The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and distinctive instances – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of multiple weeks, the American president commenced revealing everyone his intentions for an ornate dance hall double the dimensions of the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to build it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of casualties resulting from his reductions to USAID stands at 600,000 and increasing, and recently research forecast his petroleum strategies would kill another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have attempted – really, no other president would have imagined – independently wrecking significant portions of the presidential residence in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of numerous America's wealthiest, nearly all of which maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We went from 'the gentle will obtain the world' to 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the chief executive attempt to overturn the established notion about democracy and exchange it with its direct contrary, there exists a significant segment of Americans who should not find it entirely new. This includes individuals like us – within elder demographics close to half – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed throughout the years while conservative evangelical congregations converted the Savior we were raised with into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they transformed an image of compassion into an icon of hostility who approves precisely the cruelties that he condemned in biblical teachings; this has happened more slowly, over decades instead of months, yet it remains disturbing through similar means, a confusing personal impact for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Christ that I grew up with, as conceptually the Savior is the core of Christian religion, and because the quickly increasing segment within America may possess limited understanding about him because they identify as atheists or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with different religions; but I do think that there are pearls of significant worth in biblical accounts.
It is decidedly absolutely not the story of an authoritative monarch emerging; rather, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in a storage space, who are forced to hastily depart to a foreign land to evade undercover officers. The child matures in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine focuses on affection for others, particularly for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, demonstrated through nourishing and housing. Jesus' answer to hostility is to present the opposite cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a way to teach the attacker; his crime policy indicates that whenever an individual takes your coat you ought to provide the person your additional clothing also.
The evident and straightforward fact that Christ from scripture advocates for a form of extreme compassion concentrated on the needy has consistently rendered the Christian faith something of a scandalous religion: engaging for the general public, but because of its natural unconventionality needing to be contained. In the fifties it was restrained through watering down – Protestantism was so widespread that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Battle for the Finest Among Us
Hence I have become heartened to observe the determined opposition regarding Trump arise in this past year. It has been great solace to assist in constructing the campaign that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and likely has encouraged electorate to turn out in large quantities in the off-year elections. We shall require to persist with it, and in the same spirit, with American flags during all protests and calls to the finest aspects in US history.
We're going to be asked ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you receive him and welcome him or not?
The nation is most protected, in other words, through connection to the best within national tradition, similar to Christianity is best defended through connection to that which renders it unique and beautiful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In neither case does it imply pretending the worst about the nation and Christian faith did not happen; it represents both humility and belief, a mixture that serious American Christians should be comfortable with.
