The Trump phenomenon's most telling and distinctive moments – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. During the period of several weeks, the American president began displaying everyone his plans for a gilded ballroom twice the size than the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to build it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of deaths due to his slashing to USAID amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and presently research forecast his energy policies would cause deaths an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No former leader would have attempted – really, no former commander would have conceived – independently wrecking major areas of the executive mansion to build a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of numerous America's wealthiest, almost all of whom maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We went from 'the gentle will obtain the planet' toward 'the humble will perish from cholera'
As confusing as it is to witness the chief executive attempt to overturn the old idea of democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there is one large group among Americans who wouldn't consider it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – within elder demographics a near majority – who were brought up as conventional Protestant believers.
We have observed over the years as politically conservative religious groups converted the Savior we were raised with into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they transformed an image of compassion into a symbol of animosity who approves exactly the harshness that he denounced in scripture; this transformation occurred more slowly, through multiple decades instead of months, yet it remains disturbing through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Jesus that I grew up with, because theoretically the Savior is the core of any Christian faith, and given that the fastest-growing cadre within America might have little sense regarding him because they identify as skeptics or doubters or spiritual independents. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that there are pearls of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is decidedly not the narrative of a mighty king emerging; rather, an infant arrives to homeless parents in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to a different country to avoid secret police. The baby grows up in simple surroundings, a working carpenter; his message concerns compassion for others, particularly for the poor – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and housing. Jesus' answer to aggression is to turn the opposite cheek – not as an act of submissive tolerance, but as a way to educate the aggressor; his method regarding offenses states that when a person pilfers your outer garment you must offer the person your additional clothing as well.
The evident and straightforward truth that Christ from scripture advocates for a type of extreme compassion concentrated on the poor has consistently rendered Christian religion rather a provocative belief system: engaging for the general public, but due to its inherent radicalness needing to be restrained. In the fifties it was controlled via weakening – Protestantism was so dominant that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Battle for the Finest Within Us
Therefore I have felt encouraged to observe the persistent defiance against Trump arise during the previous year. It has been substantial consolation to help build the campaign that has protested openly via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired citizens to turn out in numbers in interim political contests. We will need to maintain it, and in the same spirit, with American flags throughout each rally and requests to the best parts of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the stranger? Did you accept these individuals and embrace them or refuse?
The nation is most protected, to put it differently, by reference to the finest in US heritage, just as Christianity is best defended by reference to what makes it distinctive and magnificent, which is the example of the Savior. In all circumstances does it mean acting as if the most damaging of both America and Christianity never occurred; it represents both meekness and belief, a combination that committed US believers should embrace.
