Trumpism's most revealing and defining instances – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of multiple weeks, the US president started showing everyone his designs for an ornate dance hall twice the size of the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to erect it.
He has done things countless times more severe – the current estimate of deaths due to his slashing to international aid amounts to 600,000 and growing, and recently an analysis predicted his petroleum strategies would kill 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No former leader would have dared – really, no previous leader would have conceived – unilaterally destroying major areas of the White House to build a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of numerous America's wealthiest, nearly all of which maintain dealings with the government.
We moved from 'the gentle will obtain the Earth' to 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the leader attempt to overturn the old idea about democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there is one large group of Americans who might not perceive it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were educated as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed across decades as politically conservative religious groups transformed the Christ we grew up with into the total contrary of our perception of his character. At its most basic, they converted a persona of love into an icon of hate who blesses exactly the harshness that he criticized in scripture; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, across decades as opposed to months, but it is nonetheless disturbing via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
Therefore allow me to outline the Christ from my childhood, since in theory Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and since the rapidly expanding group within America could have minimal awareness about him since they are skeptics or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with these different approaches, nor with different religions; but I do think that exist valuable insights of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably absolutely not the story of an authoritative monarch emerging; conversely, a baby is born to homeless parents in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to evade covert authorities. The child matures in simple surroundings, an employed craftsman; his message focuses on affection for others, especially for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, shown by providing food and housing. Jesus' answer to aggression is to offer the other cheek – not as an act of submissive tolerance, but as a way to instruct the assailant; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever a person pilfers your coat you should give them your pullover as well.
The apparent and clear fact that the Savior of the gospels requests a form of profound affection concentrated on the impoverished is what has always made Christian religion somewhat of a scandalous religion: engaging for the general public, but due to its intrinsic extremism needing to be restrained. In the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – Protestantism was so widespread that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Conflict for the Finest Within Us
Therefore I have felt encouraged to observe the persistent defiance to Trump develop during the previous year. It has been significant comfort to help build the campaign that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated electorate to turn out in numbers in the off-year elections. We will need to persist with it, and with identical determination, with American flags throughout each rally and requests to the finest aspects in US history.
We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the foreigner? Did you receive him and embrace them or refuse?
The nation is most protected, in other words, through connection to the best in US heritage, just as Christianity is best defended by reference to elements that cause it to be special and magnificent, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In neither case does it imply feigning the most negative regarding America and religious tradition never occurred; it means both humility and faith, a mixture that serious American Christians should embrace.
