The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and characteristic occasions – not its most significant, nor most harsh, nor most dangerous, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – occurred earlier this fall. In the course of multiple weeks, the US president commenced revealing the public his intentions for a gilded ballroom twice the size compared to the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has done things 10,000 times as bad – the existing assessment of deaths from his cuts to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and growing, and recently an analysis forecast his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have risked – really, no previous leader would have imagined – solo demolishing large sections of the executive mansion in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of multiple the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom maintain dealings with the government.
We went from 'the humble will receive the planet' toward 'the humble will perish from cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the president attempt to overturn the traditional concept of democracy and substitute it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment among Americans who might not perceive it completely novel. This includes individuals like us – among senior generations close to half – who were educated as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched across decades as politically conservative religious groups turned the Jesus we learned about into the complete reverse of our perception of his character. At its most basic, they converted a persona of affection into an icon of hostility who blesses exactly the harshness that he condemned in biblical teachings; this transformation occurred more gradually, through multiple decades rather than months, yet it remains unsettling in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Savior from my childhood, since in theory the Savior is the core within Christian belief, and since the fastest-growing cadre among Americans may possess limited understanding of him since they are skeptics or uncertain individuals or spiritual independents. I raise no objection with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that there are pearls of substantial value in biblical accounts.
It is unquestionably not the narrative of a powerful ruler emerging; conversely, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a storage space, who must quickly flee to a different country to avoid secret police. The infant develops in humble circumstances, a working carpenter; his doctrine is about love for other people, especially for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but tangible care, demonstrated through nourishing and sheltering. Christ's response to violence is to turn the opposite cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a method to educate the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing is that if someone steals your coat you must offer him your sweater too.
The obvious and straightforward truth that the Jesus from scripture calls for a kind of profound affection concentrated on the needy has consistently rendered Christianity somewhat of a scandalous religion: appealing to the populace, but due to its natural unconventionality demanding to be contained. During the 1950s it was contained by dilution – Protestantism was so dominant that it basically baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Highest of Us
Hence I have become encouraged to observe the determined opposition regarding Trump emerge in this past year. It has been great solace to participate in developing the campaign that has protested openly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated electorate to turn out in large quantities during minor elections. We shall require to persist with it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners throughout each rally and requests to the highest qualities of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the foreigner? Did you accept these individuals and receive them or reject?
The country is optimally secured, essentially, by reference to the finest about American history, just as Christianity is most protected by relationship to that which renders it special and beautiful, which is the example of the Savior. In all circumstances does it suggest acting as if the most damaging about the nation and Christian faith never occurred; it signifies both humility and belief, a combination that serious US believers should embrace.
