The Trump movement's most telling and defining moments – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most dangerous, nor most foolish, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. During the period of multiple weeks, the US president commenced revealing the public his intentions for a gilded ballroom twice the size compared to the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the East Wing portion to construct it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of fatalities from his cuts to foreign assistance is 600,000 and rising, and this week an analysis predicted his fossil fuel policies would kill 1.3 million more. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have dared – genuinely, no other president would have conceived – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the presidential residence to build a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of numerous the richest Americans, the majority of whom have business with public institutions.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the Earth' to 'the humble will perish of cholera'
As confusing as it is to witness the chief executive try to upend the old idea of democracy and exchange it with its complete opposite, there is one large group of Americans who should not find it entirely new. That is those of us – within elder demographics a near majority – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed over the years as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we grew up with into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. Essentially, they transformed an image of compassion into a figure of hostility who endorses specifically the brutality that he denounced in scripture; this change developed at a slower pace, across decades as opposed to months, but it is nonetheless disturbing in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
Therefore allow me to outline the Savior that I grew up with, because theoretically Jesus is the center of Christian religion, and since the fastest-growing cadre among Americans may possess limited understanding about him because they identify as non-believers or agnostics or nones. I raise no objection with any of these traditions, nor with different religions; however I believe that contain precious wisdom of great price in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably definitely not the account of an authoritative monarch appearing; instead, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in a garage, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to avoid secret police. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his doctrine concerns compassion for others, specifically for the poor – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, demonstrated through nourishing and sheltering. The Savior's reaction to aggression is to turn the other cheek – not as an act of submissive tolerance, but as a method to instruct the aggressor; his crime policy states that when an individual takes your outer garment you ought to provide the person your additional clothing too.
The evident and direct fact that Christ in biblical accounts advocates for a type of radical love focused on the poor has consistently rendered Christian religion something of a scandalous religion: appealing to the populace, but due to its inherent radicalness demanding to be controlled. During the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – Protestantism was so prevalent that it basically sanctified existing conditions.
A Conflict for the Finest Within Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to witness the determined opposition against Trump arise during the previous year. It has served as great solace to help build the initiative that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired electorate to show up in numbers during minor elections. We will need to persist with it, and with identical determination, with American flags at every demonstration and calls to the finest aspects of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you receive him and welcome him or reject?
America is best defended, essentially, by relationship to the best about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is most protected by relationship to that which renders it special and magnificent, specifically the model of the Savior. In neither case does it imply pretending the most negative of both America and Christianity never occurred; it signifies both meekness and conviction, a blend that genuine American Christians should be comfortable with.
