Attempting to assassinate a political candidate is a violation of our fundamental moral and democratic principles.
Period.
End of story.
It is also abhorrent to use political violence as a means to convince people of God’s power and favoritism. Asserting that a supernatural God intervened to save a 78-year-old presidential candidate at a rally leaves us to wonder where that same God was when children were wailing as they were hunted down in classroom after classroom during the last two decades of mass shooting events.
And where was that same God when a bullet missed Donald J. Trump but another hit and killed an innocent bystander?
I’m a rabbi. I pray regularly and religion is the animating force in my life. But this kind of pediatric theology is manipulative. Attempting to garner votes based on a false narrative that frames God as a power that chooses to save some people while letting others die is spiritually abusive.
God did not intervene to save Donald Trump. The former president was simply lucky.
As a religiously grounded person, I believe in a God who created a beautiful, deeply flawed, ever-evolving world — a God who, with love and empathy, expects us to navigate our own existence.
This means accidents happen. And disease happens. And just as people are sometimes cruel and make terrible choices, people are often breathtakingly loving and brave. There is evil and darkness, and there is also incredible goodness and light. Each of us has the choice of how we will speak, lead, respond, and act every single day. That’s the reality of the human condition.
Using a terrible act of political violence to hypnotize Americans into believing that Trump is a messianic figure “saved by God” is not only delusional — it’s also profoundly dangerous.
We need to take back religion here in America and prevent the far-right from manipulating citizens into believing that God saved their candidate and is rooting for their political party and their social agenda. We must not let America slide further down the slippery slope toward a dangerous nexus of Christian Nationalism and political power.
Rabbi Rachel Kobrin moved to Denver in 2018 to become the spiritual leader of Congregation Rodef Shalom.
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