The Trump movement's most revealing and characteristic moments – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most dangerous, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of several weeks, the American president started showing the public his intentions for an ornate dance hall double the dimensions of the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the eastern section to build it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of casualties resulting from his reductions to USAID is 600,000 and growing, and presently an analysis predicted his petroleum strategies would kill another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No former leader would have attempted – truly, no other president would have contemplated – unilaterally destroying large sections of the White House to construct a royal-themed celebration hall, with the enthusiastic participation of some of America's wealthiest, nearly all of which have business with federal agencies.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the planet' toward 'the humble will perish from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the president attempt to overturn the established notion of democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there exists a significant segment within America who wouldn't consider it entirely new. That is those of us – within elder demographics close to half – who were raised as conventional Protestant believers.
We have observed across decades as politically conservative religious groups turned the Jesus we were raised with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. Fundamentally, they converted a persona of compassion into an icon of hate who blesses exactly the harshness that he criticized in the Gospel; this transformation occurred more slowly, across decades rather than months, yet it remains disconcerting via comparable methods, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Savior from my upbringing, since in theory Jesus is the center of Christian religion, and given that the fastest-growing cadre of Americans might have little sense regarding him since they are atheists or doubters or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with these various perspectives, nor with any other faith; but I do think that exist valuable insights of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is emphatically not the account of an authoritative monarch emerging; rather, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to evade covert authorities. The child matures in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine is about love for other people, specifically for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but a concrete one, demonstrated through nourishing and sheltering. The Savior's reaction to aggression is to present the opposite cheek – not as a demonstration of passive acceptance, but as a way to teach the assailant; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever someone steals your outer garment you must offer him your sweater too.
The obvious and direct reality that the Savior in biblical accounts requests a kind of radical love concentrated on the needy is what has always made Christianity somewhat of a controversial faith: attractive to the masses, but owing to its intrinsic extremism requiring to be restrained. In the fifties it was controlled via weakening – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Best of Us
So I have been encouraged to witness the persistent defiance to Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has been great solace to help build the initiative that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and likely has encouraged electorate to participate in large quantities in interim political contests. We shall require to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, featuring US banners throughout each rally and appeals to the best parts of American history.
We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the stranger? Did you accept these individuals and welcome him or refuse?
America is best defended, in other words, by reference to the best in US heritage, exactly as the Christian faith is best defended by reference to what makes it unique and beautiful, particularly the pattern of Jesus. In neither case does it imply feigning the most negative of both America and Christianity was nonexistent; it signifies both humility and faith, a mixture that committed American Christians should embrace.
