The Trump movement's most telling and characteristic instances – not its most crucial, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. In the course of a few weeks, the US president commenced revealing the public his designs for a lavish reception room two times larger compared to the White House and then began solo dismantling the East Wing to build it.
He has performed deeds countless times more severe – the existing assessment of fatalities due to his slashing to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and increasing, and recently research projected his fossil fuel policies would kill an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No former leader would have attempted – genuinely, no other president would have conceived – independently wrecking large sections of the presidential residence to build a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of numerous the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom conduct transactions with federal agencies.
We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' to 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the chief executive attempt to overturn the old idea about democracy and exchange it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion within America who might not perceive it entirely new. This includes individuals like us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were educated within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed over the years while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we learned about into exactly the opposite of our perception of his character. Essentially, they transformed an image of compassion into a symbol of animosity who blesses exactly the harshness that he condemned in the Gospel; this transformation occurred more slowly, over decades rather than months, however it is still disconcerting in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Savior from my upbringing, since in theory Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and because the quickly increasing segment among Americans could have minimal awareness regarding him because they identify as atheists or agnostics or nones. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that exist valuable insights of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically not the account of a powerful ruler appearing; conversely, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in a storage space, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to evade secret police. The child matures in simple surroundings, a working carpenter; his doctrine is about love for other people, particularly for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but a concrete one, demonstrated through nourishing and housing. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to present the additional cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a way to teach the assailant; his crime policy indicates that whenever someone steals your outer garment you should give him your sweater too.
The evident and straightforward reality that the Savior of the gospels advocates for a kind of extreme compassion focused on the poor is what has always made Christianity something of a provocative belief system: attractive to the masses, but owing to its natural unconventionality needing to be contained. During the 1950s it was contained via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so prevalent that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Best of Us
Therefore I have felt encouraged to see the determined opposition against Trump arise in this past year. It has provided significant comfort to help build the movement that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and likely has encouraged electorate to participate in numbers in the off-year elections. We must have to persist with it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and calls to the best parts of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and welcome him or not?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by reference to the finest in US heritage, exactly as the Christian faith is most protected through connection to elements that cause it to be special and wonderful, which is the example of Christ. In neither case does it mean pretending the most damaging of both America and Christianity was nonexistent; it represents both humility and conviction, a blend that genuine American Christians should be comfortable with.
