The Trump phenomenon's most telling and characteristic instances – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of several weeks, the US president began displaying the public his plans for an ornate dance hall double the dimensions than the White House and then commenced unilaterally ripping down the East Wing portion to build it.
He has performed deeds countless times more severe – the existing assessment of deaths resulting from his reductions to USAID stands at 600,000 and rising, and this week an analysis predicted his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No former leader would have risked – really, no other president would have imagined – unilaterally destroying major areas of the executive mansion in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the enthusiastic participation of multiple the nation's most affluent, nearly all of which maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the planet' into 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the leader attempt to overturn the old idea of democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there exists a significant segment within America who should not find it completely novel. This includes individuals like us – in older age cohorts close to half – 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 who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they converted a persona of affection into a figure of hate who blesses precisely the cruelties that he criticized in biblical teachings; this change developed at a slower pace, across decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting via comparable methods, a bewildering emotional blow for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
Hence I shall explain the Savior that I grew up with, because theoretically Christ is the focus within Christian belief, and because the rapidly expanding group among Americans could have minimal awareness regarding him since they are skeptics or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with any of these traditions, nor with any other faith; however I believe that there are pearls of great price in the Christian story.
It is decidedly not the story of a mighty king appearing; rather, a baby is born to displaced parents in an automotive shelter, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to escape undercover officers. The child matures in humble circumstances, a working carpenter; his doctrine is about love for fellow humans, especially for the poor – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, shown by providing food and sheltering. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to offer the additional cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a means to instruct the attacker; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever someone steals your outer garment you must offer him your sweater as well.
The apparent and direct truth that Christ of the gospels calls for a form of extreme compassion focused on the needy has consistently rendered Christian religion something of a scandalous religion: attractive to the masses, but because of its natural unconventionality needing to be contained. In the 1950s it was controlled via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Struggle for the Best of Us
So I have been encouraged to observe the steadfast resistance regarding Trump develop during the previous year. It has provided substantial consolation to help build the campaign that has taken to the streets in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated voters to turn out in numbers during minor elections. We shall require to continue it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and requests to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the foreigner? Did you accept these individuals and welcome him or not?
The nation is most protected, in other words, through connection to the best within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is most protected through connection to elements that cause it to be special and beautiful, which is the example of Christ. In both situations does it imply pretending the most damaging of both America and Christianity was nonexistent; it represents both modesty and belief, a mixture that serious US believers should embrace.
