The Trump phenomenon's most telling and defining moments – not its most important, nor most harsh, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. During the period of a few weeks, the nation's leader began displaying all observers his designs for an ornate dance hall twice the size of the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to construct it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the present calculation of casualties resulting from his reductions to foreign assistance is 600,000 and growing, and recently a study projected his fossil fuel policies would kill 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No former leader would have attempted – really, no former commander would have imagined – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the presidential residence to build a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of multiple the richest Americans, the majority of whom have business with federal agencies.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the planet' toward 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the president attempt to overturn the traditional concept regarding democracy and exchange it with its complete opposite, there exists a significant segment within America who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we learned about into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they converted a persona of affection into an icon of hate who approves specifically the brutality that he denounced in scripture; this has happened at a slower pace, over decades instead of months, yet it remains unsettling through similar means, a confusing personal impact for many of us.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
Therefore allow me to outline the Savior that I grew up with, because theoretically Christ is the focus within Christian belief, and because the rapidly expanding group within America could have minimal awareness regarding him as they consider themselves non-believers or doubters or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with any of these traditions, nor with different religions; however I believe that exist valuable insights of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically not the story of an authoritative monarch emerging; rather, an infant arrives to displaced parents in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to escape undercover officers. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his doctrine is about love for other people, especially for the poor – not simply tender feelings, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and sheltering. The Savior's reaction to violence is to offer the other cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a means to teach the assailant; his crime policy states that when an individual takes your jacket you must offer him your sweater too.
The evident and straightforward reality that the Jesus in biblical accounts advocates for a kind of extreme compassion focused on the poor has perpetually caused Christian religion rather a scandalous religion: attractive to the populace, but owing to its inherent radicalness requiring to be contained. During the 1950s it was restrained through watering down – Protestantism was so widespread that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Finest Among Us
So I have been heartened to observe the steadfast resistance regarding Trump arise in this past year. It has served as substantial consolation to help build the movement that has demonstrated publicly via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired electorate to turn out in large quantities in the off-year elections. We will need to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags at every demonstration and requests to the finest aspects in US history.
We're going to be asked ... how did you receive the foreigner? Did you receive him and embrace them or not?
The country is optimally secured, to put it differently, through connection to the highest within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is best defended through connection to what makes it special and magnificent, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In both situations does it suggest pretending the most negative about the nation and Christian faith was nonexistent; it signifies both meekness and faith, a combination that serious national faithful should be comfortable with.
