The Trump phenomenon's most telling and characteristic instances – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most dangerous, nor most senseless, but possibly its most revealing – came earlier this autumn. In the course of a few weeks, the American president began displaying the public his intentions for an ornate dance hall double the dimensions compared to the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the East Wing to build it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the existing assessment of deaths from his cuts to USAID amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and this week a study projected his energy policies would kill another 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No other president would have risked – genuinely, no previous leader would have imagined – independently wrecking significant portions of the executive mansion to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of multiple America's wealthiest, almost all of whom have business with the government.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' toward 'the gentle will succumb of cholera'
As confusing as it is to witness the leader seek to颠覆 the old idea regarding democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there exists a significant segment among Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – within elder demographics almost a majority – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed across decades as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we were raised with into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. At its most basic, they transformed an image of compassion into a symbol of hate who blesses exactly the harshness that he criticized in biblical teachings; this has happened more gradually, over decades as opposed to months, yet it remains disturbing through similar means, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Savior from my upbringing, because theoretically Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and given that the quickly increasing segment of Americans might have little sense of him because they identify as non-believers or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that contain precious wisdom of significant worth in the Christian story.
It is emphatically not the story of a powerful ruler appearing; instead, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to avoid undercover officers. The child matures in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his doctrine is about love for fellow humans, particularly for the disadvantaged – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, shown by providing food and sheltering. Christ's response to violence is to present the additional cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a way to instruct the attacker; his method regarding offenses is that if someone steals your jacket you should give the person your additional clothing too.
The apparent and direct reality that the Savior of the gospels calls for a form of profound affection focused on the impoverished has perpetually caused Christianity rather a provocative belief system: appealing to the populace, but because of its intrinsic extremism needing to be restrained. In the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – Protestant Christianity was so prevalent that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Best Within Us
So I have been encouraged to observe the steadfast resistance against Trump develop in this past year. It has been substantial consolation to help build the campaign that has protested openly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated voters to show up in numbers during minor elections. We will need to maintain it, and with identical determination, displaying national flags at every demonstration and requests to the best parts of American history.
We're going to be asked ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and embrace them or not?
The country is optimally secured, essentially, through connection to the finest in US heritage, just as Christianity is best defended through connection to what makes it special and beautiful, specifically the model of Christ. In both situations does it imply acting as if the most negative of both America and religious tradition never occurred; it means both meekness and faith, a combination that serious American Christians should embrace.
