Eighty-one precent of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. However, President emeritus of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Richard Mouw is concerned. Mouw says that the evangelical community is a diverse one and that he’s concerned about the racism he’s seen in the wake of the Trump election. He says he’d like Trump to “calm our fears” and “promote peace and unity.”
Richard Mouw: I’m an evangelical Christian and we’ve been much in the news lately because 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Mr. Trump. I would hope that I could explain to Mr. Trump that in spite of the fact that he had very strong support vote-wise that the evangelical community has a lot of concerns about the leadership that he will be bringing through our nation- for one thing that 81 percent is white evangelicals and there are Latino and African-American evangelicals and furthermore, many of us spend a lot of time with people from other faith traditions.
For all of us, there is a concern – a spiritual concern- about a lot of fear in our society. Some of the fear is very down to earth. I mean, I know Muslim mothers here in southern California who are very fearful of sending their kids off to public school because Muslim kids get beat up on the playground. I would urge Mr. Trump to be very clear about the fact that his public discourse can have an impact on the way in which kids on playgrounds treat other kids. We’ve had an outbreak of overt racial violence and expressions of racial hatred in communities for whom this has not been a normal kind of thing in recent years.
And so we need a president who calms our fears by calling us to respect each other and I say this as a person of faith; as human beings who are created in the image of God who deserve dignity and respect from people who are very different from each other. I think many of us are also concerned about a kind of vindictive spirit that is rampant these days in the social media and a lot of public discourse and I would plead with Mr. Trump to not be using his frequent tweets to give the impression that he wants to get back at people. I would plead with Mr. Trump to be a voice for healing and for reconciliation; to calm our fears and to assure us that we can indeed work together to promote the peace and the unity of the society and our great nation.