The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and characteristic moments – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most dangerous, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. During the period of multiple weeks, the US president started showing all observers his intentions for a lavish reception room two times larger compared to the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the East Wing to construct it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the present calculation of deaths resulting from his reductions to USAID is 600,000 and growing, and recently an analysis predicted his fossil fuel policies would kill 1.3 million more. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have risked – truly, no former commander would have contemplated – solo demolishing significant portions of the White House in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of numerous the richest Americans, nearly all of which have business with federal agencies.
We transitioned from 'the gentle will obtain the world' toward 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As confusing as it is to watch the president attempt to overturn the traditional concept of democracy and replace it with its polar opposite, there remains a substantial portion of Americans who should not find it entirely new. This includes individuals like us – within elder demographics close to half – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed over the years as politically conservative religious groups turned the Jesus we grew up with into the total contrary of our perception of his character. Essentially, they transformed an image of affection into a figure of hostility who blesses specifically the brutality that he denounced in the Gospel; this change developed at a slower pace, through multiple decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless disturbing in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Savior from my childhood, because theoretically the Savior is the core within Christian belief, and since the fastest-growing cadre within America may possess limited understanding about him because they identify as non-believers or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that exist valuable insights of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is emphatically definitely not the story of a powerful ruler emerging; conversely, a baby is born to displaced parents in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to evade secret police. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his doctrine is about love for fellow humans, especially for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but tangible care, demonstrated through nourishing and protecting. Christ's response to violence is to offer the opposite cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a method to educate the aggressor; his method regarding offenses states that when a person pilfers your jacket you ought to provide him your sweater too.
The evident and clear truth that the Jesus from scripture calls for a form of extreme compassion concentrated on the poor is what has always made Christian religion rather a controversial faith: engaging for the masses, but owing to its natural unconventionality requiring to be controlled. During the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – Protestantism was so dominant that it basically baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Highest Within Us
So I have been heartened to see the steadfast resistance against Trump arise in this past year. It has provided significant comfort to help build the campaign that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and likely has encouraged citizens to turn out in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We must have to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags at every demonstration and calls to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the stranger? Did you receive him and embrace them or not?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by reference to the best within national tradition, just as Christianity is most protected through connection to elements that cause it to be special and beautiful, particularly the pattern of Christ. In neither case does it suggest pretending the most negative about the nation and Christianity never occurred; it means both modesty and conviction, a mixture that serious American Christians should embrace.
