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In the 1946, the German pastor Martin Niemoller wrote a poem about the importance of speaking out against authoritarians like Adolph Hitler.

Like most German pastors, Niemoller was a member of the German Evangelical Church which supported Hitler and his nationalist and racist projects.  There was virtually no public opposition to antisemitism or any readiness by church leaders to publicly oppose the regime on the issues of antisemitism and state-sanctioned violence.

In addition, most Evangelical Church leaders, including Niemoller, wanted to avoid any conflict with the regime.

Niemoller welcomed Hitler’s rise to power in the early 1930s. believing that Hitler would make Germany “great again” after its economic and social decline in the wake of World War I. He hailed Hitler for beginning what he called “a national revival”.

Niemoller didn’t speak out on behalf of Hitler’s “enemies” until he, personally, became one. Only then did he join other Lutheran pastors and churchmen, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth, in founding the Confessing Church, which opposed the capitulation of the German Church to Hitler’s demands.

After the war, Niemoller expressed regret for not speaking sooner on behalf of Hitler’s victims:

            First they came for the Communists.
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist.

            Then they came for the Socialists.
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist.

            Then they came for the trade unionists.
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist.

            Then they came for the Jews.
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew.

            Then they came for me.
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.

The Trump administration is currently involved in the arrest and deportation of immigrants to Central American prisons without due process of law and against a federal judge’s orders. In the past, Trump has ridiculed the physically handicapped, women, homosexuals, the press, political opponents and the homeless.

While most Americans remain silent. Even, for the most part, the American Church, whose white conservative branch of Christian Nationalists support his efforts with enthusiasm.

It is time for those of us who care about those especially loved by God, those referred to by Jesus as “the least”, to join with them and speak out against the illegal and unchristian way the Trump administration is treating them. To stand in solidarity with them and join our voices with theirs to demand justice and compassion.

It is time to speak out against the purging of programs that support ill and hungry children, the equality of races and genders, and traditional American civil rights.

Last week, I received this updated version of Niemoller’s poem from a friend:

               First they came for the immigrants, and I did not speak out

               because I was not an immigrant.

               Then they came for transgender people, and I did not speak out

               because I was not transgender.

               Then they came for the civil servants, and I did not speak out

               because I was not a civil servant.

               Then they came for the Palestinians, and I did not speak out

               because I was not a Palestinian.

               Then they came for the journalists, and I did not speak out

               Because I was not a journalist.

               Then they came for me,

               and there was no one left to speak for me.

                                              Marshall Davis, Baptist Pastor

In 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine was one of the few politicians in the country to oppose the lies and defamations of her fellow senator Joe McCarthy.

On June 1, 1950, she became the first Senator to publically criticize McCarthy in a speech on the Senate floor. She concluded the speech with a warning to her Republican colleagues: “It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”

Silence is complicity.

To protect our rights as an American and, if it be so, as a Christian, speak out now, before it’s too late.

Polk Culpepper is a retired Episcopal priest, former lawyer and a Washington resident.