The Trump movement's most revealing and characteristic moments – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – came earlier this autumn. Over the span of several weeks, the American president commenced revealing everyone his intentions for a lavish reception room double the dimensions compared to the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to build it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the present calculation of fatalities resulting from his reductions to international aid amounts to 600,000 and growing, and this week a study projected his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have risked – genuinely, no previous leader would have imagined – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the White House to construct a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of numerous America's wealthiest, nearly all of which maintain dealings with public institutions.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' into 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As confusing as it is to witness the leader attempt to overturn the established notion about democracy and replace it with its polar opposite, there remains a substantial portion among Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were raised as conventional Protestant believers.
We have witnessed over the years as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we learned about into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of love into a figure of hostility who endorses exactly the harshness that he criticized in the Gospel; this change developed more gradually, across decades instead of months, however it is still disconcerting via comparable methods, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Christ from my upbringing, as conceptually Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and because the quickly increasing segment within America could have minimal awareness about him since they are skeptics or uncertain individuals or nones. I raise no objection with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that there are pearls of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically not the story of a powerful ruler emerging; instead, a baby is born to homeless parents in a garage, who are forced to hastily depart to a different country to escape covert authorities. The infant develops in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine is about love for fellow humans, specifically for the disadvantaged – not merely emotional affection, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and protecting. Christ's response to aggression is to present the additional cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a method to teach the attacker; his method regarding offenses states that when someone steals your outer garment you should give them your pullover as well.
The evident and direct reality that Christ from scripture calls for a type of extreme compassion concentrated on the poor is what has always made Christian religion rather a scandalous religion: engaging for the general public, but owing to its intrinsic extremism needing to be restrained. In the 1950s it was restrained through watering down – Protestantism was so prevalent that it basically sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Finest of Us
Hence I have become inspired to see the determined opposition against Trump arise in this past year. It has been great solace to assist in constructing the campaign that has protested openly via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired voters to participate in numbers in interim political contests. We will need to continue it, and with identical determination, with American flags throughout each rally and appeals to the highest qualities in US history.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you receive him and receive them or refuse?
America is best defended, to put it differently, through connection to the finest in US heritage, similar to Christianity is optimally secured by relationship to that which renders it unique and magnificent, which is the example of Jesus. In both situations does it imply acting as if the most negative of both America and Christianity never occurred; it represents both modesty and faith, a blend that genuine American Christians should be comfortable with.
