The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and defining occasions – not its most significant, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of multiple weeks, the nation's leader began displaying everyone his plans for an ornate dance hall two times larger compared to the White House and then began solo dismantling the East Wing to build it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the existing assessment of deaths from his cuts to USAID is 600,000 and increasing, and this week an analysis projected his energy policies would kill an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have risked – truly, no previous leader would have imagined – independently wrecking large sections of the White House in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of numerous America's wealthiest, almost all of whom maintain dealings with the government.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' to 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to observe the leader attempt to overturn the traditional concept of democracy and exchange it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion of Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – in older age cohorts close to half – who were brought up as conventional Protestant believers.
We have witnessed across decades as politically conservative religious groups turned the Jesus we grew up with into the complete reverse of our perception of his character. At its most basic, they converted a persona of love into an icon of hostility who approves specifically the brutality that he condemned in biblical teachings; this has happened more gradually, over decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless unsettling through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Christ that I grew up with, as conceptually the Savior is the core of Christian religion, and given that the rapidly expanding group within America could have minimal awareness regarding him since they are atheists or doubters or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that contain precious wisdom of substantial value in biblical accounts.
It is unquestionably not the account of a powerful ruler emerging; instead, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a storage space, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to avoid covert authorities. The infant develops in humble circumstances, 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 protecting. Jesus' answer to violence is to offer the additional cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a method to instruct the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever someone steals your outer garment you ought to provide the person your additional clothing also.
The apparent and direct reality that the Savior in biblical accounts advocates for a form of profound affection centered on the poor is what has always made Christian religion rather a provocative belief system: appealing to the general public, but owing to its natural unconventionality demanding to be restrained. In the fifties it was restrained by dilution – The Protestant faith was so dominant that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Battle for the Best of Us
So I have been heartened to witness the steadfast resistance against Trump emerge during the previous year. It has provided great solace to participate in developing the movement that has demonstrated publicly via continuous gatherings, and appears to have motivated voters to participate in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We will need to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags at every demonstration and appeals to the best parts of American history.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the immigrant? Did you receive him and embrace them or not?
America is best defended, in other words, through connection to the finest within national tradition, just as Christianity is best defended by relationship to what makes it unique and magnificent, specifically the model of Jesus. In neither case does it imply pretending the most damaging of both America and religious tradition never occurred; it means both modesty and faith, a blend that serious American Christians should be comfortable with.
