The Trump phenomenon's most telling and defining moments – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. During the period of multiple weeks, the US president started showing everyone his plans for a gilded ballroom two times larger of the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the East Wing portion to build it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of casualties from his cuts to USAID stands at 600,000 and growing, and this week research predicted his fossil fuel policies would kill another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have risked – genuinely, no previous leader would have conceived – solo demolishing major areas of the executive mansion to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of multiple America's wealthiest, almost all of whom have business with the government.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the world' toward 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the leader try to upend the traditional concept of democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there exists a significant segment among Americans who wouldn't consider it totally unfamiliar. This includes individuals like us – in older age cohorts close to half – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed over the years while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we were raised with into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. At its most basic, they converted a persona of affection into an icon of hate who blesses specifically the brutality that he denounced in biblical teachings; this has happened more slowly, over decades as opposed to months, however it is still disturbing in the same ways, a confusing personal impact for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Savior from my childhood, since in theory the Savior is the core of any Christian faith, and since the rapidly expanding group of Americans may possess limited understanding of him because they identify as skeptics or doubters or spiritual independents. I raise no objection with any of these traditions, nor with different religions; however I believe that there are pearls of great price in biblical accounts.
It is decidedly absolutely not the narrative of a powerful ruler arising; conversely, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to escape covert authorities. The child matures in humble circumstances, a working carpenter; his doctrine is about love for fellow humans, especially for the disadvantaged – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, shown by providing food and housing. Christ's response to hostility is to offer the opposite cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a means to teach the attacker; his crime policy is that if someone steals your coat you must offer him your sweater also.
The evident and straightforward fact that Christ from scripture calls for a form of profound affection focused on the impoverished has perpetually caused Christian religion something of a provocative belief system: appealing to the general public, but because of its intrinsic extremism demanding to be contained. In the fifties it was controlled via weakening – Protestantism was so dominant that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Battle for the Finest Among Us
Hence I have become encouraged to witness the persistent defiance to Trump develop in this past year. It has served as substantial consolation to help build the movement that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated citizens to turn out in large quantities during minor elections. We must have to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags during all protests and calls to the best parts of American history.
We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and embrace them or reject?
The country is optimally secured, to put it differently, by reference to the highest about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured through connection to that which renders it unique and beautiful, which is the example of Christ. In both situations does it imply feigning the most damaging regarding America and Christianity was nonexistent; it represents both modesty and conviction, a mixture that genuine US believers ought to accept.
