The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and distinctive instances – not its most significant, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but possibly its most revealing – came earlier this autumn. Over the span of multiple weeks, the US president commenced revealing everyone his designs for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions compared to the White House and then began solo dismantling the East Wing to erect it.
He has done things countless times more severe – the present calculation of casualties from his cuts to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and increasing, and presently research forecast his energy policies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No former leader would have risked – genuinely, no other president would have conceived – independently wrecking significant portions of the executive mansion to build a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of numerous the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom maintain dealings with the government.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the planet' toward 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As confusing as it is to witness the president attempt to overturn the established notion regarding democracy and substitute it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment of Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – in older age cohorts close to half – who were educated as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have observed across decades as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we were raised with into the complete reverse of our perception of his character. Essentially, they turned a figure of compassion into a symbol of animosity who blesses precisely the cruelties that he criticized in the Gospel; this transformation occurred more slowly, over decades rather than months, however it is still unsettling through similar means, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Jesus that I grew up with, since in theory Christ is the focus within Christian belief, and because the rapidly expanding group of Americans could have minimal awareness of him as they consider themselves non-believers or uncertain individuals or spiritual independents. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with different religions; but I do think that contain precious wisdom of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably absolutely not the account of a powerful ruler arising; rather, a baby is born to parents without shelter in an automotive shelter, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to escape secret police. The infant develops in simple surroundings, a working carpenter; his message is about love for fellow humans, specifically for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and sheltering. Christ's response to hostility is to offer the other cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a method to educate the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing is that if a person pilfers your outer garment you ought to provide them your pullover as well.
The apparent and straightforward reality that Christ in biblical accounts calls for a kind of radical love concentrated on the poor has consistently rendered Christianity rather a scandalous religion: appealing to the masses, but because of its inherent radicalness requiring to be contained. In the fifties it was contained via weakening – Protestantism was so prevalent that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Conflict for the Finest Within Us
So I have been encouraged to see the persistent defiance to Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has been great solace to help build the movement that has protested openly in rally after rally, and seems to have inspired electorate to turn out in large quantities during minor elections. We must have to maintain it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and appeals to the finest aspects in US history.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you welcome them and receive them or refuse?
America is best defended, in other words, by reference to the best in US heritage, similar to Christianity is most protected by relationship to what makes it special and beautiful, specifically the model of Jesus. In neither case does it mean acting as if the worst of both America and Christianity was nonexistent; it represents both meekness and conviction, a combination that serious US believers ought to accept.
