The Making of a Great America Where the Church and the Founding Fathers Fell Short

This is an excerpt from the chapter entitled "Our Love is as Fierce as Our Anger."

I have tried to hide from the anger that I have felt about matters of race and how they have been treated in the media, by politicians and even by religious leaders that I respect. The anger I felt was so strong that I couldn’t watch certain programs in the media, I couldn’t watch certain political commentary, and I even found myself withdrawing support from certain religious leaders.

I’m angry because I haven’t been honest. I haven’t been honest about who I am and what I believe. In a country where people fight to identify themselves in so many ways, I, for many years, have identified myself as a Christian and a Republican. I’m angry that those terms recently have been so closely associated with racism and division.

I’m angry that the President of the United States could go to Alabama in a rally and refer to a black athlete protesting gun violence as “a son of a bitch.” I’m angry that the president would attack Senator John McCain’s combat record and POW status when his wealth and privilege allowed him to escape Vietnam. I am angry at Republicans who did not rebuke the president when he attacked Senator McCain, as he was battling brain cancer, or when the attacks did not cease after his death. I’m angry that the president can call Barbara Bush, one of our most revered first ladies, “nasty,” and get away with it.

As a person who has taught in predominantly Hispanic schools for the past seven years, I’m angry that I had to explain to my students why their president has referred to Mexicans as “killers, rapists, murderers, and drug lords.” I’m angry that my church sent missionary teams, aid, and clothing to Puerto Rico’s disaster recovery while simultaneously supporting a president whose delay in sending billions in aid exacerbated the tragic conditions and suffering there.

I am angry that the son/grandson of poor immigrants has such a ferocious immigration policy that he would separate non-criminal parents from their children and place the children in conditions not much better than internment camps.

Most of all I am angry that my fellow Christian Republicans would support a person, in the name of the “religious right,” who has what I believe to be a convenient passion for ending abortion but aside from that, has never espoused any of the values, morals, or standards of decency and character that we’d want in any national leader.