The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and characteristic instances – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. During the period of a few weeks, the nation's leader started showing the public his designs for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions compared to the White House and then began independently demolishing the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of deaths due to his slashing to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and rising, and recently a study projected his energy policies would kill an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have risked – really, no previous leader would have contemplated – solo demolishing large sections of the executive mansion to build a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of some of America's wealthiest, nearly all of which have business with the government.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the world' toward 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to witness the chief executive attempt to overturn the traditional concept regarding democracy and replace it with its direct contrary, there exists a significant segment among Americans who wouldn't consider it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – within elder demographics a near majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches transformed the Christ we grew up with into exactly the opposite of our perception of his character. Essentially, they turned a figure of compassion into an icon of hate who blesses specifically the brutality that he condemned in the Gospel; this change developed at a slower pace, through multiple decades rather than months, yet it remains disturbing through similar means, a confusing personal impact for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Christ from my upbringing, because theoretically the Savior is the core of any Christian faith, and since the fastest-growing cadre within America might have little sense about him as they consider themselves skeptics or uncertain individuals or nones. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that exist valuable insights of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is decidedly not the story of a powerful ruler emerging; conversely, an infant arrives to homeless parents in an automotive shelter, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to escape secret police. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his teaching focuses on affection for fellow humans, especially for the poor – not simply tender feelings, but tangible care, demonstrated through nourishing and housing. Christ's response to violence is to offer the additional cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a method to teach the attacker; his crime policy is that if someone steals your jacket you should give them your pullover as well.
The obvious and straightforward reality that Christ from scripture calls for a type of profound affection centered on the needy has perpetually caused Christianity rather a controversial faith: appealing to the populace, but due to its inherent radicalness demanding to be restrained. During the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – The Protestant faith was so prevalent that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Finest Within Us
So I have been encouraged to observe the steadfast resistance against Trump develop over the last twelve months. It has been great solace to help build the movement that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated electorate to participate in large quantities during minor elections. We will need to persist with it, and with identical determination, featuring US banners throughout each rally and appeals to the highest qualities in US history.
We're going to be asked ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you receive him and receive them or refuse?
The nation is most protected, essentially, through connection to the best in US heritage, just as Christianity is most protected by reference to that which renders it distinctive and magnificent, particularly the pattern of Christ. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the worst about the nation and Christian faith did not happen; it means both modesty and conviction, a combination that committed US believers should be comfortable with.
