The Trump movement's most revealing and characteristic occasions – not its most crucial, nor cruelest, nor most dangerous, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating – occurred earlier this fall. In the course of multiple weeks, the American president started showing everyone his plans for an ornate dance hall double the dimensions than the White House and then began independently demolishing the East Wing to construct it.
He has done things 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of casualties resulting from his reductions to USAID stands at 600,000 and increasing, and this week a study forecast his petroleum strategies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have dared – genuinely, no former commander would have imagined – solo demolishing major areas of the presidential residence to build a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of numerous America's wealthiest, the majority of whom conduct transactions with public institutions.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the world' to 'the meek shall die of cholera'
As confusing as it is to witness the president try to upend the traditional concept regarding democracy and exchange it with its complete opposite, there is one large group of Americans who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – within elder demographics close to half – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have observed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we learned about into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of compassion into an icon of animosity who blesses exactly the harshness that he denounced in scripture; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, across decades rather than months, however it is still disconcerting via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Establishes Itself
Hence I shall explain the Christ that I grew up with, since in theory Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and given that the rapidly expanding group within America might have little sense about him since they are skeptics or uncertain individuals or nones. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; yet I maintain that contain precious wisdom of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is decidedly not the story of an authoritative monarch appearing; instead, a baby is born to displaced parents in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to escape undercover officers. The child matures in simple surroundings, a laboring woodworker; his teaching concerns compassion for others, especially for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and sheltering. Christ's response to aggression is to offer the other cheek – not as a demonstration of submissive tolerance, but as a way to teach the aggressor; his method regarding offenses states that when an individual takes your coat you must offer him your sweater as well.
The apparent and clear fact that the Savior in biblical accounts requests a type of extreme compassion concentrated on the poor is what has always made the Christian faith somewhat of a provocative belief system: appealing to the masses, but because of its natural unconventionality requiring to be restrained. During the 1950s it was contained by dilution – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Best Within Us
So I have been heartened to observe the persistent defiance regarding Trump arise during the previous year. It has provided substantial consolation to help build the movement that has protested openly via continuous gatherings, and likely has encouraged electorate to show up in large quantities in interim political contests. We must have to persist with it, and in the same spirit, with American flags during all protests and calls to the highest qualities in US history.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the immigrant? Did you receive him and welcome him or refuse?
America is best defended, in other words, through connection to the best within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is best defended by reference to what makes it special and magnificent, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In both situations does it suggest feigning the most damaging of both America and Christian faith was nonexistent; it means both meekness and belief, a mixture that committed US believers should embrace.
