The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and defining instances – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most dangerous, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of multiple weeks, the US president began displaying everyone his designs for a lavish reception room two times larger than the White House and then began solo dismantling the eastern section to build it.
He has committed acts countless times more severe – the present calculation of deaths due to his slashing to international aid amounts to 600,000 and rising, and recently research projected his energy policies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have risked – really, no other president would have conceived – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the White House in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of some of the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom conduct transactions with public institutions.
We moved from 'the gentle will obtain the planet' into 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to witness the president attempt to overturn the established notion regarding democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there remains a substantial portion of Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – within elder demographics almost a majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched across decades as politically conservative religious groups turned the Jesus we learned about into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they turned a figure of affection into a figure of animosity who endorses precisely the cruelties that he condemned in scripture; this transformation occurred more slowly, over decades as opposed to months, however it is still disturbing through similar means, a confusing personal impact for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
Therefore allow me to outline the Savior that I grew up with, because theoretically Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and since the rapidly expanding group among Americans may possess limited understanding about him since they are atheists or agnostics or nones. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that there are pearls of great price within Christian narrative.
It is unquestionably not the narrative of a powerful ruler emerging; rather, a baby is born to displaced parents in a garage, who are forced to hastily depart to a foreign land to avoid covert authorities. The child matures in simple surroundings, an employed craftsman; his teaching focuses on affection for fellow humans, particularly for the disadvantaged – and not a sentimental love, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and housing. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to present the other cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a means to educate the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing states that when a person pilfers your outer garment you ought to provide him your sweater too.
The apparent and direct fact that the Savior in biblical accounts requests a form of radical love focused on the impoverished has perpetually caused the Christian faith something of a provocative belief system: attractive to the general public, but due to its intrinsic extremism requiring to be contained. In the fifties it was contained by dilution – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Struggle for the Best Within Us
Therefore I have felt encouraged to see the persistent defiance regarding Trump emerge in this past year. It has been substantial consolation to help build the campaign that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and appears to have motivated citizens to turn out in large quantities in the off-year elections. We shall require to continue it, and through comparable resolve, displaying national flags at every demonstration and appeals to the highest qualities of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and embrace them or reject?
The nation is most protected, essentially, by relationship to the finest in US heritage, just as Christianity is best defended by relationship to that which renders it unique and beautiful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In neither case does it imply acting as if the worst about the nation and religious tradition never occurred; it signifies both meekness and faith, a blend that serious national faithful should be comfortable with.
