The Trump movement's most revealing and distinctive moments – not its most significant, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of multiple weeks, the nation's leader commenced revealing the public his intentions for a gilded ballroom twice the size than the White House and then commenced unilaterally ripping down the East Wing portion to build it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of fatalities resulting from his reductions to USAID amounts to 600,000 and rising, and this week research forecast his energy policies would kill 1.3 million more. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have attempted – truly, no other president would have imagined – independently wrecking major areas of the White House to build a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the enthusiastic participation of some of the richest Americans, the majority of whom conduct transactions with federal agencies.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' into 'the gentle will succumb of cholera'
As disorienting as it is to witness the president attempt to overturn the established notion regarding democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion among Americans who should not find it completely novel. That encompasses people such as ourselves – among senior generations close to half – who were brought up as conventional Protestant believers.
We have observed throughout the years while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we learned about into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they turned a figure of love into a symbol of hate who endorses specifically the brutality that he criticized in scripture; this has happened at a slower pace, across decades rather than months, yet it remains disconcerting in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
Therefore allow me to outline the Savior from my childhood, since in theory the Savior is the core of Christian religion, and given that the fastest-growing cadre within America may possess limited understanding of him as they consider themselves skeptics or doubters or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with these different approaches, nor with different religions; but I do think that exist valuable insights of great price in the Christian story.
It is decidedly not the story of a mighty king emerging; rather, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to escape secret police. The child matures in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his teaching is about love for other people, specifically for the poor – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, shown by providing food and protecting. Jesus' answer to violence is to offer the opposite cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a means to educate the assailant; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever someone steals your jacket you should give the person your additional clothing too.
The evident and straightforward truth that the Savior in biblical accounts advocates for a type of extreme compassion concentrated on the poor is what has always made Christianity somewhat of a provocative belief system: attractive to the masses, but owing to its intrinsic extremism demanding to be controlled. In the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Best Among Us
So I have been heartened to observe the persistent defiance against Trump develop during the previous year. It has provided substantial consolation to assist in constructing the campaign that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and likely has encouraged citizens to show up in large quantities in the off-year elections. We will need to maintain it, and with identical determination, with American flags at every demonstration and appeals to the highest qualities 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, essentially, by relationship to the highest about American history, just as Christianity is most protected by relationship to what makes it distinctive and wonderful, which is the example of the Savior. In both situations does it suggest feigning the most negative about the nation and religious tradition never occurred; it means both humility and belief, a combination that serious American Christians should embrace.
