The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and characteristic instances – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most dangerous, nor most foolish, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of a few weeks, the nation's leader started showing all observers his designs for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions of the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the present calculation of casualties from his cuts to international aid stands at 600,000 and rising, and presently research forecast his petroleum strategies would kill 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No former leader would have risked – really, no previous leader would have conceived – independently wrecking significant portions of the presidential residence in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of multiple America's wealthiest, the majority of whom conduct transactions with the government.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the world' into 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As confusing as it is to watch the president attempt to overturn the old idea regarding democracy and replace it with its direct contrary, there exists a significant segment of Americans who wouldn't consider it completely novel. That is those of us – within elder demographics close to half – who were raised as conventional Protestant believers.
We have witnessed over the years as rightwing evangelical churches transformed the Christ we learned about into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. At its most basic, they transformed an image of compassion into an icon of hostility who endorses specifically the brutality that he denounced in scripture; this change developed at a slower pace, across decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless unsettling through similar means, a confusing personal impact for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Christ from my childhood, since in theory Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and since the rapidly expanding group of Americans may possess limited understanding about him because they identify as skeptics or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with these different approaches, nor with different religions; yet I maintain that there are pearls of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is decidedly not the account of a mighty king arising; rather, an infant arrives to displaced parents in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to evade secret police. The child matures in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his doctrine concerns compassion for others, especially for the poor – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, expressed by feeding and housing. Jesus' answer to hostility is to offer the opposite cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a method to instruct the assailant; his method regarding offenses is that if someone steals your outer garment you ought to provide him your sweater too.
The evident and direct fact that the Jesus from scripture advocates for a form of extreme compassion centered on the poor has consistently rendered the Christian faith something of a scandalous religion: appealing to the general public, but due to its inherent radicalness demanding to be restrained. During the 1950s it was controlled by dilution – Protestantism was so widespread that it essentially blessed current circumstances.
A Struggle for the Best Among Us
So I have been inspired to see the steadfast resistance regarding Trump develop during the previous year. It has been significant comfort to help build the movement that has taken to the streets through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired electorate to turn out in significant amounts during minor elections. We shall require to maintain it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners during all protests and calls to the highest qualities in US history.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the foreigner? Did you receive him and receive them or refuse?
The nation is most protected, in other words, by reference to the best in US heritage, exactly as the Christian faith is best defended by reference to what makes it unique and beautiful, specifically the model of Jesus. In neither case does it imply pretending the most damaging regarding America and Christianity never occurred; it represents both humility and conviction, a mixture that committed American Christians ought to accept.
