Trump's Push To Open Churches Contradicts Jesus' Teaching To Love Neighbors, Clergy Say
Faith leaders are speaking out against President Donald Trump’s demand that governors allow churches to reopen while the country still battles the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the activist Rev. William Barber, Trump’s push contradicts a fundamental tenet of the president’s Christian faith ― to love your neighbor as yourself. “It’s a violation of loving your neighbor as yourself to do something that you know could put your neighbor in harm’s way,” Barber told HuffPost on Friday. “That’s a fundamental violation.”
Barber pointed to scripture verses that lash out at people who cling to religious customs while mistreating the poor, immigrants and other marginalized people. “Those who will worship and go through religious ceremony, but don’t care for justice and lifting up the poor and fighting for what is right, the Bible calls it hypocrisy, the very thing that God does not like.”
Rev. Jim Wallis, president of the progressive Christian group Sojourners, called on people of faith to stay at home “until it is healthy and safe to gather again.” Like Barber, Wallis said that this was a way to live out Jesus’ teaching to love your neighbor. “We all want to go back to our corporate church gatherings — but only when that is safe, being very careful not to infect each other or our neighbors with a virus,” Wallis told HuffPost. “Keeping houses of worship closed until safety is secured is a direct action to love and protect our neighbors,” he added.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-churches-reopening_n_5ec81eddc5b6ccbb305f7ecf
