The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and characteristic instances – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating – occurred earlier this fall. In the course of several weeks, the US president started showing all observers his designs for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions of the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to build it.
He has committed acts countless times more severe – the present calculation of deaths from his cuts to international aid stands at 600,000 and growing, and presently an analysis forecast his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths an additional 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have attempted – really, no former commander would have imagined – independently wrecking large sections of the executive mansion to build a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of numerous the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom conduct transactions with the government.
We went from 'the gentle will obtain the world' toward 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the leader seek to颠覆 the old idea of democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there exists a significant segment within America who wouldn't consider it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were educated as conventional Protestant believers.
We have observed over the years as rightwing evangelical churches transformed the Christ we grew up with into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they converted a persona of love into a figure of hostility who blesses specifically the brutality that he criticized in the Gospel; this transformation occurred more gradually, over decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disturbing in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Christ that I grew up with, since in theory Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and because the rapidly expanding group of Americans may possess limited understanding about him as they consider themselves atheists or agnostics or nones. I raise no objection with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; yet I maintain that there are pearls of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is unquestionably absolutely not the account of a powerful ruler arising; conversely, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in an automotive shelter, who are forced to hastily depart to a different country to avoid covert authorities. The baby grows up in simple surroundings, an employed craftsman; his teaching is about love for other people, specifically for the disadvantaged – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and housing. Christ's response to violence is to offer the additional cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a way to educate the assailant; his method regarding offenses is that if someone steals your coat you ought to provide them your pullover as well.
The apparent and straightforward reality that the Jesus of the gospels calls for a form of extreme compassion concentrated on the poor has consistently rendered the Christian faith somewhat of a scandalous religion: engaging for the general public, but because of its natural unconventionality demanding to be contained. In the fifties it was controlled through watering down – Protestantism was so prevalent that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Highest Among Us
So I have been inspired to observe the persistent defiance to Trump arise in this past year. It has been substantial consolation to participate in developing the initiative that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and likely has encouraged voters to show up in large quantities in the off-year elections. We must have to maintain it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and requests to the finest aspects of American history.
We're going to be asked ... how did you receive the foreigner? Did you welcome them and receive them or refuse?
The country is optimally secured, to put it differently, through connection to the best about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured by reference to elements that cause it to be unique and wonderful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In both situations does it mean feigning the worst regarding America and Christian faith was nonexistent; it represents both meekness and belief, a mixture that committed national faithful should embrace.
