The Trump movement's most revealing and distinctive moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating – came earlier this autumn. During the period of a few weeks, the US president started showing everyone his designs for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions compared to the White House and then commenced solo dismantling the East Wing to build it.
He has done things countless times more severe – the present calculation of casualties from his cuts to international aid stands at 600,000 and rising, and recently an analysis predicted his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have dared – truly, no former commander would have contemplated – unilaterally destroying major areas of the White House to build a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the enthusiastic participation of multiple the richest Americans, nearly all of which have business with federal agencies.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the planet' into 'the humble will perish of cholera'
As confusing as it is to watch the president attempt to overturn the established notion about democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment within America who wouldn't consider it completely novel. That is those of us – within elder demographics a near majority – who were brought up as conventional Protestant believers.
We have watched throughout the years while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we learned about into exactly the opposite of our perception of his character. Essentially, they transformed an image of love into a symbol of hate who endorses specifically the brutality that he criticized in the Gospel; this has happened at a slower pace, across decades rather than months, yet it remains disturbing through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Christ from my childhood, since in theory the Savior is the core of Christian religion, and because the rapidly expanding group within America may possess limited understanding of him since they are atheists or uncertain individuals or nones. I raise no objection with these different approaches, nor with different religions; yet I maintain that contain precious wisdom of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically absolutely not the narrative of a mighty king emerging; conversely, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in an automotive shelter, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to evade covert authorities. The infant develops in simple surroundings, a laboring woodworker; his message is about love for fellow humans, specifically for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, shown by providing food and protecting. Christ's response to aggression is to turn the other cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a means to instruct the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing states that when someone steals your jacket you should give him your sweater too.
The obvious and straightforward reality that the Jesus in biblical accounts advocates for a kind of extreme compassion focused on the impoverished has consistently rendered the Christian faith something of a scandalous religion: engaging for the masses, but because of its inherent radicalness demanding to be contained. During the 1950s it was controlled via weakening – Protestantism was so dominant that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Best of Us
So I have been encouraged to witness the persistent defiance against Trump arise over the last twelve months. It has served as great solace to assist in constructing the campaign that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired citizens to participate in numbers in interim political contests. We shall require to continue it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags throughout each rally and calls to the highest qualities of American history.
We're going to be asked ... regarding how you welcomed the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and embrace them or reject?
The nation is most protected, to put it differently, through connection to the highest about American history, just as Christianity is optimally secured by reference to elements that cause it to be distinctive and magnificent, specifically the model of the Savior. In both situations does it mean feigning the worst of both America and Christianity never occurred; it represents both humility and conviction, a mixture that serious American Christians ought to accept.
