The Trump movement's most telling and characteristic moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of several weeks, the American president started showing everyone his plans for a lavish reception room two times larger than the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the East Wing to build it.
He has performed deeds countless times more severe – the present calculation of fatalities due to his slashing to foreign assistance amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and this week an analysis predicted his energy policies would kill 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No other president would have risked – genuinely, no former commander would have conceived – unilaterally destroying large sections of the White House to construct a royal-themed celebration hall, with the enthusiastic participation of multiple the richest Americans, the majority of whom have business with the government.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the world' toward 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the leader attempt to overturn the established notion about democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there exists a significant segment within America who should not find it entirely new. That encompasses people such as ourselves – among senior generations close to half – who were brought up as conventional Protestant believers.
We have observed over the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we were raised with into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they turned a figure of compassion into a symbol of animosity who endorses precisely the cruelties that he condemned in the Gospel; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, through multiple decades rather than months, yet it remains disconcerting via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.
A Toxic Christianity Establishes Itself
Hence I shall explain the Christ that I grew up with, since in theory Jesus is the center of Christian religion, and given that the rapidly expanding group among Americans could have minimal awareness of him because they identify as non-believers or agnostics or spiritual independents. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that there are pearls of great price in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably not the narrative of an authoritative monarch emerging; rather, a baby is born to parents without shelter in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to escape covert authorities. The child matures in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his message is about love for others, specifically for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but tangible care, demonstrated through nourishing and sheltering. Christ's response to hostility is to present the opposite cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a way to teach the assailant; his approach to wrongdoing is that if an individual takes your outer garment you should give him your sweater too.
The obvious and straightforward fact that the Savior from scripture requests a form of radical love centered on the impoverished has consistently rendered Christianity somewhat of a provocative belief system: attractive to the masses, but due to its inherent radicalness demanding to be restrained. During the 1950s it was contained via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it basically baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Finest Among Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to witness the steadfast resistance against Trump develop in this past year. It has served as significant comfort to help build the movement that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired voters to participate in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We will need to maintain it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners during all protests and requests to the best parts within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you receive him and embrace them or reject?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by reference to the highest within national tradition, just as Christianity is optimally secured by reference to elements that cause it to be distinctive and magnificent, particularly the pattern of Christ. In all circumstances does it suggest feigning the most damaging of both America and religious tradition was nonexistent; it means both modesty and belief, a combination that genuine US believers should embrace.
