The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and defining moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. During the period of multiple weeks, the nation's leader commenced revealing all observers his designs for a lavish reception room twice the size of the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the East Wing portion to construct it.
He has done things 10,000 times as bad – the existing assessment of fatalities resulting from his reductions to USAID amounts to 600,000 and rising, and recently an analysis forecast his petroleum strategies would kill 1.3 million more. But nothing as definitional. No former leader would have dared – truly, no other president would have contemplated – solo demolishing significant portions of the executive mansion to construct a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the enthusiastic participation of some of the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom conduct transactions with the government.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the Earth' to 'the meek shall die of cholera'
As bewildering as it is to observe the president attempt to overturn the traditional concept about democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there is one large group within America who should not find it entirely new. That is those of us – among senior generations almost a majority – who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have observed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we were raised with into exactly the opposite of our perception of his character. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of compassion into a symbol of hate who endorses exactly the harshness that he criticized in biblical teachings; this change developed more gradually, over decades rather than months, yet it remains disturbing via comparable methods, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Savior that I grew up with, since in theory the Savior is the core of any Christian faith, and given that the quickly increasing segment within America could have minimal awareness of him because they identify as atheists or uncertain individuals or spiritual independents. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that there are pearls of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably not the account of an authoritative monarch arising; rather, a child comes into the world to displaced parents in a storage space, who must quickly flee to another nation to avoid secret police. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his message focuses on affection for other people, particularly for the poor – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Jesus' answer to hostility is to offer the other cheek – not as an act of submissive tolerance, but as a method to teach the assailant; his crime policy indicates that whenever someone steals your jacket you ought to provide the person your additional clothing also.
The obvious and clear fact that the Savior in biblical accounts advocates for a kind of extreme compassion focused on the needy has perpetually caused Christian religion something of a scandalous religion: appealing to the populace, but due to its natural unconventionality needing to be controlled. During the 1950s it was contained via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Highest of Us
Therefore I have felt heartened to see the steadfast resistance regarding Trump develop in this past year. It has been great solace to help build the initiative that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and seems to have inspired voters to show up in numbers in interim political contests. We shall require to persist with it, and with identical determination, with American flags at every demonstration and appeals to the best parts of American history.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the foreigner? Did you receive him and welcome him or refuse?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by relationship to the best within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is most protected by relationship to elements that cause it to be special and beautiful, particularly the pattern of Christ. In both situations does it suggest acting as if the most damaging of both America and Christian faith was nonexistent; it means both modesty and belief, a mixture that committed US believers ought to accept.
