The Trump movement's most telling and characteristic moments – not its most crucial, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of multiple weeks, the nation's leader started showing the public his designs for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions compared to the White House and then commenced solo dismantling the East Wing to build it.
He has performed deeds countless times more severe – the existing assessment of casualties due to his slashing to USAID is 600,000 and growing, and recently an analysis forecast his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have attempted – truly, no other president would have conceived – solo demolishing large sections of the White House to construct a royal-themed celebration hall, with the active collaboration of numerous America's wealthiest, almost all of whom conduct transactions with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' into 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As confusing as it is to watch the president attempt to overturn the traditional concept about democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there remains a substantial portion among Americans who might not perceive it totally unfamiliar. This includes individuals like us – among senior generations close to half – who were educated as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have observed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we grew up with into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they turned a figure of affection into a symbol of hostility who blesses precisely the cruelties that he denounced in the Gospel; this has happened more slowly, through multiple decades rather than months, yet it remains disturbing via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Christ from my childhood, as conceptually the Savior is the core of Christian religion, and because the quickly increasing segment among Americans could have minimal awareness about him as they consider themselves non-believers or uncertain individuals or spiritual independents. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that there are pearls of great price in biblical accounts.
It is emphatically not the story of a powerful ruler arising; conversely, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a garage, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to evade secret police. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his teaching concerns compassion for others, especially for the disadvantaged – not merely emotional affection, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and housing. Jesus' answer to violence is to offer the other cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a way to teach the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing is that if a person pilfers your jacket you ought to provide him your sweater too.
The evident and clear fact that the Savior of the gospels requests a type of profound affection focused on the poor has consistently rendered Christianity somewhat of a provocative belief system: engaging for the general public, but due to its intrinsic extremism requiring to be contained. In the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – Protestantism was so dominant that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Battle for the Finest of Us
Therefore I have felt heartened to witness the determined opposition against Trump arise during the previous year. It has been substantial consolation to help build the initiative that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and likely has encouraged citizens to participate in numbers during minor elections. We shall require to maintain it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and appeals to the highest qualities within national heritage.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the foreigner? Did you welcome them and embrace them or not?
The country is optimally secured, in other words, through connection to the best within national tradition, similar to Christianity is best defended by relationship to what makes it special and beautiful, particularly the pattern of Christ. In both situations does it mean pretending the most negative of both America and Christianity never occurred; it means both meekness and conviction, a mixture that genuine national faithful ought to accept.
