St. Matthew Church, Orange, New Jersey, Set to Present Sizeable Donation to RIP Medical Debt

Jerry Roberts, 1st Episcopal District (with additional info from TAPinto.net)

On Sunday, May 7, 2023, the congregation of St. Matthew African Methodist Episcopal Church, Orange, New Jersey, under the leadership of the Rev. Melvin E. Wilson, presented a check of $15,000.00 to RIP Medical Debt immediately following their 9:00 a.m. Sunday morning worship service. This $15,000 donation will eliminate over $1.5 million in medical debt for residents of New Jersey. Rest in Peace Medical Debt is a national non-profit whose sole purpose is to strengthen marginalized communities by abolishing financially burdensome medical debt. The non-profit uses analytics to pinpoint the medical debt of those most in need: households that earn less than four times the federal poverty level (varies by state and family size) or whose debts are five percent or more of annual income.

When asked what makes this moment so special and significant, the Rev. Wilson, senior pastor, said, “St. Matthew AME Church has always been a congregation that is concerned about the well-being of members of the community, whether we know them personally or not. We consider this effort to be a part of the fulfillment of the Gospel of Matthew 25, where Jesus implores us that being helpful to others is just like being helpful to him. We have been very involved in addressing the needs of the community before, during, and after the pandemic. This donation continues that focus.”

“The St. Matthew family led by the Rev. Melvin Wilson continues to serve the Oranges in action and in deed,” said West Orange Council President Tammy Williams. “This act of kindness goes far beyond the Oranges and eases the burden of medical debt throughout the state of New Jersey. This example should be followed by many and provides a blueprint for how to erase the financial burden the underinsured face today.”

All 929 households across 18 New Jersey counties will see the impact of their medical debt relieved through this donation. As outlined in his remarks, the Rev. Wilson noted that:

35 recipients in Atlantic County totaling $61,340.86

67 recipients in Bergen County totaling $226,192.15

164 recipients in Burlington County totaling $340,603.28

21 recipients in Cape May County totaling $51,215.36

33 recipients in Cumberland County totaling $45,812.85

62 recipients in Glouster County totaling $96,695

74 recipients in Hudson County totaling $79,255.17

14 recipients in Hunterdon County totaling $84,669.84

123 recipients in Mercer County totaling $242,791.67

74 recipients in Middlesex County totaling $105,291.75

58 recipients in Monmouth County totaling $84,245.30

34 recipients in Morris County totaling $74,858.29

61 recipients in Ocean County totaling $80,486.68

29 recipients in Passaic totaling $50,000.53

12 recipients in Salem County totaling $22,470.92

24 recipients in Somerset County totaling $24,497.84

9 recipients in Sussex County totaling $35,039.02

35 recipients in Warren County totaling $23,401.69

“We will see a day when medical debt is non-existent because the system has changed, but until that day, there is St. Matthews standing in the gap,” said Assemblywoman Britnee N. Timberlake. ❏ ❏ ❏

Why Donald Trump’s Indictment Will Matter so Little to Most of His Christian Supporters – White Evangelicals Have Long Abandoned Their “Values Voters” Brand

Robert P. Jones, White Too Long

On April 4, 2023, former President Donald Trump was indicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, stemming from an attempt to cover up the payment of $130,000 of “hush money” to adult film actress Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election. This action marks the first time in American history a former president has been charged with a crime.

One of the most blatant acts of public hypocrisy I’ve witnessed in more than two decades observing conservative white

Christians was their easy discarding of the “values voters” moniker along the road to supporting Trump. This abrupt abandonment of the “values voters” brand was particularly striking, given that its original purpose was to exploit the sexual indiscretions of Bill Clinton as a campaign weapon to be wielded against other democratic candidates.

Jonathan Merritt highlighted the hypocrisy in a 2016 Atlantic article. He quotes Southern Baptist Seminary President Al Mohler making this point explicitly, “If I were to support, much less endorse, Donald Trump for president, I would actually have to go back and apologize to former President Bill Clinton.”

By 2020, Mohler had nonetheless become a public supporter of Trump, even standing by his vote for Trump after the ...continued on p27

January 6 th insurrection. “Based upon the binary choice we faced on November the third, I believe then that that was the right action to take,” Mohler said on his podcast on January 7, 2021. “And going back to November the third, I would do the same thing again.” To my knowledge, Mohler has yet to issue an apology to Bill Clinton.

As we anticipate the potential indictment of a former president, the data suggests that even such an unprecedented event would have little impact on the support for Trump by white evangelical Protestants and other conservative white Christians.

The Unwavering Support of Trump by White Evangelical Protestants

First, we have the testimony of the trends: the unwavering support of Trump by these former “values voters” across Trump’s presidency, despite numerous well-known episodes of lewd, bigoted, and unethical behavior. Check out the chart below.

the counting of state electoral votes to stay in power. The 2020 election becomes the first in U.S. history not marked by a peaceful transition of power. On January 13, 2021, Trump is impeached for a second time. By the fall of 2021, after losing the election, inciting an insurrection, and becoming the first U.S. president in history to be impeached for a second time, his favorability finally dropped among white evangelical Protestants—but only 7 percentage points to 67%.

❖ By the fall of 2022, Trump’s favorability among white evangelical Protestants dips modestly to 63%, but his popularity remains comparable to this same point in his 2016 campaign.

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth

Avenue and shoot somebody….”

At a campaign stop at Sioux Center, Iowa’s Dordt College—an institution whose website assures students that “Everything at Dordt revolves around Jesus Christ”—Trump infamously described his confidence in the unfettered allegiance of his supporters. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” Trump remarked. “It’s, like, incredible.” NPR described the audience that day as “receptive” to his message.

In a series of PRRI surveys across Trump’s presidency, we set out to see just how many Trump supporters would explicitly affirm such an allegiance to the former president. In the fall of 2020, nearly half of Republicans (49%) and white evangelicals (46%) who approved of Trump’s presidency declared there is almost nothing Trump could do to lose their approval. These findings were generally consistent each year throughout Trump’s presidency.

The Abandonment of Even the Pretense of Principle

Now, consider just a few of the public revelations and remarks by Trump that occurred during this period covered by that chart:

❖ Oc tober 7, 2016: The Access Hollywood tape is released. On a hot mic, Trump brags about forcibly kissing and groping women, declaring, “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything…. Grab them by the p---y; you can do anything.” Between September 2016, before the tape was released, and 2017, Trump’s favorability among white evangelical Protestants climbed 12 points, from 61% to 73%.

❖ August 12, 2017: The white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which gathered around a statue of Robert E. Lee that was slated for removal, resulted in the murder of a counter-protester. Trump refused to denounce the white supremacists, declared that there were “very fine people on both sides,” and suggested that it was the counter-protesters who were “very, very violent.” Trump’s favorability among white evangelicals remains at 73%.

❖ January 12, 2018: The Wall Street Journal breaks the story about Trump’s hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, reporting her claim that Trump had an affair with the adult film actress at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006. Trump was just a year into his marriage with Melania and just months into being a new father following the birth of his son Barron. At the time, Daniels was 27, and Trump was 60. Additionally, in April, Trump’s inhumane policy of separating immigrant children, some as young as four, from their families came to light. Trump’s favorability among white evangelicals remains at 73% throughout 2018.

❖ De cember 18, 2019: Trump is impeached for the first time for attempting to get Ukraine to announce an investigation into Joe Biden in exchange for U.S. military and other assistance. Trump’s favorability among white evangelicals remains at 73% throughout 2019 and even inches up to 74% in 2020.

❖ January 6, 2021: Trump incites a violent insurrection designed to thwart

Finally, PRRI polling also documented a stunning wholesale abandonment of even the pretense of a political ethic of principle by white evangelical Protestants and other conservative white Christians. In 2011 and again in 2016, PRRI asked Americans whether “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.”

Across this five-year period, no group shifted their position more dramatically than white evangelical Protestants. In 2011, only 30% of white evangelical Protestants agreed that an elected official can behave ethically even if they have committed transgressions in their personal life, a position one might expect from a group billing itself as “values voters.” But by 2016, with Trump at the top of the Republican ticket, 72% of white evangelicals agreed—a 42-point jump from 2011. These results were largely unchanged the last time PRRI asked this question in 2020.

Trump may yet make history again this week, becoming not only the only president to be impeached twice but the first former president to be indicted. Should he run in 2024, it is likely that such ...continued on p28 a distinction will hurt him in the general election, especially given that he lost the 2020 election by over 7 million votes and his favorability ratings among all Americans are consistently underwater.

But an indictment is unlikely to have a great impact on the white evangelicals and other conservative white Christians who have been

Africa Day Matters!

Rev. Dr. Angelique Walker-Smith his staunchest supporters. To those who have long abandoned their posture as “values voters” and have fully embraced an authoritarian figure they see as the savior and protector of white Christian America, the moral repulsiveness of the crass violation of his marriage vows and the legal evidence of a coverup, even if they are substantiated in a court of law, will likely have little weight. As has been the case since Trump’s

LET BRONZE BE BROUGHT FROM EGYPT; LET CUSH HASTEN TO STRETCH OUT ITS HANDS TO GOD. — PSALM 68:31

In 1993, Dr. Cain Hope Felder, a New Testament scholar of African descent, served as the editor of The Original African Heritage Study Bible: King James Version. The Rev. Dr. Renita Weems, a woman of African descent and a mentee of Dr. Cain Hope Felder, wrote the book Just a Sister Away, in which she focused on women of African descent relative to the Bible. People like Dr. Cain Hope Felder and Rev. Dr. Weems have understood Africa matters in the Bible.

May 25 is Africa Day—or Africa Liberation Day for some. It is a day when we all have another opportunity to take a closer look at the importance of Africa and her diaspora in our lives. The Bible is a good place to start. African leaders, peoples, and places are identified throughout the Bible. Further, many of us are Africans or people of African descent—or live among people of African descent. Do you know your story as it relates to this and your community?

May 25 also invites us to scrutinize the negative narratives and images of Africans and people of emergence as a national political figure in 2015, any excuse to deny the obvious will do. An indictment—particularly by a district attorney who is a black Democrat from Manhattan who Trump has already derided as a politically motivated “racist”—is likely to reconfirm their perception of a world upside down and strengthen their allegiance to Trump. ❏ ❏ ❏

African descent. For example, while it is true that the data does show disproportionate numbers of Africans and people of African descent affected by hunger and poverty, this data often does not show the counter-narrative of faith, resilience, resolve, and financial contributions of Africans and the African diaspora. For example, did you know Africans in the diaspora are Africa’s largest financiers? Remittances from the diaspora to Africa grew from $37 billion in 2010 to $96 billion in 2021.

Further, the largest social movement in the United States was the continuing Black Lives Matter movement, according to the New York Times. Recently the vice president of the United States, the first woman of African descent in this role, visited African nations with priorities on democracy, economic development, and partnership. This, after the African Leaders Summit in December 2022 was hosted by the president of the U.S. Executive orders concerning a way forward with Africa and the African diaspora were signed.

A historic session of the U.N. Permanent Forum of People of African Descent was held in December 2022, when African leaders visited Washington, District of Columbia. The second session is happening this year at the United Nations. Bread for the World invites you to a webinar about this forum on Africa Day, May 25, from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. EST. The theme is Africa Day: Pan-Africanism, Liberation, and Restorative Justice. You can join the meeting on Zoom.

Recently, Bread for the World partnered with the Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Black Church Food Security network for an Earth Day weekend, at which we celebrated the importance of reinvesting in black farmers with the Farm Bill. Learn more about the Farm Bill, which supports Africa and the African diaspora, and how you can help. Angelique Walker-Smith is a senior associate for Pan-African and Orthodox Church engagement at Bread for the World.

AME Treasurer/CFO Receives Honorary Doctorate From Payne Theological Seminary

At the May 12, 2023, commencement of Payne Theological Seminary, African Methodist Episcopal Church Treasurer/Chief Financial Officern Marcus T. Henderson was bestowed the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by the institution.

In his remarks to those assembled, he stated, “…[T]he question I pose to you is simple, one that you will have to ask yourself every day until it becomes your life’s standard. I say standard because goals change, move, and morph. Yet a standard is how you live your life. So here is the haunting question, ‘Are you going to be prophetic or pathetic?’ They both start with ‘P’ and sound a little bit alike, but as you know have vastly different meanings, effect, and delivery.”

Dr. Henderson and his wife Yolanda Mason Henderson also seeded the Henderson Family Endowment at Payne with a $100,000 contribution. ❏ ❏ ❏