The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and defining moments – not its most important, nor most harsh, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of several weeks, the nation's leader started showing the public his designs for an ornate dance hall double the dimensions of the White House and then commenced unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to build it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of fatalities from his cuts to foreign assistance is 600,000 and rising, and recently research projected his petroleum strategies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have attempted – genuinely, no other president would have conceived – unilaterally destroying large sections of the presidential residence in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of numerous the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom have business with public institutions.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' to 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the leader attempt to overturn the established notion regarding democracy and exchange it with its direct contrary, there is one large group within America who wouldn't consider it entirely new. This includes individuals like us – among senior generations almost a majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have observed across decades as rightwing evangelical churches transformed the Christ we grew up with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they turned a figure of compassion into an icon of hostility who blesses specifically the brutality that he denounced in the Gospel; this has happened at a slower pace, through multiple decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless disturbing through similar means, a confusing personal impact for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
Therefore allow me to outline the Savior from my childhood, because theoretically Christ is the focus of Christian religion, and because the quickly increasing segment of Americans could have minimal awareness of him because they identify as skeptics or uncertain individuals or nones. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with any other faith; but I do think that exist valuable insights of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is decidedly definitely not the account of an authoritative monarch appearing; instead, a baby is born to displaced parents in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to a different country to evade covert authorities. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his doctrine is about love for other people, specifically for the disadvantaged – and not a sentimental love, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and housing. The Savior's reaction to violence is to offer the other cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a method to teach the aggressor; his crime policy states that when a person pilfers your outer garment you should give the person your additional clothing too.
The evident and direct fact that Christ from scripture requests a type of profound affection centered on the poor has consistently rendered Christian religion something of a provocative belief system: engaging for the populace, but owing to its inherent radicalness demanding to be restrained. During the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Conflict for the Best Within Us
Hence I have become encouraged to observe the steadfast resistance regarding Trump develop in this past year. It has been substantial consolation to assist in constructing the campaign that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired voters to turn out in numbers during minor elections. We must have to maintain it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners at every demonstration and calls to the finest aspects of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you welcome them and welcome him or not?
The nation is most protected, in other words, through connection to the highest in US heritage, similar to Christianity is most protected through connection to elements that cause it to be unique and wonderful, specifically the model of Christ. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the most damaging of both America and Christianity did not happen; it represents both modesty and conviction, a combination that serious US believers ought to accept.
