The Trump movement's most telling and characteristic instances – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of a few weeks, the US president commenced revealing all observers his designs for a gilded ballroom twice the size than the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the East Wing portion to build it.
He has done things countless times more severe – the existing assessment of casualties from his cuts to USAID is 600,000 and increasing, and presently research predicted his fossil fuel policies would kill 1.3 million more. However nothing as distinctive. No former leader would have attempted – truly, no other president would have conceived – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the White House to build a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of multiple the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom have business with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the humble will receive the world' into 'the gentle will succumb from cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the chief executive try to upend the old idea regarding democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there is one large group among Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – within elder demographics almost a majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we grew up with into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. Essentially, they turned a figure of affection into a symbol of hostility who approves exactly the harshness that he criticized in biblical teachings; this has happened at a slower pace, through multiple decades instead of months, yet it remains unsettling in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
Therefore allow me to outline the Jesus from my upbringing, since in theory Christ is the focus of Christian religion, and since the rapidly expanding group of Americans could have minimal awareness of him because they identify as skeptics or uncertain individuals or nones. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; however I believe that there are pearls of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is emphatically absolutely not the story of a mighty king appearing; conversely, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to a different country to evade secret police. The infant develops in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his teaching focuses on affection for other people, particularly for the disadvantaged – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, demonstrated through nourishing and housing. Christ's response to hostility is to turn the other cheek – not as a gesture of submissive tolerance, but as a way to educate the aggressor; his method regarding offenses is that if a person pilfers your coat you must offer the person your additional clothing as well.
The evident and direct truth that the Savior from scripture requests a kind of profound affection centered on the impoverished is what has always made Christian religion somewhat of a scandalous religion: attractive to the populace, but because of its natural unconventionality needing to be contained. During the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – Protestantism was so prevalent that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Conflict for the Highest Among Us
Hence I have become inspired to witness the persistent defiance to Trump arise during the previous year. It has been significant comfort to participate in developing the movement that has taken to the streets through repeated demonstrations, and likely has encouraged citizens to show up in numbers in the off-year elections. We must have to continue it, and with identical determination, displaying national flags at every demonstration and requests to the best parts in US history.
We're going to be asked ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you receive him and embrace them or not?
America is best defended, in other words, by reference to the highest about American history, just as Christianity is optimally secured by relationship to what makes it special and wonderful, specifically the model of Jesus. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the most damaging of both America and religious tradition did not happen; it signifies both humility and conviction, a mixture that committed national faithful ought to accept.
