Trumpism's most revealing and characteristic moments – not its most important, nor most harsh, nor most threatening, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of multiple weeks, the US president started showing everyone his intentions for an ornate dance hall two times larger of the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the East Wing to build it.
He has done things 10,000 times as bad – the present calculation of fatalities from his cuts to international aid stands at 600,000 and rising, and this week a study forecast his energy policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have attempted – genuinely, no other president would have conceived – solo demolishing large sections of the executive mansion to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of numerous America's wealthiest, the majority of whom maintain dealings with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the gentle will obtain the Earth' into 'the humble will perish from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the president attempt to overturn the established notion regarding democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there is one large group of Americans who might not perceive it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – among senior generations a near majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched across decades as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we grew up with into the complete reverse of our perception of his character. Fundamentally, they converted a persona of compassion into an icon of hate who approves precisely the cruelties that he criticized in scripture; this transformation occurred more gradually, through multiple decades as opposed to months, however it is still disconcerting via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Savior from my childhood, as conceptually the Savior is the core within Christian belief, and given that the quickly increasing segment within America might have little sense of him as they consider themselves skeptics or uncertain individuals or spiritual independents. I raise no objection with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; however I believe that there are pearls of substantial value in biblical accounts.
It is emphatically absolutely not the account of a mighty king emerging; instead, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in an automotive shelter, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to evade undercover officers. The infant develops in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine is about love for other people, especially for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and housing. The Savior's reaction to violence is to present the additional cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a means to instruct the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever someone steals your outer garment you must offer the person your additional clothing too.
The evident and direct truth that Christ from scripture requests a type of radical love concentrated on the needy is what has always made Christian religion something of a scandalous religion: attractive to the masses, but because of its intrinsic extremism needing to be controlled. In the fifties it was restrained by dilution – Protestant Christianity was so widespread that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Conflict for the Highest of Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to observe the persistent defiance against Trump develop in this past year. It has served as substantial consolation to participate in developing the campaign that has protested openly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated citizens to show up in large quantities in the off-year elections. We must have to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, displaying national flags during all protests and requests to the finest aspects of American history.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you receive him and welcome him or reject?
The nation is most protected, in other words, by relationship to the best about American history, just as Christianity is most protected through connection to what makes it unique and magnificent, which is the example of Christ. In both situations does it imply feigning the most negative about the nation and Christianity never occurred; it represents both modesty and faith, a combination that genuine American Christians should embrace.
