The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and characteristic instances – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – came earlier this autumn. Over the span of several weeks, the nation's leader started showing the public his intentions for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions of the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the East Wing to construct it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of casualties due to his slashing to USAID is 600,000 and rising, and presently a study projected his fossil fuel policies would kill another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No former leader would have dared – really, no other president would have conceived – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the presidential residence to construct a royal-themed celebration hall, with the direct cooperation of numerous the richest Americans, nearly all of which maintain dealings with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the humble will receive the Earth' into 'the meek shall die of cholera'
As disorienting as it is to witness the president 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 completely novel. This includes individuals like us – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed over the years while conservative evangelical congregations converted the Savior we grew up with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they converted a persona of affection into a figure of animosity who approves precisely the cruelties that he denounced in the Gospel; this has happened at a slower pace, across decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless disturbing via comparable methods, 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 the Savior is the core of any Christian faith, and since the quickly increasing segment among Americans could have minimal awareness regarding him as they consider themselves non-believers or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with different religions; but I do think that contain precious wisdom of great price in the Christian story.
It is emphatically absolutely not the narrative of a mighty king appearing; conversely, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a garage, who must quickly flee to a different country to evade covert authorities. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine is about love for fellow humans, specifically for the poor – not merely emotional affection, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and protecting. Christ's response to violence is to present the opposite cheek – not as an act of submissive tolerance, but as a method to teach the aggressor; his crime policy indicates that whenever a person pilfers your coat you should give him your sweater also.
The obvious and straightforward truth that the Savior from scripture requests a form of extreme compassion centered on the needy has consistently rendered Christianity rather a controversial faith: engaging for the general public, but because of its intrinsic extremism demanding to be controlled. During the 1950s it was restrained through watering down – Protestantism was so widespread that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Battle for the Highest Among Us
Hence I have become encouraged to observe the steadfast resistance against Trump develop over the last twelve months. It has provided great solace to assist in constructing the campaign that has demonstrated publicly via continuous gatherings, and appears to have motivated citizens to participate in numbers in the off-year elections. We shall require to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags at every demonstration and appeals to the finest aspects of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the immigrant? Did you receive him and embrace them or not?
The nation is most protected, in other words, by relationship to the best within national tradition, similar to Christianity is best defended through connection to what makes it unique and wonderful, specifically the model of Christ. In neither case does it suggest pretending the worst about the nation and religious tradition never occurred; it means both modesty and conviction, a combination that serious national faithful ought to accept.
