The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and defining moments – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but possibly its most revealing – came earlier this autumn. During the period of a few weeks, the American president started showing all observers his plans for a lavish reception room twice the size compared to the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the East Wing portion to build it.
He has committed acts countless times more severe – the existing assessment of deaths due to his slashing to foreign assistance amounts to 600,000 and rising, and recently an analysis predicted his energy policies would cause deaths 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have risked – genuinely, no other president would have contemplated – solo demolishing significant portions of the White House to construct a royal-themed celebration hall, with the active collaboration of multiple the richest Americans, nearly all of which conduct transactions with federal agencies.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' to 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to witness the president attempt to overturn the old idea regarding democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion within America who should not find it entirely new. That encompasses people such as ourselves – within elder demographics almost a majority – who were raised as conventional Protestant believers.
We have witnessed throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we learned about into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they turned a figure of compassion into an icon of animosity who blesses exactly the harshness that he criticized in scripture; this transformation occurred more gradually, through multiple decades instead of months, yet it remains unsettling via comparable methods, a bewildering emotional blow for numerous individuals.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Jesus from my childhood, as conceptually the Savior is the core of Christian religion, and since the rapidly expanding group within America could have minimal awareness of him as they consider themselves skeptics or doubters or spiritual independents. I have no problem with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that there are pearls of substantial value in biblical accounts.
It is unquestionably absolutely not the account of a mighty king appearing; conversely, an infant arrives to displaced parents in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to avoid undercover officers. The infant develops in simple surroundings, an employed craftsman; his message is about love for other people, especially for the poor – not merely emotional affection, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and protecting. Jesus' answer to aggression is to turn the other cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a way to teach the assailant; his crime policy states that when a person pilfers your jacket you ought to provide him your sweater too.
The obvious and clear reality that the Jesus of the gospels advocates for a type of extreme compassion focused on the needy is what has always made Christianity rather a controversial faith: engaging for the populace, but owing to its natural unconventionality demanding to be contained. During the 1950s it was controlled by dilution – The Protestant faith was so dominant that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Conflict for the Finest Within Us
So I have been heartened to observe the steadfast resistance against Trump arise in this past year. It has been great solace to assist in constructing the initiative that has demonstrated publicly via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired electorate to turn out in significant amounts in interim political contests. We will need to maintain it, and with identical determination, with American flags throughout each rally and calls to the best parts in US history.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the immigrant? Did you welcome them and embrace them or reject?
The nation is most protected, to put it differently, by relationship to the best within national tradition, similar to Christianity is optimally secured through connection to what makes it distinctive and beautiful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In both situations does it imply feigning the most damaging of both America and Christian faith never occurred; it represents both modesty and belief, a combination that serious US believers ought to accept.
