The Trump movement's most revealing and defining moments – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of a few weeks, the US president commenced revealing the public his intentions for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions compared to the White House and then commenced solo dismantling the eastern section to construct it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of fatalities resulting from his reductions to foreign assistance is 600,000 and growing, and this week a study forecast his petroleum strategies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No other president would have risked – truly, no previous leader would have contemplated – independently wrecking significant portions of the White House to build a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of some of America's wealthiest, the majority of whom conduct transactions with the government.
We went from 'the humble will receive the world' to 'the humble will perish of cholera'
As bewildering as it is to witness the president try to upend the established notion regarding democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there exists a significant segment within America who wouldn't consider it completely novel. That encompasses people such as ourselves – among senior generations a near majority – who were raised as conventional Protestant believers.
We have observed across decades as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we grew up with into exactly the opposite of our perception of his character. At its most basic, they turned a figure of love into a figure of animosity who approves precisely the cruelties that he denounced in the Gospel; this transformation occurred more slowly, through multiple decades instead of months, yet it remains disconcerting via comparable methods, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Jesus from my upbringing, as conceptually Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and given that the fastest-growing cadre among Americans could have minimal awareness of him as they consider themselves skeptics or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; but I do think that contain precious wisdom of great price in the Christian story.
It is emphatically absolutely not the account of a mighty king emerging; conversely, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a garage, who must quickly flee to another nation to evade covert authorities. The baby grows up in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his teaching focuses on affection for fellow humans, especially for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and sheltering. Christ's response to hostility is to turn the other cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a means to instruct the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing is that if a person pilfers your jacket you should give the person your additional clothing too.
The apparent and direct fact that the Jesus of the gospels calls for a form of extreme compassion centered on the poor is what has always made Christianity somewhat of a provocative belief system: attractive to the general public, but because of its natural unconventionality demanding to be contained. During the 1950s it was contained through watering down – Protestant Christianity was so prevalent that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Best of Us
Hence I have become heartened to see the determined opposition regarding Trump emerge during the previous year. It has served as substantial consolation to participate in developing the movement that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and likely has encouraged electorate to participate in numbers in the off-year elections. We will need to persist with it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners at every demonstration and appeals to the finest aspects in US history.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the foreigner? Did you accept these individuals and receive them or refuse?
The country is optimally secured, essentially, by reference to the finest about American history, similar to Christianity is optimally secured through connection to what makes it unique and beautiful, particularly the pattern of Christ. In all circumstances does it mean feigning the most negative about the nation and Christian faith never occurred; it signifies both meekness and faith, a blend that committed American Christians should be comfortable with.
