The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and characteristic moments – not its most significant, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of a few weeks, the American president started showing the public his plans for a lavish reception room twice the size of the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the East Wing portion to construct it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of deaths due to his slashing to USAID is 600,000 and growing, and recently a study predicted his petroleum strategies would result in fatalities another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have attempted – really, no previous leader would have contemplated – independently wrecking large sections of the White House to build a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of some of America's wealthiest, nearly all of which conduct transactions with the government.
We transitioned from 'the gentle will obtain the Earth' into 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the chief executive attempt to overturn the established notion regarding democracy and substitute it with its polar opposite, there remains a substantial portion of Americans who might not perceive it completely novel. This includes individuals like us – in older age cohorts close to half – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have watched over the years while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we were raised with into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they converted a persona of love into an icon of hostility who endorses specifically the brutality that he criticized in the Gospel; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, through multiple decades instead of months, however it is still unsettling in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for numerous individuals.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
Therefore allow me to outline the Jesus that I grew up with, because theoretically the Savior is the core of Christian religion, and because the fastest-growing cadre among Americans could have minimal awareness of him because they identify as atheists or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with any other faith; but I do think that exist valuable insights of great price in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably absolutely not the narrative of a mighty king emerging; rather, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to escape secret police. The baby grows up in simple surroundings, a working carpenter; his message focuses on affection for fellow humans, especially for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but tangible care, shown by providing food and protecting. Christ's response to violence is to offer the additional cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a method to educate the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing states that when someone steals your jacket you should give the person your additional clothing as well.
The obvious and clear truth that Christ of the gospels calls for a type of extreme compassion concentrated on the poor has perpetually caused Christianity something of a scandalous religion: attractive to the populace, but owing to its natural unconventionality needing to be controlled. In the fifties it was contained via weakening – The Protestant faith was so prevalent that it basically baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Highest of Us
Hence I have become encouraged to witness the determined opposition regarding Trump arise in this past year. It has provided great solace to assist in constructing the movement that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired electorate to turn out in numbers in the off-year elections. We shall require to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags during all protests and requests to the best parts in US history.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the foreigner? Did you accept these individuals and welcome him or reject?
The country is optimally secured, to put it differently, through connection to the best in US heritage, exactly as the Christian faith is best defended by reference to that which renders it distinctive and magnificent, particularly the pattern of Jesus. In both situations does it mean acting as if the most negative of both America and Christianity did not happen; it means both modesty and conviction, a blend that serious American Christians should embrace.
