The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and characteristic instances – not its most crucial, nor most harsh, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. In the course of multiple weeks, the nation's leader began displaying the public his plans for an ornate dance hall twice the size of the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to erect it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of fatalities resulting from his reductions to foreign assistance is 600,000 and rising, and recently research projected his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No former leader would have dared – really, no other president would have conceived – independently wrecking large sections of the White House to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of some of the nation's most affluent, nearly all of which have business with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' toward 'the gentle will succumb from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the president attempt to overturn the traditional concept regarding democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there exists a significant segment of Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – among senior generations close to half – who were educated as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we were raised with into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they converted a persona of affection into a figure of hate who blesses specifically the brutality that he denounced in the Gospel; this has happened more slowly, across decades as opposed to months, but it is nonetheless disturbing via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Jesus from my upbringing, as conceptually Christ is the focus within Christian belief, and given that the fastest-growing cadre among Americans might have little sense of him because they identify as non-believers or agnostics or spiritual independents. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that contain precious wisdom of substantial value in biblical accounts.
It is emphatically not the account of a mighty king emerging; instead, a baby is born to homeless parents in a storage space, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to escape covert authorities. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his teaching is about love for other people, specifically for the poor – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, shown by providing food and sheltering. Jesus' answer to aggression is to turn the additional cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a method to educate the aggressor; his crime policy indicates that whenever an individual takes your coat you ought to provide them your pullover too.
The apparent and direct reality that the Savior from scripture requests a kind of profound affection focused on the poor has perpetually caused the Christian faith somewhat of a controversial faith: engaging for the masses, but owing to its inherent radicalness requiring to be contained. In the fifties it was restrained by dilution – The Protestant faith was so prevalent that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Battle for the Highest of Us
So I have been inspired to see the determined opposition regarding Trump emerge during the previous year. It has served as substantial consolation to assist in constructing the initiative that has protested openly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated electorate to turn out in large quantities in the off-year elections. We shall require to continue it, and in the same spirit, displaying national flags at every demonstration and calls to the highest qualities of American history.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you welcome them and embrace them or not?
America is best defended, to put it differently, through connection to the best in US heritage, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured through connection to what makes it special and magnificent, particularly the pattern of Jesus. In all circumstances does it suggest pretending the worst regarding America and Christian faith did not happen; it signifies both modesty and belief, a mixture that committed US believers should be comfortable with.
