To the Editor:

Re “Evangelicals Closing Ranks With President” (front page, Dec. 21), about reaction to a Christianity Today editorial calling for President Trump’s removal:

When I was a child, the parable about George Washington confessing to cutting down the cherry tree left several questions floating around in my head, but the message was clear — telling the truth is a fundamental virtue exemplified by the first president of our great country.

Our current president provides a shocking contrast and shameful example to Americans of all ages. He repeatedly, publicly and unapologetically violates nearly all the moral precepts fundamental to every religious community in our country. Yet until the clear and bold statement from an important portion of the evangelical Christian community, most of our religious leaders have been silent while the president disregards and undermines core values they spend their lives professing.

I helped organize and worked closely with Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders in the United States, Israel and the Palestinian Authority with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I deeply respect their faith, appreciate the organizational constraints within which they exercise leadership and have applauded their courageous public statements. But their remarkable silence in the face of the president’s abject immorality is an abdication of their leadership responsibility, and undermines the credibility of the faith communities to which they have dedicated their lives.

Does it take the fresh eyes and innocence of a child to say, “The emperor has no clothes”?

Bruce E. Wexler

New Haven

The writer, a professor of psychiatry at Yale, served as convener of the National Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East.