The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and defining occasions – not its most significant, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. During the period of a few weeks, the American president started showing all observers his designs for an ornate dance hall twice the size compared to the White House and then began solo dismantling the eastern section to erect it.
He has performed deeds countless times more severe – the current estimate of deaths due to his slashing to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and growing, and presently a study predicted his petroleum strategies would cause deaths an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have attempted – truly, no former commander would have contemplated – unilaterally destroying large sections of the White House to build a royal-themed celebration hall, with the active collaboration of numerous the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom have business with the government.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the planet' to 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As confusing as it is to watch the president try to upend the old idea about democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment within America who might not perceive it entirely new. That encompasses people such as ourselves – among senior generations a near majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched across decades as politically conservative religious groups turned the Jesus we grew up with into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they turned a figure of compassion into a figure of hostility who blesses exactly the harshness that he criticized in scripture; this has happened more slowly, across decades instead of months, yet it remains disconcerting in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Savior that I grew up with, because theoretically the Savior is the core within Christian belief, and given that the rapidly expanding group within America could have minimal awareness of him since they are skeptics or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that contain precious wisdom of great price in the Christian story.
It is emphatically not the narrative of an authoritative monarch emerging; instead, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in a garage, who are forced to hastily depart to a foreign land to evade secret police. The child matures in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his teaching concerns compassion for others, especially for the poor – not merely emotional affection, but a concrete one, demonstrated through nourishing and protecting. Christ's response to violence is to offer the other cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a way to instruct the assailant; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever an individual takes your jacket you ought to provide them your pullover as well.
The obvious and direct fact that Christ from scripture advocates for a form of radical love concentrated on the poor is what has always made the Christian faith rather a provocative belief system: attractive to the populace, but due to its intrinsic extremism needing to be restrained. In the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – Protestantism was so dominant that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Highest Among Us
Hence I have become inspired to observe the persistent defiance to Trump arise over the last twelve months. It has served as substantial consolation to assist in constructing the initiative that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired electorate to show up in numbers in interim political contests. We shall require to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags at every demonstration and requests to the best parts within national heritage.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you welcome them and receive them or refuse?
The nation is most protected, to put it differently, by reference to the best in US heritage, just as Christianity is optimally secured by relationship to elements that cause it to be special and magnificent, specifically the model of Jesus. In neither case does it imply acting as if the most negative of both America and religious tradition never occurred; it signifies both humility and conviction, a mixture that genuine US believers should embrace.
