Trumpism's most telling and distinctive moments – not its most significant, nor most harsh, nor most dangerous, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating – occurred earlier this fall. In the course of a few weeks, the nation's leader commenced revealing everyone his intentions for a lavish reception room double the dimensions compared to the White House and then commenced solo dismantling the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of fatalities resulting from his reductions to USAID stands at 600,000 and growing, and recently research predicted his energy policies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have risked – really, no former commander would have contemplated – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the presidential residence to construct a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of numerous the nation's most affluent, nearly all of which conduct transactions with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the planet' into 'the gentle will succumb from cholera'
As bewildering as it is to witness the leader attempt to overturn the traditional concept about democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there is one large group among Americans who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – among senior generations close to half – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have observed throughout the years while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we learned about into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. Essentially, they turned a figure of compassion into a figure of animosity who endorses specifically the brutality that he criticized in the Gospel; this change developed more slowly, through multiple decades instead of months, however it is still disconcerting through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Christ that I grew up with, as conceptually Christ is the focus within Christian belief, and since the fastest-growing cadre within America may possess limited understanding of him since they are skeptics or doubters or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with any of these traditions, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that exist valuable insights of great price within Christian narrative.
It is unquestionably absolutely not the narrative of a powerful ruler arising; conversely, an infant arrives to displaced parents in a garage, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to escape undercover officers. The infant develops in humble circumstances, a working carpenter; his teaching is about love for others, particularly for the disadvantaged – not merely emotional affection, but a concrete one, demonstrated through nourishing and sheltering. Jesus' answer to hostility is to turn the other cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a way to teach the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever a person pilfers your outer garment you ought to provide the person your additional clothing also.
The evident and clear reality that the Jesus from scripture advocates for a kind of extreme compassion focused on the poor has consistently rendered Christian religion rather a controversial faith: appealing to the masses, but because of its inherent radicalness requiring to be restrained. In the 1950s it was contained through watering down – Protestantism was so widespread that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Best of Us
So I have been inspired to witness the steadfast resistance to Trump develop in this past year. It has served as great solace to assist in constructing the movement that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired citizens to show up in large quantities during minor elections. We must have to maintain it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and calls to the highest qualities in US history.
We're going to be asked ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you welcome them and receive them or refuse?
The country is optimally secured, essentially, by relationship to the best about American history, just as Christianity is most protected by reference to what makes it special and wonderful, which is the example of Christ. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the most damaging about the nation and Christianity never occurred; it represents both modesty and conviction, a combination that committed American Christians ought to accept.
