The Trump phenomenon's most telling and characteristic occasions – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of multiple weeks, the nation's leader commenced revealing the public his intentions for a lavish reception room twice the size compared to the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the eastern section to build it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of fatalities resulting from his reductions to USAID is 600,000 and increasing, and presently research predicted his energy policies would cause deaths 1.3 million more. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have risked – really, no previous leader would have imagined – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the executive mansion to build a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of multiple America's wealthiest, almost all of whom maintain dealings with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the humble will receive the Earth' to 'the gentle will succumb from cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the chief executive try to upend the established notion of democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there remains a substantial portion among Americans who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts close to half – who were educated as conventional Protestant believers.
We have watched throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we learned about into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. Fundamentally, they turned a figure of compassion into a figure of hate who approves exactly the harshness that he denounced in the Gospel; this change developed more slowly, through multiple decades as opposed to months, but it is nonetheless disturbing in the same ways, a confusing personal impact for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Jesus from my upbringing, because theoretically Christ is the focus within Christian belief, and given that the quickly increasing segment among Americans may possess limited understanding regarding him as they consider themselves non-believers or agnostics or nones. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that there are pearls of great price in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably not the story of an authoritative monarch arising; instead, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in an automotive shelter, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to escape covert authorities. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine concerns compassion for others, especially for the poor – not simply tender feelings, but tangible care, demonstrated through nourishing and sheltering. The Savior's reaction to violence is to offer the additional cheek – not as an act of submissive tolerance, but as a method to instruct the assailant; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever someone steals your outer garment you should give the person your additional clothing too.
The apparent and clear fact that the Jesus in biblical accounts calls for a type of radical love concentrated on the needy has perpetually caused the Christian faith somewhat of a provocative belief system: engaging for the populace, but due to its intrinsic extremism demanding to be controlled. During the 1950s it was restrained through watering down – Protestantism was so prevalent that it basically sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Best Within Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to see the steadfast resistance against Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has provided great solace to help build the movement that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and seems to have inspired voters to turn out in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We shall require to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, displaying national flags throughout each rally and requests to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the stranger? Did you welcome them and embrace them or reject?
The nation is most protected, in other words, through connection to the best within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured by relationship to that which renders it unique and beautiful, specifically the model of Jesus. In both situations does it mean feigning the worst of both America and Christianity never occurred; it signifies both meekness and belief, a combination that serious American Christians ought to accept.
