The Trump phenomenon's most telling and distinctive occasions – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – came earlier this autumn. During the period of multiple weeks, the American president commenced revealing all observers his plans for an ornate dance hall twice the size than the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to build it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of casualties due to his slashing to USAID stands at 600,000 and growing, and recently a study projected his energy policies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have risked – really, no former commander would have conceived – solo demolishing large sections of the White House to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of multiple America's wealthiest, almost all of whom conduct transactions with public institutions.
We went from 'the humble will receive the planet' toward 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the leader try to upend the old idea regarding democracy and replace it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion of Americans who wouldn't consider it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts close to half – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have watched over the years while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we learned about into the total contrary of our understanding of him. Essentially, they turned a figure of love into a symbol of hostility who endorses specifically the brutality that he denounced in scripture; this has happened at a slower pace, through multiple decades as opposed to months, however it is still disconcerting in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Jesus from my upbringing, because theoretically Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and because the quickly increasing segment within America might have little sense of him because they identify as skeptics or uncertain individuals or nones. I raise no objection with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that contain precious wisdom of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably not the narrative of an authoritative monarch appearing; instead, an infant arrives to homeless parents in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to evade secret police. The child matures in simple surroundings, an employed craftsman; his doctrine concerns compassion for other people, especially for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but tangible care, expressed by feeding and housing. The Savior's reaction to aggression is to offer the opposite cheek – not as a demonstration of passive acceptance, but as a way to teach the attacker; his method regarding offenses is that if a person pilfers your jacket you must offer him your sweater as well.
The evident and clear fact that the Savior of the gospels advocates for a kind of extreme compassion centered on the needy is what has always made Christianity somewhat of a scandalous religion: attractive to the masses, but because of its natural unconventionality needing to be controlled. During the 1950s it was contained by dilution – Protestant Christianity was so widespread that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Battle for the Highest of Us
So I have been heartened to witness the persistent defiance against Trump develop during the previous year. It has been great solace to assist in constructing the initiative that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated voters to participate in significant amounts during minor elections. We will need to continue it, and through comparable resolve, displaying national flags throughout each rally and appeals to the best parts within national heritage.
We're going to be asked ... regarding how you welcomed the stranger? Did you accept these individuals and receive them or reject?
The country is optimally secured, essentially, through connection to the best about American history, just as Christianity is most protected by relationship to what makes it distinctive and wonderful, particularly the pattern of Christ. In neither case does it imply feigning the most damaging about the nation and Christian faith was nonexistent; it means both meekness and conviction, a mixture that genuine American Christians should embrace.
