The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and distinctive occasions – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but possibly its most revealing – came earlier this autumn. In the course of multiple weeks, the nation's leader began displaying the public his intentions for a lavish reception room twice the size than the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to construct it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of casualties resulting from his reductions to international aid is 600,000 and increasing, and recently an analysis projected his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No former leader would have dared – really, no previous leader would have imagined – unilaterally destroying large sections of the presidential residence to build a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of multiple America's wealthiest, the majority of whom have business with federal agencies.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the world' toward 'the humble will perish from cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the chief executive attempt to overturn the traditional concept regarding democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there exists a significant segment among Americans who wouldn't consider it entirely new. That is those of us – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were brought up as conventional Protestant believers.
We have observed over the years as rightwing evangelical churches transformed the Christ we learned about into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. Fundamentally, they converted a persona of compassion into a figure of hate who endorses precisely the cruelties that he criticized in the Gospel; this has happened more slowly, through multiple decades instead of months, however it is still disconcerting in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
Therefore allow me to outline the Savior that I grew up with, since in theory Jesus is the center of Christian religion, and given that the rapidly expanding group within America may possess limited understanding of him since they are skeptics or doubters or nones. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that exist valuable insights of substantial value in biblical accounts.
It is unquestionably not the account of a mighty king emerging; instead, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to evade undercover officers. The infant develops in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his teaching concerns compassion for other people, specifically for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but tangible care, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Jesus' answer to aggression is to turn the additional cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a means to teach the aggressor; his crime policy states that when an individual takes your jacket you must offer him your sweater also.
The apparent and straightforward reality that the Savior from scripture calls for a type of radical love centered on the needy has perpetually caused Christian religion somewhat of a controversial faith: appealing to the populace, but because of its inherent radicalness demanding to be contained. In the 1950s it was contained via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it basically blessed current circumstances.
A Struggle for the Finest Among Us
So I have been heartened to observe the persistent defiance regarding Trump arise in this past year. It has provided significant comfort to help build the movement that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired voters to turn out in numbers during minor elections. We must have to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags during all protests and appeals to the highest qualities in US history.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the foreigner? Did you receive him and embrace them or not?
America is best defended, in other words, through connection to the best in US heritage, just as Christianity is most protected through connection to elements that cause it to be unique and beautiful, which is the example of Christ. In neither case does it mean feigning the most negative of both America and Christian faith never occurred; it represents both humility and faith, a mixture that serious American Christians should embrace.
