The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and characteristic moments – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but possibly its most revealing – came earlier this autumn. In the course of multiple weeks, the nation's leader started showing everyone his intentions for a lavish reception room double the dimensions of the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to erect it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of casualties from his cuts to USAID is 600,000 and growing, and recently a study forecast his energy policies would kill 1.3 million more. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have attempted – genuinely, no previous leader would have contemplated – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the presidential residence in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of multiple the richest Americans, the majority of whom have business with federal agencies.
We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' into 'the gentle will succumb from cholera'
As confusing as it is to watch the president try to upend the traditional concept regarding democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there exists a significant segment of Americans who should not find it completely novel. This includes individuals like us – among senior generations close to half – who were educated as conventional Protestant believers.
We have witnessed throughout the years as politically conservative religious groups turned the Jesus we grew up with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they transformed an image of compassion into a figure of hate who blesses precisely the cruelties that he criticized in biblical teachings; this has happened at a slower pace, over decades rather than months, yet it remains unsettling via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Savior that I grew up with, as conceptually Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and because the rapidly expanding group of Americans could have minimal awareness regarding him as they consider themselves non-believers or doubters or spiritual independents. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with different religions; but I do think that there are pearls of significant worth in biblical accounts.
It is unquestionably definitely not the narrative of a mighty king arising; conversely, an infant arrives to homeless parents in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to evade covert authorities. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his message concerns compassion for other people, especially for the disadvantaged – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and protecting. The Savior's reaction to aggression is to offer the opposite cheek – not as a demonstration of passive acceptance, but as a means to teach the assailant; his approach to wrongdoing is that if someone steals your jacket you should give him your sweater also.
The obvious and clear truth that Christ in biblical accounts advocates for a type of extreme compassion focused on the impoverished is what has always made the Christian faith something of a provocative belief system: attractive to the general public, but owing to its inherent radicalness demanding to be controlled. In the fifties it was controlled by dilution – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Conflict for the Finest Within Us
So I have been heartened to witness the persistent defiance against Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has been substantial consolation to assist in constructing the movement that has demonstrated publicly via continuous gatherings, and likely has encouraged citizens to participate in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We will need to persist with it, and with identical determination, displaying national flags during all protests and calls to the highest qualities within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you welcome them and embrace them or not?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by reference to the finest in US heritage, just as Christianity is best defended through connection to elements that cause it to be special and magnificent, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the most negative of both America and religious tradition never occurred; it means both humility and faith, a mixture that serious national faithful ought to accept.
