The Trump movement's most revealing and defining moments – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most dangerous, nor most senseless, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of a few weeks, the American president began displaying all observers his designs for an ornate dance hall double the dimensions of the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the East Wing portion to construct it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of fatalities resulting from his reductions to USAID stands at 600,000 and increasing, and this week research predicted his energy policies would kill an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have dared – truly, no other president would have imagined – independently wrecking significant portions of the White House to build a royal-themed celebration hall, with the direct cooperation of multiple the richest Americans, the majority of whom maintain dealings with public institutions.
We went from 'the gentle will obtain the Earth' into 'the gentle will succumb from cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the president attempt to overturn the old idea regarding democracy and exchange it with its direct contrary, there is one large group among Americans who should not find it completely novel. That encompasses people such as ourselves – in older age cohorts close to half – who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched over the years while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we learned about into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. Fundamentally, they converted a persona of compassion into a figure of hate who approves exactly the harshness that he criticized in the Gospel; this change developed at a slower pace, through multiple decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting via comparable methods, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Savior from my upbringing, because theoretically the Savior is the core of Christian religion, and because the quickly increasing segment of Americans might have little sense about him as they consider themselves non-believers or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; but I do think that there are pearls of substantial value in biblical accounts.
It is unquestionably definitely not the narrative of a powerful ruler arising; conversely, a baby is born to parents without shelter in an automotive shelter, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to evade covert authorities. The infant develops in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his message focuses on affection for fellow humans, particularly for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and housing. Jesus' answer to hostility is to turn the other cheek – not as a gesture of submissive tolerance, but as a way to teach the assailant; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever someone steals your outer garment you must offer him your sweater also.
The obvious and clear reality that the Jesus from scripture advocates for a type of radical love focused on the impoverished has consistently rendered the Christian faith rather a controversial faith: appealing to the populace, but due to its intrinsic extremism demanding to be controlled. In the 1950s it was contained by dilution – Protestant Christianity was so widespread that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Best of Us
So I have been heartened to see the steadfast resistance to Trump develop over the last twelve months. It has served as substantial consolation to assist in constructing the campaign that has taken to the streets in rally after rally, and seems to have inspired electorate to participate in numbers in interim political contests. We will need to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags during all protests and calls to the best parts of American history.
We're going to be asked ... how did you receive the foreigner? Did you receive him and welcome him or reject?
America is best defended, in other words, through connection to the highest within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured by relationship to elements that cause it to be special and magnificent, which is the example of Christ. In all circumstances does it mean pretending the worst regarding America and Christian faith was nonexistent; it represents both meekness and faith, a blend that serious US believers ought to accept.
