The Trump movement's most telling and distinctive instances – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most dangerous, nor most senseless, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of multiple weeks, the American president started showing everyone his plans for a lavish reception room twice the size of the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to build it.
He has committed acts countless times more severe – the present calculation of fatalities resulting from his reductions to international aid stands at 600,000 and growing, and this week an analysis predicted his energy policies would kill an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have risked – really, no other president would have conceived – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the presidential residence in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of multiple the richest Americans, almost all of whom maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' toward 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the president attempt to overturn the old idea of democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there remains a substantial portion of Americans who wouldn't consider it entirely new. That encompasses people such as ourselves – within elder demographics almost a majority – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have watched across decades as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we learned about into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they converted a persona of love into an icon of animosity who endorses exactly the harshness that he denounced in the Gospel; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, across decades as opposed to months, but it is nonetheless disturbing via comparable methods, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Christ that I grew up with, because theoretically the Savior is the core within Christian belief, and since the rapidly expanding group among Americans may possess limited understanding of him since they are non-believers or uncertain individuals or nones. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that exist valuable insights of great price in biblical accounts.
It is decidedly absolutely not the story of an authoritative monarch appearing; rather, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to avoid covert authorities. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his message concerns compassion for others, especially for the disadvantaged – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, shown by providing food and sheltering. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to present the opposite cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a means to teach the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing is that if an individual takes your coat you must offer him your sweater also.
The apparent and direct reality that the Savior in biblical accounts advocates for a form of profound affection concentrated on the impoverished has perpetually caused the Christian faith rather a scandalous religion: engaging for the general public, but owing to its inherent radicalness needing to be contained. In the 1950s it was contained through watering down – Protestant Christianity was so widespread that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Conflict for the Highest of Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to see the determined opposition to Trump develop in this past year. It has provided substantial consolation to participate in developing the campaign that has protested openly via continuous gatherings, and appears to have motivated voters to turn out in large quantities in the off-year elections. We will need to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, displaying national flags throughout each rally and appeals to the highest qualities within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the immigrant? Did you welcome them and receive them or not?
America is best defended, in other words, by relationship to the best within national tradition, just as Christianity is best defended by relationship to that which renders it distinctive and beautiful, which is the example of the Savior. In neither case does it mean acting as if the most damaging about the nation and Christian faith was nonexistent; it represents both meekness and faith, a mixture that committed American Christians ought to accept.
