The Trump phenomenon's most telling and distinctive moments – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of multiple weeks, the American president began displaying everyone his plans for a lavish reception room double the dimensions of the White House and then commenced unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to construct it.
He has done things countless times more severe – the present calculation of fatalities from his cuts to foreign assistance is 600,000 and growing, and recently a study projected his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have risked – truly, no previous leader would have contemplated – solo demolishing significant portions of the White House to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of some of America's wealthiest, almost all of whom conduct transactions with federal agencies.
We moved from 'the gentle will obtain the world' to 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the chief executive attempt to overturn the traditional concept regarding democracy and exchange it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion among Americans who might not perceive it entirely new. That encompasses people such as ourselves – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were educated as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed throughout the years while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we grew up with into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they turned a figure of compassion into a symbol of hate who blesses precisely the cruelties that he condemned in biblical teachings; this change developed more gradually, through multiple decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disturbing through similar means, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Savior from my upbringing, because theoretically Christ is the focus of Christian religion, and because the rapidly expanding group of Americans might have little sense of him since they are non-believers or doubters or nones. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that there are pearls of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is decidedly absolutely not the story of an authoritative monarch arising; rather, a child comes into the world to displaced parents in an automotive shelter, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to avoid undercover officers. The child matures in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his message focuses on affection for other people, specifically for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, demonstrated through nourishing and sheltering. Christ's response to aggression is to turn the additional cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a means to instruct the assailant; his crime policy indicates that whenever a person pilfers your outer garment you should give them your pullover also.
The evident and straightforward truth that the Savior of the gospels calls for a kind of profound affection centered on the impoverished has consistently rendered Christianity rather a controversial faith: attractive to the populace, but owing to its intrinsic extremism needing to be controlled. During the 1950s it was contained through watering down – Protestantism was so dominant that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Conflict for the Best Among Us
So I have been heartened to witness the persistent defiance against Trump emerge in this past year. It has provided great solace to assist in constructing the initiative that has protested openly via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired electorate to show up in large quantities during minor elections. We must have to maintain it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners throughout each rally and calls to the best parts of American history.
We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the foreigner? Did you receive him and welcome him or not?
The country is optimally secured, essentially, by relationship to the highest within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured through connection to that which renders it special and magnificent, particularly the pattern of Jesus. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the most damaging about the nation and Christianity did not happen; it means both modesty and faith, a blend that serious American Christians should embrace.
