The Trump movement's most illuminating and defining moments – not its most crucial, nor cruelest, nor most dangerous, nor most senseless, but possibly its most revealing – occurred earlier this fall. In the course of multiple weeks, the nation's leader started showing all observers his intentions for a lavish reception room two times larger than the White House and then began solo dismantling the eastern section to construct it.
He has done things countless times more severe – the present calculation of deaths due to his slashing to USAID is 600,000 and increasing, and recently an analysis forecast his fossil fuel policies would kill 1.3 million more. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have dared – truly, no other president would have conceived – unilaterally destroying large sections of the presidential residence to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of some of the richest Americans, nearly all of which maintain dealings with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the gentle will obtain the planet' into 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the president attempt to overturn the established notion about democracy and exchange it with its direct contrary, there exists a significant segment of Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. This includes individuals like us – among senior generations a near majority – who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched across decades as politically conservative religious groups turned the Jesus we were raised with into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of compassion into a figure of animosity who approves exactly the harshness that he criticized in scripture; this has happened more slowly, through multiple decades instead of months, yet it remains unsettling in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Christ that I grew up with, since in theory Christ is the focus within Christian belief, and because the rapidly expanding group of Americans might have little sense about him as they consider themselves skeptics or doubters or spiritual independents. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; however I believe that there are pearls of great price in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably absolutely not the story of an authoritative monarch arising; conversely, a baby is born to displaced parents in an automotive shelter, who are forced to hastily depart to a different country to escape undercover officers. The baby grows up in simple surroundings, an employed craftsman; his message focuses on affection for other people, especially for the poor – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, demonstrated through nourishing and housing. Christ's response to violence is to present the additional cheek – not as a gesture of submissive tolerance, but as a means to educate the aggressor; his method regarding offenses states that when a person pilfers your jacket you should give him your sweater as well.
The evident and clear truth that the Savior of the gospels requests a type of profound affection focused on the needy is what has always made Christianity something of a scandalous religion: engaging for the populace, but because of its natural unconventionality needing to be contained. In the fifties it was controlled through watering down – Protestant Christianity was so prevalent that it basically baptized the status quo.
A Battle for the Finest Within Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to see the persistent defiance against Trump arise during the previous year. It has served as significant comfort to help build the campaign that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated citizens to turn out in numbers in interim political contests. We must have to continue it, and with identical determination, featuring US banners at every demonstration and requests to the finest aspects of American history.
We're going to be asked ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you receive him and embrace them or reject?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by reference to the highest in US heritage, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured by reference to what makes it special and magnificent, which is the example of Jesus. In both situations does it suggest feigning the most damaging of both America and religious tradition did not happen; it means both modesty and faith, a mixture that serious American Christians should embrace.
