The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and characteristic instances – not its most important, nor most harsh, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – came earlier this autumn. Over the span of multiple weeks, the US president commenced revealing everyone his designs for a gilded ballroom twice the size than the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the East Wing portion to construct it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the existing assessment of fatalities resulting from his reductions to USAID stands at 600,000 and growing, and recently a study forecast his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have risked – truly, no previous leader would have imagined – independently wrecking major areas of the executive mansion in order to erect a royal-themed celebration hall, with the enthusiastic participation of some of the richest Americans, nearly all of which have business with federal agencies.
We went from 'the gentle will obtain the planet' into 'the meek shall die of cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the chief executive attempt to overturn the old idea of democracy and exchange it with its direct contrary, there exists a significant segment among Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. This includes individuals like us – in older age cohorts close to half – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed over the years while conservative evangelical congregations converted the Savior we learned about into the total contrary of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they converted a persona of love into an icon of hate who blesses precisely the cruelties that he denounced in biblical teachings; this has happened more gradually, across decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disturbing through similar means, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
Therefore allow me to outline the Savior that I grew up with, as conceptually Christ is the focus of Christian religion, and since the quickly increasing segment among Americans may possess limited understanding about him since they are non-believers or doubters or spiritual independents. I have no problem with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that there are pearls of significant worth within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically definitely not the narrative of an authoritative monarch emerging; conversely, a baby is born to parents without shelter in a garage, who are forced to hastily depart to a different country to avoid secret police. The infant develops in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his teaching focuses on affection for fellow humans, specifically for the poor – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, shown by providing food and housing. Christ's response to hostility is to present the opposite cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a way to instruct the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing states that when someone steals your jacket you must offer them your pullover as well.
The evident and clear fact that the Jesus from scripture requests a type of extreme compassion focused on the impoverished is what has always made Christian religion somewhat of a provocative belief system: engaging for the general public, but owing to its intrinsic extremism needing to be controlled. During the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – Protestantism was so dominant that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Conflict for the Best of Us
So I have been heartened to see the determined opposition against Trump develop in this past year. It has served as significant comfort to help build the movement that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and seems to have inspired voters to participate in large quantities during minor elections. We will need to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, featuring US banners throughout each rally and calls to the highest qualities of American history.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and receive them or not?
The nation is most protected, essentially, by relationship to the best within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is best defended through connection to elements that cause it to be unique and wonderful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In neither case does it imply pretending the most negative about the nation and religious tradition did not happen; it represents both meekness and belief, a combination that serious national faithful should embrace.
