The Trump phenomenon's most telling and characteristic moments – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most dangerous, nor most senseless, but possibly its most revealing – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of multiple weeks, the nation's leader began displaying the public his plans for a gilded ballroom two times larger than the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the East Wing portion to build it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the existing assessment of deaths resulting from his reductions to foreign assistance amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and presently research predicted his petroleum strategies would kill 1.3 million more. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have dared – truly, no previous leader would have imagined – unilaterally destroying large sections of the presidential residence in order to erect a royal-themed celebration hall, with the direct cooperation of multiple the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom conduct transactions with the government.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the world' toward 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As bewildering as it is to witness the president attempt to overturn the traditional concept of democracy and exchange it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion of Americans who wouldn't consider it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts close to half – who were brought up as conventional Protestant believers.
We have observed over the years while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we learned about into the total contrary of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of compassion into a figure of animosity who endorses precisely the cruelties that he condemned in scripture; this has happened at a slower pace, over decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disturbing in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Jesus from my childhood, as conceptually Jesus is the center of Christian religion, and given that the quickly increasing segment within America may possess limited understanding of him as they consider themselves atheists or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that there are pearls of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is decidedly definitely not the account of a mighty king appearing; instead, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to a different country to evade secret police. The child matures in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his doctrine focuses on affection for fellow humans, specifically for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Jesus' answer to hostility is to offer the additional cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a method to teach the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever a person pilfers your coat you should give them your pullover also.
The obvious and clear reality that the Savior in biblical accounts advocates for a form of profound affection centered on the impoverished is what has always made the Christian faith rather a provocative belief system: attractive to the general public, but due to its inherent radicalness requiring to be restrained. During the 1950s it was contained by dilution – Protestantism was so widespread that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Best Within Us
So I have been encouraged to observe the determined opposition regarding Trump arise over the last twelve months. It has provided substantial consolation to help build the movement that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired voters to show up in large quantities during minor elections. We must have to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, featuring US banners throughout each rally and appeals to the highest qualities of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and welcome him or not?
The country is optimally secured, to put it differently, by relationship to the best about American history, just as Christianity is best defended by relationship to what makes it special and wonderful, particularly the pattern of Christ. In neither case does it suggest feigning the worst regarding America and Christianity did not happen; it represents both modesty and belief, a combination that genuine US believers should embrace.
