The sight of black evangelical pastors stretching hands onto a stone-faced Donald Trump to pray for him in the Oval Office represents a haunting portrait to so many African-Americans.
Even if we put aside the anemic lack of black people within the Republican party, Trump is a uniquely disliked man by African-Americans – only something around 8% have a positive view of him.
But the biggest Republican tool of political marketing targeted at blacks has always been Christianity-informed conservative values.
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Modern-day American conservatism itself, forgive the oversimplification, is political Christianity. With a majority of African-Americans identifying with one strand or other of the faith, one would think they would find natural affinity with Republicans and conservatives.
The blame for this not happening certainly lies with the insistence on the part of America’s right-wing party to embrace white identity politics.
With the crowning of Donald Trump as the party’s de facto and philosophical leader, the Republican party has become an organizational picture of Trump’s whims and beliefs.
It is not as if Trump’s whims and beliefs respectfully incorporate the dignity of African-Americans. For him, that demographic is a political territory to be won, not a collection of human beings with a painful American past.
So why are some black Christian leaders so loving and worshipful of a man who does not? Here’s why
