The Trump phenomenon's most telling and defining moments – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating – occurred earlier this fall. During the period of several weeks, the American president began displaying all observers his designs for an ornate dance hall double the dimensions than the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the East Wing portion to build it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the existing assessment of deaths due to his slashing to international aid amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and presently an analysis forecast his energy policies would kill an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have risked – genuinely, no other president would have imagined – unilaterally destroying large sections of the White House to build a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of numerous America's wealthiest, almost all of whom conduct transactions with federal agencies.
We transitioned from 'the humble will receive the planet' toward 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As confusing as it is to witness the president try to upend the traditional concept about democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there is one large group of Americans who might not perceive it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – among senior generations close to half – who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches transformed the Christ we grew up with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they turned a figure of affection into a symbol of hostility who approves exactly the harshness that he criticized in scripture; this has happened more slowly, over decades instead of months, however it is still unsettling in the same ways, a confusing personal impact for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
Hence I shall explain the Jesus that I grew up with, as conceptually the Savior is the core of any Christian faith, and because the rapidly expanding group of Americans could have minimal awareness of him since they are atheists or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with different religions; but I do think that exist valuable insights of great price within Christian narrative.
It is decidedly not the story of an authoritative monarch appearing; rather, a baby is born to displaced parents in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to escape undercover officers. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his message is about love for fellow humans, especially for the disadvantaged – not simply tender feelings, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and housing. Christ's response to aggression is to present the other cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a method to instruct the aggressor; his crime policy is that if someone steals your jacket you should give him your sweater also.
The obvious and straightforward reality that Christ in biblical accounts requests a kind of extreme compassion focused on the needy has consistently rendered Christianity somewhat of a provocative belief system: attractive to the masses, but due to its natural unconventionality requiring to be controlled. In the 1950s it was controlled by dilution – Protestantism was so widespread that it basically baptized the status quo.
A Conflict for the Highest of Us
Hence I have become inspired to observe the determined opposition regarding Trump arise during the previous year. It has provided significant comfort to help build the initiative that has protested openly in rally after rally, and seems to have inspired voters to participate in large quantities during minor elections. We shall require to persist with it, and in the same spirit, with American flags throughout each rally and appeals to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We're going to be asked ... how did you receive the foreigner? Did you receive him and welcome him or refuse?
The country is optimally secured, in other words, by reference to the finest about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is best defended by relationship to what makes it special and wonderful, which is the example of Jesus. In neither case does it mean pretending the worst of both America and religious tradition was nonexistent; it signifies both humility and faith, a combination that genuine US believers should embrace.
