The Trump movement's most telling and distinctive instances – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of several weeks, the nation's leader began displaying the public his intentions for a lavish reception room double the dimensions compared to the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the East Wing to build it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the existing assessment of deaths resulting from his reductions to foreign assistance amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and recently an analysis predicted his petroleum strategies would kill 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No other president would have attempted – genuinely, no other president would have imagined – unilaterally destroying large sections of the executive mansion in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of some of the nation's most affluent, nearly all of which have business with federal agencies.
We went from 'the humble will receive the Earth' to 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the president try to upend the established notion about democracy and replace it with its direct contrary, there exists a significant segment among Americans who might not perceive it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed over the years while conservative evangelical congregations converted the Savior we learned about into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of affection into a symbol of animosity who blesses precisely the cruelties that he criticized in scripture; this transformation occurred more gradually, over decades as opposed to months, yet it remains disconcerting in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Gains Ground
Therefore allow me to outline the Christ that I grew up with, because theoretically Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and because the quickly increasing segment of Americans may possess limited understanding of him as they consider themselves skeptics or agnostics or nones. I raise no objection with these various perspectives, nor with any other faith; but I do think that exist valuable insights of great price within Christian narrative.
It is unquestionably not the narrative of a powerful ruler arising; rather, a baby is born to parents without shelter in a garage, who are forced to hastily depart to a foreign land to evade undercover officers. The baby grows up in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his teaching focuses on affection for others, specifically for the poor – not simply tender feelings, but tangible care, shown by providing food and sheltering. Jesus' answer to violence is to present the other cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a method to instruct the assailant; his crime policy states that when an individual takes your outer garment you ought to provide them your pullover also.
The apparent and clear truth that the Savior of the gospels calls for a form of extreme compassion centered on the impoverished has perpetually caused the Christian faith something of a scandalous religion: engaging for the general public, but owing to its inherent radicalness demanding to be restrained. In the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – Protestantism was so prevalent that it basically baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Highest Within Us
Therefore I have felt encouraged to witness the steadfast resistance to Trump develop during the previous year. It has been great solace to participate in developing the initiative that has protested openly via continuous gatherings, and appears to have motivated electorate to show up in large quantities in the off-year elections. We shall require to continue it, and in the same spirit, displaying national flags at every demonstration and requests to the highest qualities of American history.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you accept these individuals and embrace them or refuse?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by relationship to the finest in US heritage, exactly as the Christian faith is most protected by reference to what makes it unique and wonderful, particularly the pattern of Christ. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the most damaging about the nation and Christian faith was nonexistent; it means both modesty and faith, a combination that genuine American Christians ought to accept.
