The Trump phenomenon's most telling and characteristic moments – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. In the course of multiple weeks, the US president commenced revealing the public his plans for a lavish reception room twice the size of the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the East Wing to erect it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of deaths due to his slashing to international aid amounts to 600,000 and rising, and this week an analysis projected his energy policies would kill 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have dared – truly, no former commander would have imagined – solo demolishing major areas of the White House to build 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 went from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' toward 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the chief executive try to upend the old idea regarding democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there remains a substantial portion among Americans who wouldn't consider it entirely new. This includes individuals like us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were educated as conventional Protestant believers.
We have observed over the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we grew up with into the total contrary of our perception of his character. At its most basic, they converted a persona of love into an icon of animosity who approves precisely the cruelties that he denounced in biblical teachings; this transformation occurred more gradually, over decades instead of months, yet it remains disconcerting through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Christ that I grew up with, because theoretically Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and given that the rapidly expanding group among Americans might have little sense of him as they consider themselves atheists or agnostics or spiritual independents. I raise no objection with any of these traditions, nor with different religions; but I do think that exist valuable insights of great price within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically absolutely not the account of a powerful ruler emerging; rather, a baby is born to parents without shelter in a storage space, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to escape secret police. The baby grows up in simple surroundings, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine concerns compassion for others, especially for the disadvantaged – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, demonstrated through nourishing and protecting. Jesus' answer to violence is to offer the other cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a method to instruct the aggressor; his method regarding offenses is that if a person pilfers your jacket you should give them your pullover as well.
The obvious and straightforward reality that Christ in biblical accounts calls for a form of radical love concentrated on the poor has consistently rendered the Christian faith something of a provocative belief system: appealing to the masses, but due to its natural unconventionality demanding to be contained. In the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – Protestantism was so dominant that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Struggle for the Best Among Us
So I have been encouraged to see the steadfast resistance against Trump emerge in this past year. It has been great solace to participate in developing the movement that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated electorate to turn out in large quantities in the off-year elections. We shall require to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, featuring US banners throughout each rally and requests to the best parts of American history.
We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the stranger? Did you accept these individuals and receive them or not?
America is best defended, in other words, by relationship to the finest in US heritage, similar to Christianity is optimally secured by reference to that which renders it distinctive and wonderful, particularly the pattern of Christ. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the most negative about the nation and Christian faith did not happen; it means both modesty and faith, a combination that committed American Christians should embrace.
