The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and distinctive moments – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of multiple weeks, the US president began displaying all observers his designs for a gilded ballroom two times larger than the White House and then commenced unilaterally ripping down the East Wing portion to build it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of fatalities from his cuts to foreign assistance is 600,000 and rising, and recently research projected his petroleum strategies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have dared – genuinely, no other president would have conceived – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the executive mansion to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of multiple the richest Americans, almost all of whom maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We went from 'the humble will receive the world' into 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the president try to upend the old idea regarding democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there exists a significant segment within America who might not perceive it completely novel. This includes individuals like us – within elder demographics almost a majority – who were educated as conventional Protestant believers.
We have watched across decades as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we learned about into exactly the opposite of our perception of his character. Essentially, they turned a figure of love into an icon of hate who approves precisely the cruelties that he condemned in the Gospel; this change developed more slowly, across decades rather than months, however it is still unsettling via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
Therefore allow me to outline the Jesus that I grew up with, because theoretically Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and given that the rapidly expanding group among Americans may possess limited understanding regarding him because they identify as atheists or agnostics or nones. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; yet I maintain that exist valuable insights of significant worth in biblical accounts.
It is decidedly definitely not the story of a powerful ruler appearing; instead, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in an automotive shelter, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to escape undercover officers. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his teaching focuses on affection for fellow humans, especially for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and housing. Jesus' answer to aggression is to offer the other cheek – not as a gesture of submissive tolerance, but as a way to teach the aggressor; his method regarding offenses is that if a person pilfers your jacket you must offer them your pullover also.
The evident and clear reality that Christ in biblical accounts requests a form of radical love centered on the poor has perpetually caused the Christian faith something of a provocative belief system: engaging for the general public, but because of its intrinsic extremism requiring to be contained. In the fifties it was contained via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so widespread that it essentially blessed current circumstances.
A Conflict for the Highest Within Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to see the steadfast resistance against Trump develop over the last twelve months. It has served as substantial consolation to participate in developing the movement that has demonstrated publicly via continuous gatherings, and likely has encouraged voters to turn out in numbers in the off-year elections. We shall require to maintain it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and calls to the best parts in US history.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the foreigner? Did you welcome them and embrace them or refuse?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by relationship to the best about American history, similar to Christianity is optimally secured by relationship to elements that cause it to be special and wonderful, particularly the pattern of Jesus. In all circumstances does it imply acting as if the most damaging regarding America and Christian faith was nonexistent; it means both modesty and conviction, a combination that committed national faithful ought to accept.
