In targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the federal government, President Donald Trump has seemingly begun to roll back decades of civil rights progress under the belief that DEI discriminates against white people.   By Dorothy Boulware To paraphrase the American philosopher Thomas Paine, these are times that try the souls of Black America. A big reason is the return of President Donald Trump, and his push to erase the hard-won gains of the Civil Rights Movement. He fired tens of thousands of federal employees, shut down the Justice Department’s civil rights investigations, wants to close the Department of Education, including its office of civil rights enforcement, and is auditing colleges that study race. He fired the Black general who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, erased the stories of Black military heroes buried in Arlington National Cemetery, and pardoned two Washington, D.C., police officers serving time for killing a Black man in a car chase and trying to cover it up. That’s just for starters. LEARN MORE: Faith Leaders Stand on Business to Protect Undocumented Folks  With Congress unwilling or unable to stop him, and a Supreme Court conservative supermajority that seems just as hostile to Civil Rights as Trump, even regular churchgoers are asking how to maintain faith — and hope — in such troubling times.   Feeling Overwhelmed The answer, according to several faith leaders, is to rely on Christianity, as well as history, for examples of resilience; stay informed while carefully moderating news intake; and use moments of action, no matter how small, as an antidote for hopelessness. Bishop Paula E. Clark, the first Black person and first woman to become presiding prelate for the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, looks to history for perspective. Her mantra: “We’ve got this, and we always have.”  “We’ve got this, and we always have.”  Bishop paula E. clark, ePISCOPAL DIOCESE OF CHICAGO Since Africans were shipped to this strange land and forced to work as chattel slaves, Black people have always had to fight for survival, Clark says. Even after emancipation, she says, nothing has come easy — from the battle against Jim Crow to the push for acknowledgement that the country was built on the very backs of Black people. And we’ve never fought alone. ”We’ve got this for ourselves and we’ve got it for other people too,” she says. “We’ve always helped our families, our friends, and anyone else who needed help. It’s just who we are as a people, and definitely as a people of faith.” Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, president of Sojourners, a Christian social justice nonprofit, wrote in the organization’s namesake magazine in February that creating the feeling of being overwhelmed is a “core feature,” not a glitch, of Trump’s governing plan. The administration’s goal, he wrote, is to foment a sense of hopelessness to dampen pushback and paralyze potential resistance.  “We know that authoritarian movements of the past and present thrive on people feeling despair,” he wrote. The key, Taylor says, is remembering to transform despair and frustration into action: sign a petition, call a congressional office, or donate to a political cause. Finding Hope in History Dr. Harold A. Carter Jr., senior pastor of New Shiloh Baptist Church in Baltimore, also looks to the past, and the Gospel, to find hope in the present.  “I would certainly begin by referencing the Apostle Paul that without hope, we of all people are most miserable,” he says. “So hope is essential.” For Black Americans in particular, “hope is what has carried us — having been brought here against our will,” he says. After four centuries of bondage, he says, hope “has been our main source that there is a bright side somewhere, that there is a tomorrow and that there is possibility, that there is freedom, that there is liberty.”  At the same time, ”God sends, in many ways, his love through adversity and through affliction; actually, Isaiah 30:20 calls it ‘the bread of adversity and the water of affliction,’” he says. “So sometimes God loves us by chastening us like a parent might have done.” As the intensity of the Trump administration’s actions ratchets up — “it just keeps spiraling out of control,” Carter says — self-reflection can be helpful.  RELATED: Prayer — and Protests — on Ash Wednesday “We might also want to revisit Chronicles 7:14 and look at what might be our downfalls in various areas of our lives: ’If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land,’” he says.  Nourish the Spirit Taylor, the Sojourners director, agrees that “spiritual sustenance” shouldn’t be an afterthought in difficult times. He says he personally is committed to balancing news consumption with prayer, meditation, breathing exercises, and participating in a 40-day fast.  At the same time, “we are not powerless: Through signing petitions, making phone calls, conducting district visits, writing op-eds, and more, you can apply direct pressure on Congress,” Taylor says. “Right now, we have significant power to block harmful legislation” because Republican vote margins in both chambers of Congress are so thin.  Though it can feel hopeless, “the Trump administration is all but certain to falter due to many of its own divisions and excesses, including a feuding [GOP] coalition that includes Christian nationalists, ultra-conservatives, tech billionaires, and white nationalists,” he wrote. “As these failures become evident, I hope it will cause more and more people to hunger for justice and thirst for righteousness.” The post Under Trump 2.0, it’s Hard — But Not Impossible — to Find Hope appeared first on Atlanta Daily World. ...read more read less