The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and distinctive moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – came earlier this autumn. Over the span of multiple weeks, the US president started showing all observers his plans for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions of the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to erect it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of casualties from his cuts to USAID is 600,000 and increasing, and this week an analysis projected his fossil fuel policies would kill an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No former leader would have dared – genuinely, no previous leader would have conceived – unilaterally destroying major areas of the presidential residence in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of multiple the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom maintain dealings with public institutions.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the world' to 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the president try to upend the traditional concept of democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there is one large group among Americans who should not find it entirely new. This includes individuals like us – among senior generations a near majority – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed over the years as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we learned about into the total contrary of our understanding of him. Essentially, they transformed an image of love into a symbol of hate who approves precisely the cruelties that he condemned in scripture; this change developed more gradually, through multiple decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless disturbing through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Establishes Itself
Therefore allow me to outline the Christ from my upbringing, as conceptually the Savior is the core of any Christian faith, and since the quickly increasing segment of Americans may possess limited understanding of him because they identify as skeptics or doubters or spiritual independents. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that there are pearls of great price in the Christian story.
It is decidedly definitely not the story of a powerful ruler arising; instead, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to evade secret police. The child matures in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his doctrine concerns compassion for others, especially for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but tangible care, demonstrated through nourishing and protecting. The Savior's reaction to aggression is to present the other cheek – not as a demonstration of submissive tolerance, but as a means to instruct the attacker; his crime policy is that if an individual takes your coat you must offer them your pullover as well.
The obvious and straightforward fact that the Jesus from scripture requests a type of radical love focused on the needy is what has always made Christianity somewhat of a scandalous religion: engaging for the masses, but because of its inherent radicalness demanding to be contained. In the fifties it was restrained through watering down – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Conflict for the Best Within Us
Therefore I have felt heartened to observe the determined opposition against Trump arise over the last twelve months. It has been significant comfort to assist in constructing the initiative that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated electorate to participate in large quantities in the off-year elections. We must have to continue it, and with identical determination, with American flags at every demonstration and calls to the highest qualities of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the foreigner? Did you welcome them and receive them or not?
The country is optimally secured, in other words, through connection to the best in US heritage, just as Christianity is optimally secured through connection to that which renders it unique and magnificent, which is the example of Christ. In both situations does it suggest acting as if the worst about the nation and religious tradition was nonexistent; it represents both modesty and faith, a combination that genuine national faithful should be comfortable with.
