The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and defining occasions – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most dangerous, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. In the course of multiple weeks, the US president started showing everyone his designs for an ornate dance hall two times larger compared to the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the East Wing portion to construct it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the existing assessment of fatalities from his cuts to foreign assistance is 600,000 and growing, and recently an analysis projected his energy policies would kill 1.3 million more. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have dared – really, no other president would have imagined – independently wrecking large sections of the White House to construct a royal-themed celebration hall, with the enthusiastic participation of some of the richest Americans, almost all of whom conduct transactions with federal agencies.
We transitioned from 'the gentle will obtain the world' to 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the president attempt to overturn the established notion of democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there remains a substantial portion within America who wouldn't consider it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have observed over the years while conservative evangelical congregations converted the Savior we were raised with into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. Essentially, they converted a persona of compassion into an icon of hate who approves precisely the cruelties that he criticized in scripture; this transformation occurred more slowly, across decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless unsettling in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Savior that I grew up with, since in theory Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and since the rapidly expanding group of Americans could have minimal awareness regarding him since they are skeptics or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with different religions; but I do think that there are pearls of significant worth in the Christian story.
It is decidedly not the story of a powerful ruler arising; instead, a baby is born to parents without shelter in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to escape undercover officers. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine is about love for others, specifically for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, shown by providing food and sheltering. Christ's response to hostility is to offer the opposite cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a method to instruct the attacker; his crime policy indicates that whenever an individual takes your jacket you ought to provide them your pullover also.
The obvious and clear truth that the Savior of the gospels calls for a type of radical love concentrated on the needy is what has always made Christian religion rather a scandalous religion: appealing to the populace, but because of its inherent radicalness demanding to be contained. During the 1950s it was restrained via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so widespread that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Finest Among Us
Hence I have become heartened to see the steadfast resistance to Trump emerge in this past year. It has provided significant comfort to assist in constructing the campaign that has demonstrated publicly via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired voters to participate in significant amounts during minor elections. We shall require to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags during all protests and requests to the best parts within national heritage.
We're going to be asked ... regarding how you welcomed the stranger? Did you accept these individuals and welcome him or reject?
The nation is most protected, essentially, by relationship to the finest in US heritage, similar to Christianity is best defended by reference to that which renders it special and magnificent, particularly the pattern of Christ. In all circumstances does it imply pretending the most damaging about the nation and Christian faith did not happen; it represents both meekness and conviction, a mixture that genuine US believers ought to accept.
