suites and 81 deluxe rooms, Immokalee’s casino attracts tourists and hosts group events from all parts of Florida as well as other states.

Other area attractions include the Immokalee Regional Raceway, Immokalee Pioneer Museum at Roberts Ranch, Lake Trafford Marina airboat tours, Lake Trafford fishing excursions (listed as a top bass fishing destination), the Pepper Ranch Preserve, and the not-to-be-missed Immokalee Produce Center where local farmers market their crops. No one should leave the Produce Center without trying an ear of roasted corn with a choice of butter, mayonnaise, or spicy taco seasoning–or for the adventurous, all three.

Just 13 miles west of Immokalee, tourists will find the Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, designated a national natural landmark and home to the largest old growth Bald Cypress forest in North America. A 2.5-mile boardwalk is “a journey into the heart of the Everglades ecosystem” (Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary website). The sanctuary is also famous for its “super” ghost orchids, a tourist attraction in themselves.

Immokalee, “my home,” is a quiet, sleepy little town where a passer-through will see a steady stream of pedestrians, including mothers pushing baby strollers which carry both babies and the day’s collection of household supplies, since few of the lower-income residents own cars. The aromas of authentic Mexican food, as well as a few other ethnic cuisines, fill the air. Chickens roam freely along the streets and in the yards of local businesses, foraging for food.

Entering Immokalee from the east, along State Route 29, which becomes Main Street and then Immokalee Road, to the left is New Market Road, which leads to the Produce Center. Continuing west, the driver will see a few large churches, some banks, businesses, restaurants, the usual assortment of fast-food joints, University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, Florida State University College of Medicine’s Immokalee Health Education Site, and some of Immokalee’s more comfortable homes. Closer to town, SR 29 crosses Lake Trafford Road and Roberts Ranch Road before passing through the quaint “downtown” area. Here on Immokalee’s west side are located the offices for Coalition of Immokalee Workers and Misión Peniel, a Presbyterian mission operated by the Peace River Presbytery of the PC(USA).

The contrast between the east end of town and the west end is stark. The comfortable homes of the east are replaced by ramshackle trailers which most people would think uninhabitable but which are in fact inhabited by farm workers and their families who pay a large percentage of their meager earnings to live in deplorable conditions. In one of the more shocking contrasts, Juanita’s Restaurant–which serves authentic tacos, fajitas, and other Mexican favorites at incredibly low prices–and Misión Peniel–which ministers to the poorest of the farm workers–are located only minutes away from the glitzy Seminole Casino and a short distance from the upscale Ave Maria community.  

Within the Naples-Immokalee-Marco Island Statistical Area, Immokalee’s economy is at the low end of the scale. According to the site datausa.io, the median household income is $29,308; the median property value, $99,700; and the poverty rate, 43.4%. The same site lists the most common occupations of the employed year-round Immokalee residents as agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting (35%); construction trades (11%); and administrative and support and waste management services (8%).  The highest-paying industries are real estate; public administration; and professional, scientific, and technical services.

Immokalee’s school system includes eight elementary and middle schools, Immokalee High School, Immokalee Technical Center, the PACE Program, Immokalee Teen Parenting Program, The Phoenix Program-Immokalee, and Immokalee Technological Academy. Schools also have special programs for migrant children.

At the lowest end of Immokalee’s socio-economic structure are the migrant farm workers, who labor long days in the fields under Florida’s blazing sun to earn a bare subsistence. For these people who harvest and process the crops we all enjoy eating, the work day begins early with a long wait for buses which pick up the workers and transport them to the fields. Although waiting for the buses, riding to the fields, and then waiting again for the dew to dry consume a significant amount of workers’ time, they are paid only for the buckets of crops they pick. For each bucket a worker picks, he or she receives a token, which can later be redeemed for an average of fifty to sixty cents per token, depending on the farm. Buckets weigh approximately 32 pounds when filled; so to earn the $500 necessary to pay the weekly rent for a family of four, a working couple would have to pick 1,000 buckets–or 32,000 pounds, or 16 tons of tomatoes–in one week, in the blazing Florida sun with no shade and no time for breaks. And that pays only the rent, leaving nothing for food, clothing, and other necessities.

Despite the fact that Immokalee supplies the nation’s food retailers and dinner tables with almost all of the winter tomatoes grown in the United States, along with the other fruits and vegetables mentioned above, many of the people who pick those crops go hungry and live in unimaginable conditions. A family of two adults and two children pays $500 per week (yes, if you’re doing the math, that’s $2000 per month) for half of a trailer; trailers often have leaking roofs, large holes in the floor, widespread mold, malfunctioning appliances, and unsafe steps and entryways. The family may be forced to share the trailer with strangers and to live in fear within their own homes.

Housing, land, and almost everything else in Immokalee are in the hands of four or five families, who care more about their profits than about the safety and well-being of their tenants. Rent-gouging is the norm, and those who dare to complain can expect eviction. The same families control local businesses and set price points in local stores, placing those prices out of reach for farm-worker families.

Abuses amounting to slavery dominated the fields of Immokalee for many years, earning Immokalee the title “ground zero for modern-day slavery.” In addition to wage theft, beatings, and human trafficking, 80% of farm-worker women reported experiencing sexual assault and harassment in the fields. Farms which employ migrant workers are owned by giant companies; they are not family farms. Companies employ crew leaders to organize the field labor. The crew leaders, who supervise work in the fields, were responsible for the rampant abuse of farm workers who had no contact with the farm owners and nowhere to turn for help in escaping their cruel treatment.

In 1993, six farm workers, two of whom were Greg Asbed and Lucas Benitez, met weekly in a borrowed room of a local church to form the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW); Gerardo Reyes later joined the leadership of the organization. The CIW today is active not only in Florida but also in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey. The CIW website describes the conditions they were formed to confront:

In 21st century America, slavery remains woven into the fabric of our daily lives.  On any given day, the fruit and vegetables we eat or drink may have been picked by workers in involuntary servitude.  Men and women are held against their will by their employers through the use of violence – including beatings, shootings, and pistol-whippings – threats of violence, and coercion. 

The CIW’s Anti-Slavery Program has uncovered, investigated, and assisted in the prosecution of numerous multi-state, multi-worker farm slavery operations across the Southeastern U.S., helping liberate over 1,200 workers held against their will.  The U.S. Department of State credits the CIW with ‘pioneering’ the worker-centered and multi-sectoral approach to prosecutions, and hails the CIW’s work on some of the earliest cases as the ‘spark’ that ignited today’s national anti-slavery movement.

From 1993 to 2001, the CIW’s focus was on cleaning up existing abuses and human-rights violations, forcing farm owners and field bosses to abide by a higher set of standards. Workers were connected with farm owners, farm owners were held liable for their field bosses’ abuses, and workers were provided hotlines for reporting abuse. In 2001, the group progressed to the prevention phase of their initiative by forming the Campaign for Fair Food, which asked the nation’s largest food retailers to pay one extra penny for each pound of tomatoes they purchase and to agree to the standards set forth by the Fair Food Program. Since their formation, the CIW has succeeded in winning Fair Food Agreements with Walmart, Ahold USA, Taco Bell, Chipotle, McDonald’s, Subway, Compass Group, Yum Brands, Burger King, Aramark, Sodexo, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and The Fresh Market. They continue to work toward securing agreements with Wendy’s and Publix.

The CIW website credits their efforts  with achieving

more humane farm labor standards and fairer wages for farm workers in their tomato suppliers’ operations. Alongside farm workers and 90% of tomato growers, participating buyers are a key part of the Fair Food Program (FFP). Through the Program, these buyers support a wage increase through paying an additional penny per pound and require a human-rights-based Code of Conduct to be implemented on the farms that grow their tomatoes. Not only does the FFP make a substantial difference for workers’ wages, but it transforms the labor environment in Florida’s fields into a workplace rooted in mutual respect and basic dignity for farm workers.

The CIW stands today as a model of worker-driven social responsibility (WSR) and is leading a 21st-century human rights revolution. Recently the Vermont Dairy Milk with Dignity program was formed, inspired by the CIW’s model and guided by the CIW leadership team.

For more information on the CIW, watch the documentary film Food Chains.

Thanks to the CIW, the participating businesses in the FFP, and many other groups who have responded to the calls to help erase human-rights violations in Immokalee, the farm workers live better lives today than they did several decades ago. Yet the shortage of decent, affordable housing and the inability to buy sufficient nutritious food for their families leave the farm workers even now living in extreme poverty. Organizations such as Misión Peniel, the Guadeloupe Church, and the Amigo Center offer needed assistance by providing food and other supplies; but these organizations lack the resources to address the housing problem. Habitat for Humanity works in Immokalee as in many other communities across the world, but the farm workers fall below the income threshold to qualify for a Habitat home and their migrant lifestyle does not lend itself to home ownership.

Since destruction done by Hurricane Irma in 2017 exacerbated the already-dire housing conditions, the need for action has become even more critical. Inspired by the efforts of many organizations which rushed to offer post-hurricane relief to those most severely affected and by our bonds with the farm workers through affiliations with the CIW and Misión Peniel, a group of concerned people formed the Immokalee Fair Housing Alliance to build new safe, decent, hurricane-resistant housing.

Immokalee has a rich history and is vital to this nation’s food supply. It is called “my home” by a remarkably diverse population, demonstrated graphically by a group that descended upon Roberts Ranch in the summer of 2016. The ranch that day was the venue for a speech by a nationally known politician, but what made a far greater impact than the speaker’s words was the audience, which resembled a scene from a Nathaniel Hawthorne story. There, gathered in a semicircle around the makeshift stage, were Naples elites, Immokalee farm workers, Seminole Native Americans, local politicians, old people, young people, black people, brown people, red people, and white people. All were joined in one congenial group, applauding and chanting in unison.

The IFHA and Misión Peniel dream of an Immokalee where that Roberts Ranch scene will be the daily norm, where every citizen–regardless of race, social status, or income level–will live in dignity and harmony and will have decent, secure, affordable housing and enough food for themselves and their children. Every human being deserves a secure home.

We ask anyone who likes to eat, who appreciates the hard work done by the good people who harvest our food, and who believes that every human being has dignity and worth to please consider making contributions to the IFHA, Misión Peniel, and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

By Barb Woolard Griffith