The Trump phenomenon's most telling and characteristic instances – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most dangerous, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of multiple weeks, the American president began displaying all observers his intentions for a gilded ballroom twice the size compared to the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to construct it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of casualties resulting from his reductions to foreign assistance is 600,000 and increasing, and presently an analysis predicted his energy policies would kill an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have dared – genuinely, no former commander would have contemplated – solo demolishing major areas of the presidential residence in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of some of the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom conduct transactions with the government.
We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the planet' to 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the leader attempt to overturn the established notion regarding democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there is one large group within America who wouldn't consider it entirely new. That encompasses people such as ourselves – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed over the years as politically conservative religious groups turned the Jesus we were raised with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they transformed an image of compassion into an icon of hate who endorses precisely the cruelties that he condemned in scripture; this change developed more gradually, across decades as opposed to months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting through similar means, a confusing personal impact for numerous individuals.
A Harmful Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Christ from my childhood, since in theory Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and because the quickly increasing segment of Americans might have little sense of him as they consider themselves skeptics or agnostics or spiritual independents. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that there are pearls of great price in biblical accounts.
It is emphatically definitely not the narrative of an authoritative monarch arising; rather, a child comes into the world to displaced parents in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to escape undercover officers. The baby grows up in simple surroundings, a working carpenter; his doctrine concerns compassion for others, particularly for the poor – not simply tender feelings, but tangible care, demonstrated through nourishing and protecting. The Savior's reaction to violence is to present the other cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a method to educate the aggressor; his crime policy states that when an individual takes your coat you should give them your pullover too.
The evident and direct truth that the Savior in biblical accounts requests a kind of radical love concentrated on the poor is what has always made Christian religion rather a scandalous religion: engaging for the masses, but owing to its inherent radicalness needing to be restrained. In the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – Protestantism was so widespread that it basically baptized the status quo.
A Battle for the Finest of Us
Therefore I have felt heartened to observe the steadfast resistance to Trump arise over the last twelve months. It has been substantial consolation to assist in constructing the movement that has taken to the streets through repeated demonstrations, and likely has encouraged electorate to show up in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We shall require to maintain it, and with identical determination, with American flags during all protests and calls to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the foreigner? Did you receive him and receive them or refuse?
The country is optimally secured, in other words, through connection to the highest about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is most protected by relationship to what makes it distinctive and magnificent, which is the example of Jesus. In neither case does it mean pretending the worst about the nation and religious tradition did not happen; it signifies both modesty and belief, a combination that committed national faithful ought to accept.
