Reader Writes: "THE Key Question of This Campaign: Mr Trump, Who Is Welcome in Your America?"

What Pr Chris/CalSailor said yesterday in a comment here is just so right to the point — and so right — that I want to lift his comment out of its thread and share it with you all today:

As an engaged citizen who worked in DC in intelligence during the Bill Clinton Presidency; I have a much higher comfort level with Hillary than with Donald. I find it very hard to find ANY love of neighbor in Donald...and one cannot love God whom you cannot see if you do not love your neighbor whom you CAN see. Too many people get left behind in a Trump world. Mr Khan, whose Army Capt son died in Iraq asked what I think is THE key question of this campaign: Mr Trump, who is welcome in your America? Unfortunate answer: Not Muslim, not refugees, not the needy, not the immigrant, in short not most of our fellow Americans. And that is not MY America. 

Pr Chris

That thing about how you cannot love God whom you cannot see if you do not love the neighbor whom you can see: it's basic to Christianity. It's bedrock gospel. A lot of Christian folks are now announcing that they intend to hold "healing" services after the elections are over.

I'll be honest: I'm not interested. I'm not willing to buy what these Christian folks are marketing. Not now. Not after this ugly, destructive campaign in which far too many Christians stood by in total silence — when they were not overtly endorsing the person spewing hatred.

Those energies to "heal" should have been expended energetically all through this election cycle, as a huge percentage of white evangelicals and their leaders jumped on the hate bandwagon and tried to wrap that immoral choice up in pious language about King David and oh, all sorts of other theological nonsense. As the U.S. Catholic bishops sat by in loud, clear, ominous, complicitous silence — when they were not directly endorsing Trump and allowing priests to endorse him from their parish pulpits . . . . 

There'd be nothing for the churches to have to heal if church people had listened to and preached the gospel throughout this election. The gospel tells us we cannot love God whom we are unable to see if we do not love the neighbor whom we do see. It tells us that people cannot be left behind, demonized, targeted, abused in a world moving towards the reign of God. 

The churches — white ones, disproportionately — have failed to preach the gospel this election cycle. And the consequences for the Christian brand in the U.S. following the election are going to be dire, for anyone watching with open eyes, healing services or no healing services.