The Trump phenomenon's most telling and defining instances – not its most important, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. During the period of a few weeks, the US president started showing all observers his intentions for a gilded ballroom twice the size compared to the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to build it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the existing assessment of deaths due to his slashing to foreign assistance is 600,000 and rising, and recently research projected his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No other president would have risked – genuinely, no other president would have imagined – independently wrecking major areas of the presidential residence in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of some of the richest Americans, the majority of whom conduct transactions with the government.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' into 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As confusing as it is to watch the president try to upend the traditional concept about democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion among Americans who wouldn't consider it entirely new. That encompasses people such as ourselves – among senior generations close to half – who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched over the years while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we learned about into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of love into an icon of hostility who blesses precisely the cruelties that he criticized in scripture; this change developed more slowly, across decades instead of months, however it is still disconcerting via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Jesus that I grew up with, as conceptually the Savior is the core within Christian belief, and since the fastest-growing cadre of Americans might have little sense about him since they are atheists or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with any other faith; but I do think that exist valuable insights of significant worth in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably definitely not the narrative of a mighty king appearing; conversely, a baby is born to homeless parents in a garage, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to avoid covert authorities. The child matures in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his teaching is about love for fellow humans, particularly for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but practical compassion, shown by providing food and housing. The Savior's reaction to violence is to turn the other cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a method to educate the attacker; his method regarding offenses is that if someone steals your outer garment you should give him your sweater too.
The evident and clear fact that Christ from scripture requests a kind of extreme compassion concentrated on the needy is what has always made Christianity something of a provocative belief system: attractive to the masses, but owing to its natural unconventionality requiring to be contained. In the fifties it was restrained through watering down – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Battle for the Highest Within Us
So I have been encouraged to observe the steadfast resistance to Trump emerge in this past year. It has provided substantial consolation to help build the movement that has protested openly in rally after rally, and seems to have inspired electorate to show up in numbers during minor elections. We shall require to maintain it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and calls to the finest aspects in US history.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the foreigner? Did you receive him and receive them or refuse?
The nation is most protected, to put it differently, through connection to the finest in US heritage, similar to Christianity is most protected through connection to elements that cause it to be special and beautiful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In all circumstances does it suggest pretending the most negative of both America and religious tradition did not happen; it means both humility and faith, a mixture that committed national faithful should embrace.
