The Trump movement's most telling and characteristic moments – not its most crucial, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. During the period of multiple weeks, the American president began displaying everyone his intentions for a lavish reception room twice the size of the White House and then commenced unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to build it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the present calculation of fatalities from his cuts to international aid stands at 600,000 and increasing, and recently an analysis forecast his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have risked – really, no former commander would have imagined – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the White House to build a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of numerous the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' to 'the meek shall die of cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the president try to upend the established notion of democracy and replace it with its polar opposite, there is one large group within America who might not perceive it entirely new. That is those of us – within elder demographics close to half – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we grew up with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they turned a figure of love into an icon of hate who endorses specifically the brutality that he condemned in the Gospel; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, across decades instead of months, yet it remains unsettling via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.
A Toxic Christianity Establishes Itself
Hence I shall explain the Savior from my childhood, because theoretically the Savior is the core of Christian religion, and since the rapidly expanding group of Americans may possess limited understanding of him as they consider themselves non-believers or doubters or spiritual independents. I raise no objection with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that exist valuable insights of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically absolutely not the narrative of a mighty king appearing; instead, a child comes into the world to displaced parents in an automotive shelter, who are forced to hastily depart to a different country to escape undercover officers. The child matures in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his doctrine is about love for others, specifically for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and protecting. The Savior's reaction to aggression is to offer the opposite cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a means to educate the assailant; his approach to wrongdoing states that when an individual takes your outer garment you ought to provide him your sweater too.
The obvious and direct fact that the Savior from scripture calls for a form of extreme compassion focused on the poor is what has always made Christian religion somewhat of a controversial faith: engaging for the populace, but owing to its natural unconventionality needing to be restrained. During the 1950s it was controlled via weakening – The Protestant faith was so dominant that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Conflict for the Best Among Us
Hence I have become inspired to witness the persistent defiance regarding Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has been significant comfort to participate in developing the initiative that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired electorate to participate in numbers in the off-year elections. We shall require to continue it, and in the same spirit, with American flags during all protests and appeals to the finest aspects of American history.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you receive him and welcome him or not?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by reference to the best in US heritage, just as Christianity is best defended through connection to what makes it unique and beautiful, particularly the pattern of Jesus. In both situations does it mean pretending the most negative about the nation and religious tradition was nonexistent; it means both humility and faith, a combination that committed US believers ought to accept.
