The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and defining moments – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. During the period of multiple weeks, the US president began displaying all observers his plans for a gilded ballroom twice the size of the White House and then began solo dismantling the East Wing portion to build it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the existing assessment of deaths from his cuts to foreign assistance is 600,000 and rising, and this week research predicted his energy policies would kill 1.3 million more. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have attempted – really, no other president would have contemplated – solo demolishing major areas of the White House to build a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of some of the richest Americans, almost all of whom maintain dealings with public institutions.
We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' to 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the president attempt to overturn the traditional concept of democracy and replace it with its polar opposite, there is one large group among Americans who might not perceive it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – among senior generations close to half – who were educated within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches transformed the Christ we learned about into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they transformed an image of compassion into a figure of hate who endorses precisely the cruelties that he denounced in biblical teachings; this transformation occurred more slowly, through multiple decades rather than months, however it is still disconcerting via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Christ from my childhood, since in theory Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and because the fastest-growing cadre among Americans may possess limited understanding regarding him as they consider themselves non-believers or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that exist valuable insights of great price in the Christian story.
It is emphatically not the story of an authoritative monarch appearing; instead, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in a storage space, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to escape covert authorities. The baby grows up in simple surroundings, a working carpenter; his teaching concerns compassion for fellow humans, specifically for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but a concrete one, demonstrated through nourishing and protecting. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to present the additional cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a method to teach the aggressor; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever an individual takes your coat you should give the person your additional clothing also.
The apparent and direct reality that the Savior of the gospels requests a kind of extreme compassion focused on the needy has perpetually caused Christianity somewhat of a provocative belief system: attractive to the populace, but due to its inherent radicalness demanding to be contained. In the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Battle for the Best Within Us
Hence I have become heartened to witness the persistent defiance regarding Trump develop during the previous year. It has been significant comfort to help build the initiative that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired citizens to turn out in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We shall require to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, featuring US banners throughout each rally and appeals to the finest aspects in US history.
We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the immigrant? Did you receive him and receive them or refuse?
The country is optimally secured, to put it differently, by relationship to the best within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is most protected through connection to that which renders it unique and magnificent, which is the example of Jesus. In all circumstances does it mean feigning the worst regarding America and Christian faith never occurred; it means both modesty and faith, a blend that genuine national faithful should embrace.
