The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and distinctive instances – not its most important, nor most harsh, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. During the period of several weeks, the American president started showing all observers his intentions for an ornate dance hall two times larger of the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of fatalities resulting from his reductions to foreign assistance amounts to 600,000 and rising, and this week research predicted his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths an additional 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have dared – genuinely, no other president would have conceived – unilaterally destroying major areas of the executive mansion to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of multiple the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom conduct transactions with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the humble will receive the world' toward 'the humble will perish of cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the leader attempt to overturn the old idea regarding democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there is one large group of Americans who might not perceive it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – among senior generations a near majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched across decades as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we learned about into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. At its most basic, they turned a figure of compassion into a figure of hostility who blesses exactly the harshness that he criticized in biblical teachings; this has happened more slowly, across decades rather than months, however it is still unsettling through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Christ from my childhood, because theoretically Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and because the fastest-growing cadre within America could have minimal awareness about him since they are non-believers or agnostics or nones. I have no problem with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that contain precious wisdom of great price in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably not the story of a powerful ruler arising; rather, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to escape undercover officers. The infant develops in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his message concerns compassion for fellow humans, especially for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Jesus' answer to aggression is to present the other cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a method to instruct the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing states that when someone steals your coat you should give the person your additional clothing as well.
The evident and clear reality that the Savior from scripture requests a type of extreme compassion focused on the poor has perpetually caused the Christian faith somewhat of a provocative belief system: engaging for the populace, but owing to its intrinsic extremism requiring to be restrained. In the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Finest of Us
Hence I have become inspired to observe the steadfast resistance to Trump develop over the last twelve months. It has provided great solace to assist in constructing the campaign that has demonstrated publicly via continuous gatherings, and appears to have motivated voters to show up in large quantities in the off-year elections. We must have to maintain it, and with identical determination, featuring US banners during all protests and calls to the best parts of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the foreigner? Did you welcome them and welcome him or refuse?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by relationship to the finest in US heritage, just as Christianity is most protected by reference to elements that cause it to be unique and wonderful, which is the example of Christ. In both situations does it mean pretending the worst regarding America and Christianity never occurred; it means both humility and faith, a combination that committed US believers should be comfortable with.
