The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and defining occasions – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but possibly its most revealing – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of multiple weeks, the nation's leader started showing everyone his designs for an ornate dance hall twice the size compared to the White House and then commenced unilaterally ripping down the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of deaths due to his slashing to foreign assistance is 600,000 and rising, and presently an analysis forecast his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have risked – truly, no previous leader would have contemplated – solo demolishing major areas of the executive mansion to construct a royal-themed celebration hall, with the enthusiastic participation of some of the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom maintain dealings with public institutions.
We went from 'the humble will receive the Earth' toward 'the humble will perish from cholera'
As confusing as it is to watch the chief executive try to upend the traditional concept regarding democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion among Americans who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed across decades as rightwing evangelical churches transformed the Christ we grew up with into exactly the opposite of our perception of his character. Essentially, they transformed an image of love into a symbol of hostility who blesses specifically the brutality that he denounced in the Gospel; this transformation occurred more slowly, through multiple decades as opposed to months, but it is nonetheless unsettling via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Establishes Itself
Therefore allow me to outline the Christ from my upbringing, because theoretically Christ is the focus of Christian religion, and because the rapidly expanding group within America could have minimal awareness regarding him because they identify as non-believers or doubters or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that there are pearls of significant worth within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically not the narrative of a mighty king emerging; conversely, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in a garage, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to avoid secret police. The child matures in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his message focuses on affection for others, particularly for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, demonstrated through nourishing and sheltering. Jesus' answer to hostility is to turn the additional cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a method to educate the attacker; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever an individual takes your jacket you ought to provide them your pullover too.
The obvious and clear reality that Christ of the gospels advocates for a kind of extreme compassion focused on the poor has consistently rendered Christian religion something of a scandalous religion: attractive to the populace, but due to its natural unconventionality needing to be restrained. In the 1950s it was controlled by dilution – Protestant Christianity was so prevalent that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Battle for the Highest Within Us
So I have been heartened to see the steadfast resistance regarding Trump arise during the previous year. It has provided great solace to participate in developing the campaign that has protested openly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated voters to show up in numbers during minor elections. We must have to maintain it, and in the same spirit, displaying national flags throughout each rally and appeals to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We're going to be asked ... regarding how you welcomed the stranger? Did you accept these individuals and receive them or reject?
The country is optimally secured, to put it differently, through connection to the highest within national tradition, similar to Christianity is optimally secured through connection to that which renders it special and beautiful, particularly the pattern of Christ. In neither case does it mean acting as if the most negative about the nation and Christian faith was nonexistent; it means both meekness and faith, a blend that genuine American Christians ought to accept.
