The Trump phenomenon's most telling and characteristic instances – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating – came earlier this autumn. In the course of a few weeks, the US president began displaying all observers his intentions for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions of the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the East Wing portion to build it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the existing assessment of casualties from his cuts to international aid is 600,000 and growing, and presently an analysis projected his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No other president would have risked – genuinely, no former commander would have imagined – independently wrecking major areas of the White House in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of some of the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom conduct transactions with the government.
We went from 'the humble will receive the Earth' into 'the gentle will succumb of cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the leader try to upend the old idea of democracy and substitute it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment of Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – among senior generations close to half – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched over the years while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we were raised with into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of compassion into a symbol of hate who blesses precisely the cruelties that he condemned in biblical teachings; this has happened at a slower pace, across decades as opposed to months, yet it remains disconcerting via comparable methods, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Jesus that I grew up with, because theoretically Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and because the fastest-growing cadre within America may possess limited understanding of him as they consider themselves atheists or doubters or nones. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with different religions; yet I maintain that there are pearls of substantial value in biblical accounts.
It is emphatically not the narrative of a mighty king emerging; rather, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in a storage space, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to escape undercover officers. The infant develops in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine focuses on affection for fellow humans, particularly for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but tangible care, expressed by feeding and protecting. Jesus' answer to violence is to offer the opposite cheek – not as a demonstration of submissive tolerance, but as a method to instruct the assailant; his approach to wrongdoing is that if someone steals your outer garment you ought to provide the person your additional clothing as well.
The obvious and clear truth that Christ from scripture requests a form of extreme compassion concentrated on the impoverished has consistently rendered the Christian faith rather a provocative belief system: attractive to the masses, but owing to its natural unconventionality needing to be controlled. In the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – Protestantism was so prevalent that it basically blessed current circumstances.
A Battle for the Best of Us
Hence I have become heartened to observe the determined opposition to Trump emerge during the previous year. It has been substantial consolation to participate in developing the initiative that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated voters to turn out in large quantities in the off-year elections. We shall require to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, displaying national flags at every demonstration and appeals to the highest qualities within national heritage.
We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the foreigner? Did you receive him and embrace them or refuse?
The nation is most protected, to put it differently, by relationship to the highest about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured by reference to elements that cause it to be distinctive and beautiful, specifically the model of the Savior. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the most negative about the nation and Christian faith did not happen; it means both meekness and faith, a combination that committed US believers should embrace.
