The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and characteristic instances – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but perhaps its most illuminating – came earlier this autumn. In the course of a few weeks, the US president started showing the public his plans for a gilded ballroom twice the size of the White House and then commenced unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to build it.
He has done things 10,000 times as bad – the existing assessment of casualties resulting from his reductions to USAID is 600,000 and increasing, and this week an analysis predicted his energy policies would result in fatalities another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have risked – truly, no previous leader would have imagined – solo demolishing major areas of the executive mansion to build a royal-themed celebration hall, with the direct cooperation of some of the richest Americans, the majority of whom conduct transactions with the government.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' into 'the humble will perish of cholera'
As bewildering as it is to witness the president attempt to overturn the established notion about democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there remains a substantial portion of Americans who might not perceive it entirely new. That encompasses people such as ourselves – among senior generations close to half – who were educated within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed throughout the years while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we learned about into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they transformed an image of love into a symbol of hostility who approves precisely the cruelties that he criticized in biblical teachings; this transformation occurred more gradually, over decades as opposed to months, but it is nonetheless unsettling in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Jesus from my childhood, because theoretically Christ is the focus within Christian belief, and given that the fastest-growing cadre within America may possess limited understanding about him since they are non-believers or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that there are pearls of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably absolutely not the story of a powerful ruler arising; rather, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in an automotive shelter, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to evade covert authorities. The child matures in simple surroundings, a laboring woodworker; his message focuses on affection for other people, specifically for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, shown by providing food and protecting. Jesus' answer to hostility is to turn the opposite cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a way to teach the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing states that when a person pilfers your jacket you ought to provide him your sweater too.
The obvious and straightforward reality that the Savior from scripture calls for a type of profound affection focused on the needy has consistently rendered Christian religion somewhat of a controversial faith: attractive to the populace, but due to its natural unconventionality requiring to be controlled. During the 1950s it was controlled by dilution – Protestantism was so widespread that it basically baptized the status quo.
A Conflict for the Best of Us
Therefore I have felt heartened to witness the determined opposition regarding Trump develop over the last twelve months. It has been substantial consolation to assist in constructing the campaign that has taken to the streets in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated voters to turn out in numbers in interim political contests. We must have to persist with it, and in the same spirit, with American flags throughout each rally and calls to the highest qualities within national heritage.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and receive them or refuse?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by reference to the finest within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is most protected by relationship to elements that cause it to be special and beautiful, specifically the model of Jesus. In neither case does it suggest feigning the most negative regarding America and religious tradition never occurred; it signifies both meekness and faith, a combination that committed US believers should be comfortable with.
