The Trump movement's most telling and characteristic moments – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of multiple weeks, the American president commenced revealing everyone his plans for a lavish reception room twice the size than the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the eastern section to build it.
He has done things 10,000 times as bad – the present calculation of fatalities due to his slashing to USAID is 600,000 and increasing, and presently an analysis projected his fossil fuel policies would kill another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have attempted – genuinely, no other president would have imagined – independently wrecking major areas of the White House in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of some of America's wealthiest, nearly all of which have business with the government.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' toward 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As confusing as it is to watch the leader try to upend the established notion of democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there is one large group among Americans who might not perceive it completely novel. That is those of us – among senior generations a near majority – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed over the years as politically conservative religious groups converted the Savior we learned about into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. Fundamentally, they turned a figure of affection into a figure of hostility who approves precisely the cruelties that he denounced in biblical teachings; this has happened more gradually, through multiple decades instead of months, however it is still unsettling via comparable methods, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
Therefore allow me to outline the Savior 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 because they identify as atheists or uncertain individuals or spiritual independents. I raise no objection with these different approaches, nor with different religions; but I do think that there are pearls of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is decidedly not the narrative of a powerful ruler arising; rather, an infant arrives to homeless parents in a storage space, who are forced to hastily depart to a foreign land to evade covert authorities. The infant develops in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his message is about love for other people, specifically for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and housing. Jesus' answer to hostility is to offer the other cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a way to teach the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing is that if a person pilfers your outer garment you ought to provide them your pullover too.
The apparent and clear fact that the Jesus from scripture calls for a form of radical love concentrated on the needy has perpetually caused Christianity somewhat of a controversial faith: appealing to the populace, but because of its natural unconventionality demanding to be controlled. During the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – Protestant Christianity was so prevalent that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Finest Among Us
Therefore I have felt heartened to see the steadfast resistance against Trump develop in this past year. It has served as substantial consolation to participate in developing the initiative that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and likely has encouraged citizens to turn out in numbers during minor elections. We will need to continue it, and with identical determination, displaying national flags throughout each rally and requests to the highest qualities in US history.
We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the stranger? Did you welcome them and embrace them or not?
The nation is most protected, essentially, through connection to the highest within national tradition, just as Christianity is most protected by relationship to what makes it special and wonderful, particularly the pattern of Jesus. In all circumstances does it suggest pretending the most negative about the nation and religious tradition did not happen; it signifies both humility and conviction, a mixture that genuine American Christians ought to accept.
