The Trump movement's most revealing and characteristic moments – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most dangerous, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of a few weeks, the US president began displaying all observers his designs for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions of the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the eastern section to build it.
He has committed acts countless times more severe – the current estimate of fatalities resulting from his reductions to international aid is 600,000 and increasing, and recently a study projected his petroleum strategies would kill an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have attempted – really, no previous leader would have imagined – unilaterally destroying major areas of the executive mansion in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of numerous America's wealthiest, almost all of whom conduct transactions with the government.
We transitioned from 'the humble will receive the planet' toward 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the chief executive try to upend the traditional concept of democracy and substitute it with its polar opposite, there is one large group among Americans who wouldn't consider it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – in older age cohorts close to half – who were raised as conventional Protestant believers.
We have witnessed over the years while conservative evangelical congregations converted the Savior we grew up with into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they turned a figure of love into a symbol of hostility who endorses precisely the cruelties that he criticized in biblical teachings; this transformation occurred more gradually, across decades as opposed to months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.
A Harmful Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Jesus from my childhood, since in theory Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and because the fastest-growing cadre of Americans might have little sense of him because they identify as atheists or doubters or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with any of these traditions, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that exist valuable insights of great price within Christian narrative.
It is unquestionably not the account of a mighty king appearing; conversely, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in a storage space, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to escape covert authorities. The infant develops in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his message concerns compassion for other people, especially for the poor – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, demonstrated through nourishing and housing. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to offer the opposite cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a way to teach the aggressor; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever a person pilfers your jacket you should give him your sweater also.
The evident and direct reality that the Savior of the gospels calls for a kind of profound affection centered on the impoverished is what has always made Christian religion rather a provocative belief system: appealing to the masses, but due to its natural unconventionality demanding to be restrained. In the fifties it was controlled by dilution – Protestant Christianity was so widespread that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Conflict for the Best of Us
So I have been inspired to see the determined opposition against Trump develop during the previous year. It has been great solace to participate in developing the initiative that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and appears to have motivated voters to participate in large quantities in the off-year elections. We shall require to maintain it, and in the same spirit, displaying national flags throughout each rally and requests to the highest qualities of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and receive them or refuse?
The nation is most protected, to put it differently, through connection to the highest in US heritage, just as Christianity is most protected by reference to what makes it unique and wonderful, specifically the model of the Savior. In neither case does it suggest feigning the most negative of both America and religious tradition was nonexistent; it signifies both humility and conviction, a mixture that serious American Christians should be comfortable with.
