The Trump movement's most telling and characteristic instances – not its most significant, nor most harsh, nor most dangerous, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. During the period of multiple weeks, the nation's leader started showing the public his designs for an ornate dance hall twice the size of the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the eastern section to erect it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of casualties from his cuts to international aid amounts to 600,000 and growing, and presently research projected his energy policies would kill 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have attempted – really, no former commander would have conceived – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the presidential residence in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of multiple America's wealthiest, almost all of whom have business with federal agencies.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the Earth' toward 'the gentle will succumb of cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the leader attempt to overturn the traditional concept about democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there exists a significant segment among Americans who should not find it entirely new. This includes individuals like us – within elder demographics close to half – who were raised as conventional Protestant believers.
We have witnessed throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we learned about into the total contrary of our understanding of him. Essentially, they converted a persona of compassion into a symbol of hostility who approves precisely the cruelties that he denounced in scripture; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, through multiple decades as opposed to months, but it is nonetheless unsettling in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.
A Harmful Christianity Establishes Itself
Therefore allow me to outline the Savior that I grew up with, because theoretically Christ is the focus of Christian religion, and since the fastest-growing cadre within America could have minimal awareness of him because they identify as skeptics or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; but I do think that contain precious wisdom of great price in the Christian story.
It is decidedly definitely not the account of an authoritative monarch appearing; instead, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in a storage space, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to evade undercover officers. The infant develops in simple surroundings, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine focuses on affection for fellow humans, particularly for the poor – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and housing. Jesus' answer to hostility is to present the additional cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a method to instruct the assailant; his crime policy states that when someone steals your outer garment you ought to provide the person your additional clothing too.
The evident and clear truth that the Jesus in biblical accounts requests a kind of radical love concentrated on the poor has perpetually caused the Christian faith something of a scandalous religion: appealing to the masses, but due to its intrinsic extremism needing to be controlled. In the 1950s it was contained by dilution – Protestantism was so prevalent that it basically sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Finest Among Us
So I have been inspired to observe the determined opposition to Trump arise during the previous year. It has been great solace to assist in constructing the campaign that has taken to the streets in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated citizens to show up in significant amounts in interim political contests. We must have to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, displaying national flags during all protests and appeals to the finest aspects in US history.
We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the stranger? Did you receive him and embrace them or reject?
The nation is most protected, essentially, by reference to the best in US heritage, just as Christianity is best defended through connection to what makes it special and beautiful, specifically the model of Jesus. In neither case does it mean pretending the most negative about the nation and religious tradition did not happen; it represents both modesty and faith, a combination that committed national faithful should be comfortable with.
