The Trump movement's most illuminating and distinctive moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – came earlier this autumn. Over the span of several weeks, the US president began displaying everyone his plans for a lavish reception room twice the size than the White House and then began independently demolishing the East Wing to erect it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of casualties resulting from his reductions to international aid is 600,000 and rising, and recently a study predicted his energy policies would kill 1.3 million more. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have attempted – truly, no previous leader would have imagined – unilaterally destroying large sections of the White House in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of numerous the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We transitioned from 'the gentle will obtain the world' toward 'the humble will perish of cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the president try to upend the old idea about democracy and replace it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion of Americans who should not find it entirely new. This includes individuals like us – within elder demographics almost a majority – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed across decades as politically conservative religious groups transformed the Christ we learned about into the total contrary of our perception of his character. At its most basic, they transformed an image of compassion into a symbol of hate who blesses exactly the harshness that he criticized in the Gospel; this transformation occurred more slowly, through multiple decades rather than months, however it is still unsettling via comparable methods, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Savior from my childhood, because theoretically Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and because the rapidly expanding group among Americans may possess limited understanding regarding him since they are non-believers or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with these different approaches, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that there are pearls of great price in biblical accounts.
It is emphatically absolutely not the account of a mighty king emerging; conversely, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to escape undercover officers. The infant develops in simple surroundings, a working carpenter; his teaching focuses on affection for other people, especially for the poor – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Jesus' answer to hostility is to offer the other cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a means to teach the assailant; his method regarding offenses is that if a person pilfers your outer garment you must offer the person your additional clothing too.
The obvious and clear reality that the Savior from scripture advocates for a kind of radical love centered on the impoverished has consistently rendered Christian religion somewhat of a provocative belief system: appealing to the populace, but because of its intrinsic extremism needing to be restrained. During the 1950s it was contained through watering down – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it basically blessed current circumstances.
A Conflict for the Best of Us
Hence I have become inspired to witness the steadfast resistance against Trump develop over the last twelve months. It has served as significant comfort to help build the campaign that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and likely has encouraged voters to participate in numbers in interim political contests. We will need to continue it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners throughout each rally and calls to the best parts in US history.
We're going to be asked ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and embrace them or refuse?
The nation is most protected, essentially, by relationship to the highest about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is most protected through connection to what makes it special and magnificent, particularly the pattern of Jesus. In neither case does it imply pretending the most negative regarding America and Christian faith was nonexistent; it means both meekness and belief, a mixture that committed US believers should be comfortable with.
