The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and characteristic instances – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most dangerous, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – came earlier this autumn. Over the span of multiple weeks, the nation's leader started showing all observers his intentions for an ornate dance hall two times larger of the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the eastern section to erect it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the present calculation of casualties due to his slashing to USAID amounts to 600,000 and rising, and recently research forecast his petroleum strategies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have dared – really, no previous leader would have imagined – independently wrecking large sections of the presidential residence in order to erect a royal-themed celebration hall, with the active collaboration of multiple the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom conduct transactions with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the gentle will obtain the Earth' to 'the meek shall die of cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the leader attempt to overturn the traditional concept of democracy and exchange it with its complete opposite, there exists a significant segment among Americans who wouldn't consider it completely novel. That is those of us – within elder demographics a near majority – who were educated as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have observed throughout the years as politically conservative religious groups turned the Jesus we learned about into the complete reverse of our perception of his character. Essentially, they transformed an image of compassion into a figure of hate who endorses specifically the brutality that he criticized in biblical teachings; this has happened more slowly, through multiple decades as opposed to months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for numerous individuals.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Savior that I grew up with, since in theory the Savior is the core within Christian belief, and since the quickly increasing segment among Americans could have minimal awareness of him as they consider themselves atheists or doubters or nones. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; but I do think that there are pearls of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is emphatically definitely not the story of a mighty king emerging; rather, a baby is born to displaced parents in a storage space, who must quickly flee to a different country to avoid undercover officers. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his message is about love for fellow humans, particularly for the poor – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Christ's response to violence is to turn the other cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a method to teach the assailant; his approach to wrongdoing is that if a person pilfers your jacket you ought to provide him your sweater as well.
The obvious and straightforward fact that the Savior from scripture requests a form of radical love concentrated on the poor is what has always made Christianity somewhat of a provocative belief system: engaging for the general public, but owing to its intrinsic extremism demanding to be restrained. In the 1950s it was contained by dilution – Protestantism was so prevalent that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Conflict for the Finest Within Us
Therefore I have felt encouraged to see the steadfast resistance against Trump emerge in this past year. It has served as great solace to help build the initiative that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired citizens to show up in numbers in the off-year elections. We will need to continue it, and in the same spirit, displaying national flags at every demonstration and appeals to the best parts in US history.
We're going to be asked ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you welcome them and welcome him or reject?
America is best defended, in other words, through connection to the finest within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is most protected by relationship to that which renders it special and beautiful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In neither case does it mean pretending the worst about the nation and Christian faith never occurred; it means both modesty and belief, a combination that serious American Christians should embrace.
