The Trump phenomenon's most telling and defining occasions – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. During the period of several weeks, the American president began displaying everyone his designs for an ornate dance hall double the dimensions of the White House and then began independently demolishing the East Wing to construct it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of deaths due to his slashing to international aid amounts to 600,000 and rising, and presently an analysis projected his fossil fuel policies would kill another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have attempted – really, no former commander would have conceived – independently wrecking significant portions of the White House to build a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of multiple America's wealthiest, nearly all of which maintain dealings with the government.
We moved from 'the gentle will obtain the world' toward 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the chief executive try to upend the old idea of democracy and replace it with its polar opposite, there remains a substantial portion among Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. This includes individuals like us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were educated as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have observed over the years while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we grew up with into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they turned a figure of compassion into an icon of hostility who endorses specifically the brutality that he condemned in scripture; this has happened more gradually, through multiple decades instead of months, yet it remains unsettling through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Damaging Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Jesus that I grew up with, since in theory Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and since the fastest-growing cadre within America could have minimal awareness about him because they identify as skeptics or agnostics or spiritual independents. I raise no objection with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that exist valuable insights of great price in biblical accounts.
It is decidedly definitely not the narrative of a powerful ruler arising; instead, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a garage, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to evade secret police. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his message concerns compassion for fellow humans, specifically for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, demonstrated through nourishing and housing. The Savior's reaction to violence is to present the additional cheek – not as an act of submissive tolerance, but as a way to instruct the assailant; his method regarding offenses states that when an individual takes your jacket you must offer them your pullover too.
The obvious and clear truth that Christ in biblical accounts requests a form of profound affection focused on the impoverished has consistently rendered Christianity something of a controversial faith: appealing to the populace, but due to its natural unconventionality needing to be restrained. During the 1950s it was contained by dilution – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Highest Within Us
Hence I have become heartened to witness the persistent defiance regarding Trump arise over the last twelve months. It has provided great solace to assist in constructing the movement that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated voters to show up in large quantities in interim political contests. We will need to continue it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags during all protests and appeals to the highest qualities of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the foreigner? Did you welcome them and receive them or refuse?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by relationship to the best within national tradition, similar to Christianity is most protected through connection to elements that cause it to be distinctive and beautiful, specifically the model of Jesus. In all circumstances does it imply acting as if the worst regarding America and Christian faith never occurred; it means both humility and belief, a combination that genuine US believers should embrace.
