The Trump movement's most revealing and distinctive occasions – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most dangerous, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of several weeks, the nation's leader commenced revealing the public his plans for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions of the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of deaths resulting from his reductions to international aid stands at 600,000 and rising, and recently an analysis predicted his petroleum strategies would cause deaths an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No former leader would have risked – genuinely, no former commander would have contemplated – solo demolishing large sections of the presidential residence to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of multiple America's wealthiest, nearly all of which have business with the government.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' to 'the gentle will succumb of cholera'
As confusing as it is to witness the leader attempt to overturn the traditional concept regarding democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment among Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were educated as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed over the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we grew up with into exactly the opposite of our perception of his character. Fundamentally, they converted a persona of love into a figure of hate who blesses specifically the brutality that he denounced in biblical teachings; this has happened more gradually, across decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting through similar means, a confusing personal impact for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Gains Ground
Therefore allow me to outline the Christ that I grew up with, because theoretically Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and because the fastest-growing cadre of Americans might have little sense of him since they are skeptics or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with these different approaches, nor with different religions; but I do think that there are pearls of significant worth in biblical accounts.
It is emphatically definitely not the account of an authoritative monarch emerging; rather, a baby is born to parents without shelter in a storage space, who are forced to hastily depart to a different country to evade covert authorities. The baby grows up in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his doctrine concerns compassion for fellow humans, particularly for the disadvantaged – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and housing. Christ's response to aggression is to turn the other cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a means to instruct the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever a person pilfers your outer garment you must offer him your sweater also.
The apparent and straightforward truth that Christ in biblical accounts calls for a type of radical love centered on the impoverished has perpetually caused the Christian faith rather a provocative belief system: appealing to the populace, but owing to its inherent radicalness demanding to be controlled. During the 1950s it was contained by dilution – Protestant Christianity was so widespread that it basically sanctified existing conditions.
A Conflict for the Highest of Us
So I have been inspired to see the persistent defiance to Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has been great solace to help build the campaign that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and likely has encouraged electorate to participate in numbers in interim political contests. We shall require to continue it, and through comparable resolve, featuring US banners during all protests and requests to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the immigrant? Did you welcome them and embrace them or refuse?
America is best defended, essentially, by relationship to the finest about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured by relationship to what makes it distinctive and magnificent, which is the example of Christ. In neither case does it suggest pretending the most damaging about the nation and Christianity never occurred; it signifies both modesty and conviction, a mixture that serious American Christians should embrace.
