The Trump phenomenon's most telling and distinctive moments – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. Over the span of several weeks, the US president began displaying everyone his intentions for a gilded ballroom twice the size than the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the East Wing portion to build it.
He has performed deeds countless times more severe – the current estimate of deaths due to his slashing to USAID stands at 600,000 and growing, and recently research forecast his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths 1.3 million more. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have attempted – genuinely, no former commander would have contemplated – independently wrecking significant portions of the executive mansion to build a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of some of America's wealthiest, nearly all of which conduct transactions with the government.
We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the planet' toward 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to observe the chief executive attempt to overturn the old idea about democracy and substitute it with its polar opposite, there is one large group among Americans who wouldn't consider it entirely new. That is those of us – within elder demographics almost a majority – who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched throughout the years while conservative evangelical congregations converted the Savior we learned about into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they turned a figure of affection into a symbol of hostility who endorses precisely the cruelties that he denounced in the Gospel; this has happened more slowly, across decades as opposed to months, yet it remains disconcerting in the same ways, a confusing personal impact for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Establishes Itself
Hence I shall explain the Christ from my childhood, because theoretically Jesus is the center of Christian religion, and because the quickly increasing segment among Americans may possess limited understanding about him since they are non-believers or agnostics or spiritual independents. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with any other faith; however I believe that contain precious wisdom of significant worth within Christian narrative.
It is decidedly not the narrative of a mighty king appearing; instead, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in a storage space, who must quickly flee to a different country to escape covert authorities. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine focuses on affection for others, specifically for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, shown by providing food and sheltering. Christ's response to violence is to offer the other cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a method to educate the attacker; his crime policy indicates that whenever someone steals your jacket you ought to provide them your pullover also.
The apparent and direct reality that the Jesus in biblical accounts advocates for a kind of extreme compassion focused on the needy has consistently rendered the Christian faith rather a provocative belief system: attractive to the masses, but due to its inherent radicalness demanding to be restrained. During the 1950s it was restrained via weakening – Protestantism was so dominant that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Highest of Us
So I have been inspired to witness the determined opposition regarding Trump develop over the last twelve months. It has served as substantial consolation to help build the movement that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and seems to have inspired electorate to show up in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We will need to persist with it, and with identical determination, displaying national flags during all protests and requests to the highest qualities of American history.
We're going to be asked ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you receive him and welcome him or reject?
America is best defended, essentially, by relationship to the best within national tradition, just as Christianity is best defended by reference to that which renders it unique and magnificent, specifically the model of Christ. In all circumstances does it suggest acting as if the worst of both America and Christianity never occurred; it means both humility and belief, a mixture that serious American Christians ought to accept.
