The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and defining instances – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of several weeks, the US president started showing everyone his intentions for an ornate dance hall two times larger compared to the White House and then began independently demolishing the East Wing portion to build it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the existing assessment of fatalities from his cuts to international aid stands at 600,000 and increasing, and recently a study projected his fossil fuel policies would kill another 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No former leader would have dared – genuinely, no former commander would have contemplated – independently wrecking significant portions of the presidential residence in order to erect a royal-themed celebration hall, with the active collaboration of numerous America's wealthiest, almost all of whom maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We moved from 'the gentle will obtain the world' toward 'the humble will perish from cholera'
As confusing as it is to witness the leader attempt to overturn the traditional concept about democracy and replace it with its polar opposite, there is one large group of Americans who wouldn't consider it entirely new. That is those of us – in older age cohorts close to half – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed across decades as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we learned about into exactly the opposite of our perception of his character. Fundamentally, they converted a persona of compassion into a figure of animosity who blesses precisely the cruelties that he condemned in scripture; this has happened at a slower pace, across decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless disturbing in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Christ that I grew up with, since in theory Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and given that the rapidly expanding group within America could have minimal awareness of him because they identify as non-believers or uncertain individuals or spiritual independents. I raise no objection with any of these traditions, nor with different religions; but I do think that there are pearls of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is decidedly definitely not the account of a powerful ruler appearing; instead, a baby is born to displaced parents in an automotive shelter, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to avoid secret police. The child matures in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his teaching is about love for other people, particularly for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, expressed by feeding and sheltering. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to turn the opposite cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a way to teach the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing is that if someone steals your coat you must offer them your pullover also.
The apparent and clear truth that Christ of the gospels advocates for a type of extreme compassion concentrated on the poor is what has always made Christian religion somewhat of a controversial faith: attractive to the masses, but owing to its inherent radicalness requiring to be contained. During the 1950s it was restrained via weakening – The Protestant faith was so prevalent that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Best Within Us
So I have been inspired to see the persistent defiance to Trump arise during the previous year. It has provided significant comfort to assist in constructing the movement that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated voters to turn out in large quantities in the off-year elections. We shall require to persist with it, and with identical determination, displaying national flags at every demonstration and appeals to the best parts of American history.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the foreigner? Did you welcome them and embrace them or reject?
America is best defended, essentially, by relationship to the best within national tradition, just as Christianity is optimally secured by relationship to what makes it distinctive and wonderful, which is the example of the Savior. In neither case does it imply feigning the most damaging of both America and Christian faith did not happen; it means both meekness and conviction, a blend that serious national faithful should be comfortable with.
