The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and defining moments – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of a few weeks, the US president started showing all observers his designs for a gilded ballroom twice the size than the White House and then commenced unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to build it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the existing assessment of fatalities resulting from his reductions to international aid is 600,000 and rising, and recently an analysis forecast his energy policies would kill another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have dared – really, no previous leader would have conceived – solo demolishing significant portions of the presidential residence in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of multiple the richest Americans, almost all of whom have business with the government.
We moved from 'the gentle will obtain the world' into 'the humble will perish of cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the leader attempt to overturn the old idea about democracy and exchange it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion within America who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – among senior generations almost a majority – who were educated as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched over the years while conservative evangelical congregations converted the Savior we were raised with into the complete reverse of our perception of his character. Fundamentally, they turned a figure of love into a figure of hate who endorses specifically the brutality that he denounced in biblical teachings; this has happened at a slower pace, through multiple decades instead of months, however it is still disturbing via comparable methods, a bewildering emotional blow for numerous individuals.
A Harmful Christianity Establishes Itself
Hence I shall explain the Jesus from my childhood, since in theory the Savior is the core of Christian religion, and since the quickly increasing segment within America may possess limited understanding about him because they identify as skeptics or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with any other faith; but I do think that exist valuable insights of significant worth in the Christian story.
It is decidedly not the account of a powerful ruler appearing; conversely, an infant arrives to homeless parents in a garage, who are forced to hastily depart to a different country to escape undercover officers. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his message concerns compassion for fellow humans, particularly for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and sheltering. Christ's response to violence is to turn the additional cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a way to instruct the assailant; his method regarding offenses is that if a person pilfers your outer garment you should give them your pullover as well.
The obvious and clear reality that Christ from scripture requests a form of profound affection centered on the poor is what has always made the Christian faith somewhat of a provocative belief system: appealing to the populace, but because of its natural unconventionality demanding to be controlled. In the fifties it was contained through watering down – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Finest of Us
Hence I have become heartened to witness the determined opposition to Trump arise over the last twelve months. It has served as significant comfort to participate in developing the movement that has taken to the streets through repeated demonstrations, and likely has encouraged voters to participate in large quantities in interim political contests. We shall require to persist with it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and requests to the best parts of American history.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you accept these individuals and receive them or not?
America is best defended, in other words, through connection to the highest within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is best defended by reference to elements that cause it to be special and wonderful, which is the example of Jesus. In all circumstances does it imply feigning the most damaging regarding America and Christian faith never occurred; it signifies both modesty and faith, a blend that serious US believers should be comfortable with.
