The Trump phenomenon's most telling and characteristic instances – not its most important, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of multiple weeks, the US president started showing all observers his plans for an ornate dance hall double the dimensions than the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to erect it.
He has performed deeds countless times more severe – the present calculation of fatalities resulting from his reductions to USAID is 600,000 and rising, and this week an analysis projected his petroleum strategies would cause deaths an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have attempted – really, no other president would have conceived – unilaterally destroying major areas of the presidential residence to construct a royal-themed celebration hall, with the direct cooperation of numerous America's wealthiest, almost all of whom maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the world' to 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the leader try to upend the old idea about democracy and replace it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion among Americans who wouldn't consider it entirely new. That encompasses people such as ourselves – among senior generations close to half – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed throughout the years while conservative evangelical congregations converted the Savior we were raised with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they transformed an image of love into a symbol of hostility who approves precisely the cruelties that he denounced in the Gospel; this has happened at a slower pace, over decades instead of months, however it is still unsettling through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Establishes Itself
Hence I shall explain the Savior from my upbringing, because theoretically Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and since the rapidly expanding group among Americans might have little sense of him as they consider themselves skeptics or agnostics or nones. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that there are pearls of substantial value in biblical accounts.
It is emphatically absolutely not the account of a powerful ruler emerging; rather, a baby is born to displaced parents in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to another nation to escape secret police. The child matures in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his message is about love for fellow humans, specifically for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Jesus' answer to aggression is to present the other cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a method to teach the attacker; his crime policy indicates that whenever a person pilfers your outer garment you must offer the person your additional clothing also.
The apparent and direct truth that the Jesus of the gospels advocates for a form of radical love focused on the poor has consistently rendered Christianity something of a provocative belief system: engaging for the general public, but owing to its intrinsic extremism demanding to be restrained. In the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – Protestantism was so dominant that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Finest of Us
Hence I have become heartened to witness the persistent defiance regarding Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has been substantial consolation to assist in constructing the initiative that has taken to the streets in rally after rally, and likely has encouraged citizens to turn out in numbers in interim political contests. We will need to maintain it, and in the same spirit, displaying national flags during all protests and calls to the highest qualities in US history.
We're going to be asked ... regarding how you welcomed the immigrant? Did you welcome them and embrace them or refuse?
The country is optimally secured, in other words, by reference to the finest within national tradition, similar to Christianity is optimally secured through connection to what makes it distinctive and magnificent, particularly the pattern of Christ. In both situations does it suggest pretending the worst of both America and religious tradition was nonexistent; it signifies both humility and faith, a blend that genuine US believers should embrace.
