The Trump movement's most telling and characteristic moments – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of multiple weeks, the US president started showing the public his designs for a gilded ballroom twice the size compared to the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to construct it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the existing assessment of deaths resulting from his reductions to USAID is 600,000 and increasing, and this week a study forecast his energy policies would result in fatalities 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have dared – genuinely, no former commander would have imagined – solo demolishing major areas of the presidential residence to build a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of some of the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the world' to 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the chief executive attempt to overturn the traditional concept of democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment of Americans who should not find it entirely new. This includes individuals like us – among senior generations close to half – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches transformed the Christ we grew up with into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they turned a figure of affection into a figure of hostility who endorses specifically the brutality that he denounced in scripture; this change developed more slowly, through multiple decades as opposed to months, yet it remains unsettling through similar means, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Jesus from my childhood, as conceptually the Savior is the core of any Christian faith, and since the fastest-growing cadre within America could have minimal awareness of him because they identify as atheists or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with different religions; but I do think that contain precious wisdom of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is decidedly absolutely not the story of an authoritative monarch appearing; instead, a baby is born to displaced parents in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to avoid secret police. The baby grows up in simple surroundings, a working carpenter; his teaching focuses on affection for other people, especially for the poor – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and housing. Jesus' answer to aggression is to present the additional cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a method to educate the assailant; his method regarding offenses states that when someone steals your coat you should give them your pullover also.
The apparent and direct truth that Christ from scripture calls for a type of radical love focused on the needy is what has always made Christian religion rather a scandalous religion: appealing to the masses, but because of its intrinsic extremism needing to be contained. In the fifties it was restrained via weakening – Protestantism was so widespread that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Conflict for the Best Among Us
So I have been heartened to observe the persistent defiance regarding Trump develop in this past year. It has served as substantial consolation to participate in developing the movement that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired voters to turn out in large quantities during minor elections. We will need to maintain it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners throughout each rally and appeals to the highest qualities of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and receive them or not?
America is best defended, essentially, by reference to the finest within national tradition, just as Christianity is most protected through connection to elements that cause it to be distinctive and beautiful, specifically the model of Christ. In both situations does it suggest acting as if the most damaging about the nation and Christian faith did not happen; it represents both modesty and conviction, a mixture that committed American Christians should be comfortable with.
