SILENCE IS NOT NEUTRAL
Some people were offended that I called President Obama a class act. They said I was being political. They said I was excusing policy disagreements. They said I should stay in my lane. What struck me wasn’t their disagreement—it was their selectivity. Because those same voices went quiet when racist imagery portraying the Obamas as apes circulated freely in spaces aligned with the man they champion, imagery mocked, excused, minimized, or treated as humor rather than what it was: a window into the soul of something rotten.
That silence told the truth louder than any argument. You don’t have to agree with a man’s politics to recognize his dignity. You don’t have to vote for someone to refuse dehumanization. Scripture settled that long ago. Every human being bears the image of God, and to reduce a person—especially a Black person—to something less than human is not “edgy,” not “satire,” not “free speech.” It is sin (Genesis 1:26-27). And when Christians laugh, shrug, or look away, they are not being discerning—they are being complicit.
Here is where I stand, clearly and without apology. I will not pretend that character does not matter. I will not pretend that decency is optional. I will not pretend that racism becomes acceptable because it wears a red hat or quotes Scripture. When cruelty is excused because it “owns the libs,” the Church has already lost the plot. Jesus did not bless mockery. He did not wink at contempt. He did not align Himself with power that punches down while demanding praise (Matthew 23:23-28).
What troubles me most is that the loudest outrage was reserved for my defense of dignity, not for the degradation itself. That tells me something deeper is at work. The issue was never tone. It was never civility. It was never policy. The issue was that a Black man carried himself with grace, intelligence, and restraint—and that unsettled people who were comfortable with a very different narrative. When that narrative is threatened, hypocrisy rushes in to defend itself.
As a preacher, I refuse to ignore that hypocrisy. I refuse to confuse partisanship with faithfulness. I refuse to call darkness light because it flatters my tribe. The Gospel does not require me to be fair to cruelty; it requires me to name it. And it does not ask me to stay silent when God’s image is mocked—it commands me to speak (Proverbs 31:8-9).
So let there be no confusion. I stand with dignity over degradation. With truth over tribal loyalty. With Christ over any political figure who benefits from contempt while hiding behind religious language. If that offends, so be it. The Church was never called to be comfortable—it was called to be faithful. To truth. To dignity.
Trump has been wrapped in Christian language so loudly and so often that silence starts to sound like agreement, and as a preacher I could not allow that confusion to stand. At least not with me. I was going to make it clear where I stand. When someone is publicly linked to Christianity while trafficking in cruelty, mockery, racial degradation, and contempt for the very people Scripture tells us to protect, it puts a burden on the pulpit.
The Gospel does not belong to strongmen, bullies, or culture warriors, and I refuse to let Christ be mistaken for a mascot of arrogance and grievance. Speaking up was not about politics; it was about clarity. I needed people to know that I do not recognize that behavior as Christian, I do not excuse it, and I do not go along with foolishness just because it drapes itself in religious language.
BDD
