The Trump movement's most revealing and distinctive moments – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. During the period of multiple weeks, the US president began displaying everyone his designs for an ornate dance hall double the dimensions compared to the White House and then began independently demolishing the eastern section to build it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the existing assessment of deaths from his cuts to foreign assistance amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and this week a study projected his petroleum strategies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No former leader would have risked – truly, no previous leader would have conceived – solo demolishing significant portions of the presidential residence to construct a royal-themed celebration hall, with the active collaboration of some of the richest Americans, almost all of whom conduct transactions with the government.
We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the world' toward 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the chief executive attempt to overturn the established notion of democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment within America who wouldn't consider it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – among senior generations close to half – who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed over the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we were raised with into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. Essentially, they transformed an image of compassion into a figure of hostility who approves precisely the cruelties that he criticized in the Gospel; this change developed at a slower pace, over decades rather than months, yet it remains disturbing in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
Therefore allow me to outline the Christ from my childhood, because theoretically Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and since the fastest-growing cadre among Americans may possess limited understanding about him since they are non-believers or doubters or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with these different approaches, nor with different religions; yet I maintain that contain precious wisdom of great price in the Christian story.
It is emphatically not the story of a powerful ruler arising; conversely, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to a different country to evade secret police. The infant develops in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his message concerns compassion for other people, especially for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Jesus' answer to violence is to turn the other cheek – not as a demonstration of passive acceptance, but as a way to instruct the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing states that when a person pilfers your coat you must offer them your pullover as well.
The evident and clear reality that the Jesus of the gospels requests a kind of radical love concentrated on the impoverished has perpetually caused Christian religion somewhat of a provocative belief system: attractive to the general public, but because of its natural unconventionality needing to be contained. During the 1950s it was contained through watering down – The Protestant faith was so prevalent that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Best of Us
Therefore I have felt encouraged to observe the determined opposition against Trump develop during the previous year. It has been significant comfort to participate in developing the campaign that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and likely has encouraged voters to participate in numbers during minor elections. We will need to persist with it, and with identical determination, featuring US banners during all protests and calls to the best parts within national heritage.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you receive him and receive them or refuse?
America is best defended, essentially, by reference to the highest within national tradition, just as Christianity is best defended through connection to that which renders it special and beautiful, which is the example of Christ. In both situations does it mean acting as if the most negative regarding America and religious tradition never occurred; it means both humility and belief, a combination that serious US believers should embrace.
