The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and distinctive moments – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of several weeks, the nation's leader started showing everyone his intentions for a gilded ballroom two times larger of the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the East Wing portion to build it.
He has done things 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of deaths from his cuts to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and increasing, and this week an analysis forecast his petroleum strategies would kill 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No former leader would have risked – genuinely, no other president would have conceived – independently wrecking large sections of the executive mansion to build a royal-themed celebration hall, with the direct cooperation of multiple America's wealthiest, the majority of whom maintain dealings with public institutions.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the planet' into 'the humble will perish of cholera'
As confusing as it is to witness the president try to upend the old idea of democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there exists a significant segment among Americans who wouldn't consider it entirely new. That is those of us – within elder demographics close to half – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed throughout the years while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we were raised with into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. Essentially, they turned a figure of love into a figure of hostility who approves precisely the cruelties that he criticized in the Gospel; this has happened at a slower pace, through multiple decades instead of months, yet it remains disconcerting through similar means, a bewildering emotional blow for numerous individuals.
A Harmful Christianity Gains Ground
Hence I shall explain the Christ from my childhood, because theoretically Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and since the rapidly expanding group of Americans could have minimal awareness of him as they consider themselves atheists or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; yet I maintain that there are pearls of great price in the Christian story.
It is emphatically definitely not the story of a powerful ruler appearing; conversely, an infant arrives to displaced parents in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to avoid secret police. The child matures in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his message concerns compassion for others, especially for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but practical compassion, shown by providing food and housing. Jesus' answer to violence is to offer the additional cheek – not as an act of submissive tolerance, but as a means to teach the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing states that when someone steals your outer garment you must offer the person your additional clothing too.
The evident and direct fact that the Savior in biblical accounts advocates for a kind of radical love centered on the poor is what has always made Christian religion something of a controversial faith: attractive to the masses, but owing to its inherent radicalness demanding to be restrained. In the 1950s it was contained by dilution – Protestantism was so dominant that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Conflict for the Highest Among Us
So I have been inspired to witness the determined opposition regarding Trump arise during the previous year. It has been significant comfort to help build the movement that has taken to the streets through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated electorate to show up in large quantities during minor elections. We must have to continue it, and with identical determination, with American flags throughout each rally and requests to the finest aspects of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and embrace them or not?
The nation is most protected, in other words, by reference to the finest within national tradition, similar to Christianity is optimally secured by relationship to that which renders it distinctive and wonderful, which is the example of the Savior. In both situations does it imply acting as if the worst about the nation and religious tradition was nonexistent; it means both humility and belief, a combination that committed American Christians should be comfortable with.
