The Trump phenomenon's most telling and distinctive moments – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of multiple weeks, the American president began displaying the public his designs for a lavish reception room twice the size than the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the eastern section to erect it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the existing assessment of fatalities due to his slashing to international aid stands at 600,000 and growing, and presently an analysis forecast his petroleum strategies would kill 1.3 million more. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have dared – genuinely, no previous leader would have imagined – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the executive mansion to construct a royal-themed celebration hall, with the enthusiastic participation of some of the nation's most affluent, nearly all of which have business with federal agencies.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' into 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the leader try to upend the established notion of democracy and replace it with its direct contrary, there is one large group within America who wouldn't consider it completely novel. That encompasses people such as ourselves – in older age cohorts close to half – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have watched across decades as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we were raised with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they transformed an image of affection into a symbol of animosity who blesses exactly the harshness that he criticized in biblical teachings; this has happened more gradually, over decades rather than months, however it is still unsettling in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
Therefore allow me to outline the Christ from my upbringing, since in theory the Savior is the core of Christian religion, and since the fastest-growing cadre within America might have little sense of him as they consider themselves non-believers or agnostics or spiritual independents. I raise no objection with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; however I believe that contain precious wisdom of significant worth within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically definitely not the narrative of a powerful ruler arising; instead, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in an automotive shelter, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to escape secret police. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his message is about love for others, specifically for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but a concrete one, demonstrated through nourishing and sheltering. Christ's response to aggression is to offer the opposite cheek – not as a demonstration of submissive tolerance, but as a means to educate the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing states that when an individual takes your outer garment you ought to provide them your pullover too.
The obvious and direct truth that the Jesus of the gospels calls for a type of radical love focused on the poor has perpetually caused Christianity something of a provocative belief system: engaging for the general public, but due to its inherent radicalness demanding to be controlled. In the fifties it was restrained through watering down – Protestantism was so dominant that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Conflict for the Finest of Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to witness the steadfast resistance regarding Trump emerge in this past year. It has served as great solace to participate in developing the initiative that has protested openly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated voters to turn out in numbers in the off-year elections. We shall require to persist with it, and in the same spirit, with American flags during all protests and requests to the finest aspects of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the foreigner? Did you receive him and receive them or reject?
America is best defended, in other words, by relationship to the finest in US heritage, similar to Christianity is best defended by reference to elements that cause it to be unique and magnificent, specifically the model of Jesus. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the worst regarding America and Christianity never occurred; it represents both modesty and faith, a combination that serious US believers should be comfortable with.
