Trumpism's most illuminating and characteristic moments – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating – came earlier this autumn. Over the span of a few weeks, the nation's leader started showing the public his designs for a lavish reception room two times larger of the White House and then began independently demolishing the eastern section to construct it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of deaths from his cuts to foreign assistance is 600,000 and increasing, and recently an analysis predicted his petroleum strategies would kill an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No former leader would have dared – really, no other president would have conceived – unilaterally destroying large sections of the presidential residence to construct a royal-themed celebration hall, with the active collaboration of numerous America's wealthiest, almost all of whom conduct transactions with public institutions.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' to 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the president seek to颠覆 the old idea regarding democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there is one large group of Americans who might not perceive it completely novel. That encompasses people such as ourselves – within elder demographics a near majority – who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have observed over the years as politically conservative religious groups turned the Jesus we learned about into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they turned a figure of love into a symbol of animosity who blesses specifically the brutality that he criticized in biblical teachings; this has happened at a slower pace, across decades instead of months, however it is still disturbing through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Jesus that I grew up with, because theoretically Christ is the focus within Christian belief, and given that the quickly increasing segment of Americans could have minimal awareness about him because they identify as skeptics or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that there are pearls of great price in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably definitely not the account of an authoritative monarch emerging; rather, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in an automotive shelter, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to escape undercover officers. The child matures in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his teaching is about love for fellow humans, specifically for the disadvantaged – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, shown by providing food and protecting. Christ's response to aggression is to offer the opposite cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a way to instruct the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing states that when an individual takes your jacket you ought to provide him your sweater as well.
The apparent and straightforward reality that Christ in biblical accounts requests a form of profound affection concentrated on the impoverished is what has always made Christian religion rather a provocative belief system: attractive to the general public, but due to its natural unconventionality requiring to be restrained. In the fifties it was contained through watering down – Protestantism was so widespread that it essentially blessed current circumstances.
A Conflict for the Highest of Us
So I have been encouraged to observe the persistent defiance against Trump develop in this past year. It has served as great solace to participate in developing the initiative that has taken to the streets through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated citizens to participate in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We must have to persist with it, and in the same spirit, with American flags during all protests and requests to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you welcome them and welcome him or not?
America is best defended, in other words, by reference to the finest about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured through connection to what makes it distinctive and beautiful, specifically the model of the Savior. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the worst about the nation and religious tradition never occurred; it signifies both modesty and belief, a combination that genuine American Christians ought to accept.
