*(Title from II Corinthians 7.5)
By Rev. Dr. Jennifer S. Leath, 4th Episcopal District
On 28 January 2025 the AME Church Council of Bishops published a significant “Statement on Executive Orders Signed by Donald Trump.” This statement courageously names the dangers of Trump, his policies, and his conspirators as non-partisan planetary threats, calling the Church to action. Yet, the Council’s statement compromises its own objectives in two critically concerning ways.
First, the statement presents our internal justice work as a potential distraction not an essential expression of our broader justice commitments. It is strange to believe that we could be suited for expanded national and global justice work while forgetting demands for justice at home. So, when the Council admonishes us to “forget about our small AME world matters, which do not impact the world we are called to save,” we must carefully discern which of “our small AME world matters” does not “impact the world we are called to save.” Understanding such “saving” as spiritual, material, and political liberation, what we do in the AME Church does impact the world in which we are called to be salt and light liberated liberators. If we are not conscientiously and explicitly addressing our own internal, sinful injustices, we are nothing but a gang of hypocrites. And, from the outside looking in, such dissonance is painfully obvious. The fight before us requires an in(side)-and-out(side) approach. AME ecclesial self-improvement based on constructive self-reflection and self-critique is one of the most powerful weapons the AME Church has against the demonic political forces of our day. Can we rightly address the speck in the eye of the other with the log in our own (Matthew 7.3-5)? Differently put: it is unwise to throw stones from our stained-glass house. Our liberative witness is and will continue to be compromised and impotent if we do not do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with G*d at home more effectively (Micah 6.8) – perhaps exchanging holy conference for our stones and porous frames for our glass. After all:
- How do we impactfully expose the immorality of widening wealth and income gaps, the influence of a deregulated billionaire class, and corporations with more rights than people when our Church continues rejecting and resisting more equitable distributions of resources and responsibilities together with systemic practices of financial reform and transparency at every level? We cannot.
- How can we function as true advocates for economic equity in the United States and around the globe, when it requires at least the full income of a person living at the poverty line in the United States (i.e., $15,000 USD) to register, attend, give full offerings at, and comfortably participate in all local church, Presiding Elder District, Annual Conference, Episcopal District, and Connectional AME meetings in any given year? Multiply this by a factor of at least two for those living outside of North America – and often earning a fraction of what Americans make for the same work. We cannot.
- How do we reject Trump’s serious abuses of power through sexual assault, real estate schemes designed to maintain the sociopolitical weakness of people of African descent, and alliances with dictatorial world powers, when our Church is operating according to an increasingly oligarchic governance structure? We cannot.
- How do we organize public, prophetic, and loving responses in contrast with merciless policy approaches to transgender people and other gender and sexual minorities (beyond loose references to Budde’s words of prayer) when we do not even have the patience, courtesy, compassion, and courage to address these matters in our own General Conference? We cannot.
Second, the Council’s statement assumes its silence on matters of gender and sexuality are safe. These silences do not protect us. The admonition to “forget about our small AME world matters” is an invitation to bracket (without negating ore minimizing) what is happening inside the AME Church. However, the Council’s statement models an even more egregious silence considering its prophetic premise pertaining to what is happening outside the Church. Notwithstanding the availability of comprehensive lists of Trump’s twelve executive orders on “day one” and the deluge of orders that have followed, the Bishops’ Council is conveniently silent on Trump’s executive order “creating a policy recognizing only two genders.” Stating, “[t]he Council of Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church opposes most Executive Orders President Trump signed” (my italics), the Council chooses to remain silent on the most controversial and polarizing of Trump’s executive orders (for its AME audience). My response to this silence is synonymous with my response to the outcome of the presidential election: though disappointing and disheartening, this is unsurprising.
We must ask: How can silence be our faithful response to the harmful ignorance and false pretenses of an executive order “recognizing only two genders” when we have intersex people in our families, churches, and communities with biological genetic codes and anatomies from birth that prove a different reality? How dare we remain silent and consent to the muzzling, denial, and erasure of our kin? How could we pretend that such silence and silencing is not a form of injustice and sin? How do we call for the Church to fight for justice for some in the same breath that we deny justice for others? Such silence and inconsistency is not safe for people who fear G*d.
Indeed: we cannot deny or gloss over our increasing internal political diversity as a Church. Still, can we accept being conquered and ruled by monied powers, by powers willing to cede all human agency to artificial intelligence, by powers unconcerned with the global and planetary impacts of climate change and fracking, by powers unconcerned with the equal and equitable access of all people regardless of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation to employment and other opportunities at all levels of society, by powers that create hurdles for fugitives escaping harmful, violent, and dangerous circumstances of exploitation and insecurity, by perverse contemporary crusaders of Christian nationalism?
The conspiring allies needed to dismantle and defeat oppressive demonarchies now in power in the United States and around the world will not be changing any time soon! These conspiring allies include documented and undocumented Black and brown immigrants; these allies include our family members who have been, are, or will be incarcerated as a direct result of bias and unjust policing; these allies include people who are only alive today because they had access to safe, legal, and affordable abortions; these allies include the unhoused; these allies include quare, queer, bisexual, lesbian, gay, transgender, two-spirit, and intersex people; these allies include people who cannot afford to tithe, much less attend our “solemn assemblies” (Isaiah 1.13-17). The liberation of some is still inextricably bound with the liberation of all!
We cannot dodge this final question because its answer determines our commitment, preparedness, fitness, and capacity to attain and sustain justice in any meaningful way anywhere: Will we preach and live out this “good news” within the AME Church for liberating justice within and without?
