The Trump movement's most revealing and characteristic instances – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but possibly its most revealing – came earlier this autumn. Over the span of multiple weeks, the American president started showing the public his plans for a lavish reception room twice the size of the White House and then commenced solo dismantling the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of deaths due to his slashing to international aid is 600,000 and increasing, and this week research predicted his fossil fuel policies would kill an additional 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have risked – really, no other president would have imagined – solo demolishing major areas of the White House to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of numerous America's wealthiest, nearly all of which have business with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' toward 'the gentle will succumb of cholera'
As confusing as it is to watch the chief executive attempt to overturn the established notion regarding democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there is one large group of Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – within elder demographics a near majority – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we were raised with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they converted a persona of compassion into a figure of animosity who endorses exactly the harshness that he condemned in scripture; this change developed more slowly, over decades as opposed to months, however it is still unsettling via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Establishes Itself
Therefore allow me to outline the Savior from my upbringing, because theoretically Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and given that the rapidly expanding group of Americans could have minimal awareness about him since they are non-believers or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that there are pearls of great price within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically absolutely not the story of an authoritative monarch appearing; rather, an infant arrives to displaced parents in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to avoid secret police. The infant develops in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his doctrine focuses on affection for other people, especially for the poor – not merely emotional affection, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and protecting. The Savior's reaction to violence is to offer the additional cheek – not as an act of submissive tolerance, but as a means to educate the attacker; his crime policy is that if an individual takes your jacket you must offer him your sweater as well.
The apparent and direct truth that the Savior of the gospels advocates for a form of extreme compassion focused on the poor is what has always made Christian religion rather a provocative belief system: appealing to the general public, but because of its intrinsic extremism demanding to be restrained. During the 1950s it was restrained through watering down – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it basically blessed current circumstances.
A Battle for the Finest Within Us
Therefore I have felt encouraged to witness the determined opposition regarding Trump arise during the previous year. It has provided great solace to assist in constructing the campaign that has protested openly via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired citizens to participate in large quantities during minor elections. We will need to continue it, and through comparable resolve, displaying national flags throughout each rally and appeals to the finest aspects in US history.
We're going to be asked ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you welcome them and embrace them or reject?
The country is optimally secured, in other words, by reference to the finest within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is best defended through connection to elements that cause it to be special and beautiful, particularly the pattern of Jesus. In both situations does it mean acting as if the worst regarding America and Christianity did not happen; it means both humility and belief, a combination that genuine national faithful should be comfortable with.
