The Trump movement's most telling and characteristic occasions – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most dangerous, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. During the period of several weeks, the American president started showing everyone his designs for a lavish reception room double the dimensions than the White House and then began independently demolishing the East Wing portion to build it.
He has done things 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of casualties due to his slashing to USAID stands at 600,000 and rising, and presently research projected his petroleum strategies would cause deaths 1.3 million more. But nothing as definitional. No former leader would have attempted – truly, no other president would have imagined – solo demolishing large sections of the executive mansion in order to erect a royal-themed celebration hall, with the active collaboration of multiple the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We transitioned from 'the gentle will obtain the world' to 'the humble will perish of cholera'
As bewildering as it is to observe the chief executive attempt to overturn the established notion about democracy and exchange it with its complete opposite, there remains a substantial portion of Americans who should not find it entirely new. That is those of us – within elder demographics a near majority – who were educated within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed over the years as rightwing evangelical churches transformed the Christ we grew up with into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. Fundamentally, they turned a figure of love into a symbol of hate who blesses precisely the cruelties that he criticized in the Gospel; this has happened more gradually, over decades rather than months, yet it remains disconcerting through similar means, a bewildering emotional blow for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
Hence I shall explain the Christ from my upbringing, because theoretically the Savior is the core of any Christian faith, and given that the quickly increasing segment among Americans may possess limited understanding regarding him because they identify as non-believers or doubters or spiritual independents. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that there are pearls of significant worth within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically not the account of a mighty king emerging; instead, a baby is born to parents without shelter in a storage space, who must quickly flee to a different country to escape undercover officers. The infant develops in humble circumstances, a working carpenter; his teaching concerns compassion for fellow humans, especially for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but tangible care, shown by providing food and housing. Christ's response to hostility is to turn the other cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a way to educate the assailant; his crime policy is that if a person pilfers your outer garment you ought to provide the person your additional clothing also.
The apparent and straightforward truth that the Jesus from scripture advocates for a form of extreme compassion focused on the poor has perpetually caused the Christian faith rather a provocative belief system: attractive to the general public, but owing to its intrinsic extremism demanding to be restrained. During the 1950s it was contained by dilution – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it basically sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Best Among Us
So I have been heartened to observe the persistent defiance against Trump develop during the previous year. It has been significant comfort to help build the movement that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired electorate to show up in large quantities in the off-year elections. We will need to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags throughout each rally and calls to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the stranger? Did you receive him and embrace them or not?
The country is optimally secured, in other words, by relationship to the highest within national tradition, similar to Christianity is best defended by reference to that which renders it special and magnificent, which is the example of Jesus. In neither case does it imply feigning the most damaging of both America and Christianity never occurred; it means both modesty and belief, a mixture that committed US believers should be comfortable with.
