I was horrified by your story on the evangelical pastors praying with Trump (“Conservative Evangelicals Revel in ‘Unprecedented’ Access to President,” World & Faith, July 31). I cannot believe you would print that without equal time to rebuttal by equally evangelical people appalled at this act.

Those other evangelicals are calling out Trump and his empire of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell for efforts to drop millions from health care. As William Barber has said, “How can they be praying for a president and the leadership he represents, when they p-r-e-y on the most vulnerable of society?”

We who profess to be Mennonite should be troubled. Surely we hear the Old Testament prophets thunder in our ears as they cry against depriving the poor even of the sandals for their feet.

The Bible says little about the “culture war” issues of abortion, prayer in schools or same-sex marriage. But to hear about so-called persecution, you would think hundreds of scriptures were being violated as tenets of the so-called evangelical right. It is the other way around. Hundreds of scriptures deal with how people should treat the “least of these.” Biblical admonitions of the prophets and the teachings of Jesus should extend to the political debate over who gets health care.

In these turbulent times, now is not the moment to be laying hands on the president but challenging him to do the right thing in the eyes of God. To be in appeasement is to join the prophets and priests of Baal and Jezebel in the Old Testament. They said and did what empire wanted.

What transpired was an act of travesty in the Oval Office by these evangelical priests of empire. It was not from the Word of God nor from the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Donovan G. Unruh
Chippewa Falls, Wis.