The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and defining moments – not its most significant, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of a few weeks, the nation's leader started showing everyone his plans for a lavish reception room double the dimensions of the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to construct it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of deaths resulting from his reductions to USAID stands at 600,000 and growing, and presently a study predicted his fossil fuel policies would kill an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have risked – genuinely, no other president would have contemplated – solo demolishing large sections of the White House in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the enthusiastic participation of numerous America's wealthiest, the majority of whom have business with public institutions.
We went from 'the gentle will obtain the planet' to 'the humble will perish from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the leader try to upend the old idea about democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there is one large group within America who might not perceive it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have watched across decades while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we learned about into the complete reverse of our perception of his character. Essentially, they turned a figure of love into an icon of hostility who endorses exactly the harshness that he denounced in the Gospel; this has happened more slowly, through multiple decades rather than months, however it is still disconcerting through similar means, a confusing personal impact for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Christ from my childhood, because theoretically Christ is the focus of Christian religion, and because the fastest-growing cadre within America could have minimal awareness regarding him since they are non-believers or doubters or spiritual independents. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that there are pearls of great price within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically absolutely not the story of an authoritative monarch appearing; instead, a baby is born to displaced parents in an automotive shelter, who are forced to hastily depart to a different country to evade covert authorities. The infant develops in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his teaching concerns compassion for other people, particularly for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but tangible care, demonstrated through nourishing and housing. Jesus' answer to violence is to offer the other cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a method to educate the assailant; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever someone steals your outer garment you should give him your sweater also.
The apparent and straightforward reality that Christ of the gospels requests a form of extreme compassion concentrated on the impoverished has consistently rendered Christian religion somewhat of a controversial faith: engaging for the general public, but owing to its natural unconventionality requiring to be contained. In the fifties it was controlled through watering down – Protestant Christianity was so widespread that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Battle for the Highest Within Us
So I have been heartened to observe the persistent defiance regarding Trump develop during the previous year. It has provided great solace to assist in constructing the initiative that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired electorate to participate in numbers in the off-year elections. We must have to persist with it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners throughout each rally and requests to the best parts of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you receive him and receive them or not?
America is best defended, in other words, by reference to the finest within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured by reference to elements that cause it to be special and beautiful, which is the example of Christ. In both situations does it imply feigning the most damaging about the nation and Christian faith never occurred; it means both meekness and conviction, a mixture that genuine national faithful should be comfortable with.
