The Trump phenomenon's most telling and defining instances – not its most crucial, nor cruelest, nor most dangerous, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. During the period of multiple weeks, the American president started showing everyone his plans for a gilded ballroom twice the size compared to the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the East Wing to construct it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of casualties resulting from his reductions to international aid stands at 600,000 and growing, and presently a study predicted his energy policies would result in fatalities 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have attempted – really, no previous leader would have imagined – unilaterally destroying large sections of the White House to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of some of the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom have business with the government.
We transitioned from 'the humble will receive the planet' into 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As bewildering as it is to observe the chief executive attempt to overturn the old idea about democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there is one large group of Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – within elder demographics close to half – who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have observed across decades as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we were raised with into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they turned a figure of compassion into a symbol of hate who endorses specifically the brutality that he condemned in scripture; this has happened at a slower pace, through multiple decades as opposed to months, yet it remains disconcerting via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
Therefore allow me to outline the Christ from my upbringing, because theoretically Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and because the quickly increasing segment within America may possess limited understanding of him as they consider themselves non-believers or doubters or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with any other faith; but I do think that exist valuable insights of significant worth within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically absolutely not the narrative of an authoritative monarch emerging; rather, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in a garage, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to evade covert authorities. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, a working carpenter; his message is about love for fellow humans, especially for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, demonstrated through nourishing and protecting. Christ's response to hostility is to turn the additional cheek – not as an act of submissive tolerance, but as a means to educate the assailant; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever an individual takes your jacket you should give them your pullover as well.
The obvious and straightforward reality that Christ from scripture requests a form of extreme compassion centered on the poor has consistently rendered Christianity something of a scandalous religion: attractive to the masses, but due to its natural unconventionality demanding to be controlled. In the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – Protestantism was so widespread that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Finest Within Us
So I have been encouraged to observe the determined opposition against Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has provided great solace to assist in constructing the initiative that has protested openly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated voters to participate in numbers in interim political contests. We shall require to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, featuring US banners at every demonstration and requests to the best parts within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you welcome them and receive them or refuse?
The nation is most protected, in other words, by reference to the best within national tradition, similar to Christianity is optimally secured through connection to that which renders it distinctive and beautiful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the most damaging of both America and Christian faith was nonexistent; it means both humility and belief, a mixture that committed US believers ought to accept.
