The Trump movement's most illuminating and distinctive occasions – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of multiple weeks, the nation's leader started showing everyone his plans for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions compared to the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to build it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the existing assessment of fatalities from his cuts to foreign assistance amounts to 600,000 and growing, and this week an analysis forecast his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities another 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have dared – truly, no other president would have conceived – unilaterally destroying major areas of the presidential residence in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of numerous the richest Americans, almost all of whom maintain dealings with public institutions.
We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' to 'the meek shall die of cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the leader attempt to overturn the old idea of democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment within America who should not find it totally unfamiliar. This includes individuals like us – within elder demographics almost a majority – who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed across decades as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we grew up with into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they turned a figure of affection into an icon of animosity who endorses precisely the cruelties that he condemned in biblical teachings; this has happened more gradually, through multiple decades instead of months, yet it remains unsettling through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
Therefore allow me to outline the Jesus from my childhood, as conceptually Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and given that the rapidly expanding group of Americans might have little sense about him since they are skeptics or agnostics or nones. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that contain precious wisdom of great price in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably absolutely not the story of a powerful ruler arising; conversely, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in an automotive shelter, who are forced to hastily depart to a different country to evade secret police. The child matures in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his message concerns compassion for fellow humans, especially for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and housing. The Savior's reaction to violence is to turn the opposite cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a method to educate the assailant; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever an individual takes your coat you must offer them your pullover too.
The apparent and direct fact that Christ in biblical accounts calls for a kind of extreme compassion concentrated on the poor has perpetually caused Christian religion rather a controversial faith: attractive to the masses, but because of its inherent radicalness demanding to be restrained. During the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – Protestantism was so dominant that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Struggle for the Highest of Us
Hence I have become heartened to observe the steadfast resistance against Trump develop in this past year. It has served as significant comfort to participate in developing the movement that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated voters to show up in large quantities during minor elections. We must have to persist with it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and calls to the finest aspects of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the stranger? Did you accept these individuals and welcome him or refuse?
America is best defended, essentially, through connection to the finest about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is best defended through connection to what makes it unique and wonderful, specifically the model of Jesus. In neither case does it mean feigning the most negative of both America and religious tradition never occurred; it signifies both humility and belief, a mixture that serious US believers should embrace.
