The Trump movement's most illuminating and distinctive occasions – not its most important, nor most harsh, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating – came earlier this autumn. Over the span of multiple weeks, the US president began displaying everyone his designs for an ornate dance hall twice the size compared to the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to erect it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of deaths due to his slashing to foreign assistance is 600,000 and growing, and presently an analysis projected his petroleum strategies would kill 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No former leader would have attempted – really, no former commander would have contemplated – solo demolishing significant portions of the executive mansion in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of some of America's wealthiest, almost all of whom conduct transactions with federal agencies.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the planet' into 'the humble will perish from cholera'
As confusing as it is to witness the chief executive try to upend the established notion regarding democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there is one large group among Americans who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were brought up as conventional Protestant believers.
We have observed across decades as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we learned about into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they turned a figure of compassion into an icon of animosity who blesses exactly the harshness that he denounced in the Gospel; this change developed at a slower pace, through multiple decades rather than months, yet it remains disconcerting in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Savior from my childhood, since in theory the Savior is the core within Christian belief, and because the rapidly expanding group of Americans could have minimal awareness about him since they are non-believers or doubters or spiritual independents. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that there are pearls of substantial value in biblical accounts.
It is emphatically absolutely not the account of a mighty king emerging; instead, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to another nation to evade covert authorities. The infant develops in humble circumstances, a working carpenter; his teaching concerns compassion for others, especially for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Jesus' answer to aggression is to present the other cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a means to teach the assailant; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever an individual takes your coat you should give him your sweater too.
The evident and straightforward reality that the Savior of the gospels requests a type of extreme compassion concentrated on the impoverished has consistently rendered Christianity somewhat of a scandalous religion: engaging for the populace, but due to its intrinsic extremism requiring to be restrained. In the 1950s it was controlled via weakening – Protestantism was so prevalent that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Conflict for the Finest Within Us
Hence I have become encouraged to witness the steadfast resistance against Trump arise during the previous year. It has been substantial consolation to participate in developing the campaign that has taken to the streets in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated citizens to turn out in large quantities in the off-year elections. We shall require to persist with it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners at every demonstration and appeals to the highest qualities of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the foreigner? Did you accept these individuals and welcome him or refuse?
The country is optimally secured, essentially, by reference to the best within national tradition, just as Christianity is optimally secured by relationship to what makes it special and wonderful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In neither case does it imply feigning the most negative regarding America and religious tradition never occurred; it means both modesty and faith, a mixture that committed American Christians should be comfortable with.
