The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and characteristic moments – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of several weeks, the US president began displaying all observers his designs for a gilded ballroom twice the size compared to the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to erect it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of deaths from his cuts to foreign assistance is 600,000 and rising, and this week a study predicted his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have risked – genuinely, no other president would have imagined – unilaterally destroying major areas of the White House to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of numerous America's wealthiest, nearly all of which maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We transitioned from 'the gentle will obtain the planet' to 'the humble will perish of cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the president seek to颠覆 the traditional concept about democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there exists a significant segment within America who wouldn't consider it entirely new. That is those of us – among senior generations almost a majority – who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have observed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations converted the Savior we grew up with into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they turned a figure of compassion into a symbol of animosity who endorses exactly the harshness that he denounced in scripture; this transformation occurred more slowly, across decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disturbing in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Savior from my upbringing, because theoretically the Savior is the core of any Christian faith, and since the fastest-growing cadre among Americans may possess limited understanding regarding him as they consider themselves atheists or doubters or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with different religions; but I do think that contain precious wisdom of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is decidedly not the account of an authoritative monarch arising; conversely, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to avoid covert authorities. The infant develops in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his doctrine concerns compassion for fellow humans, especially for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and housing. Jesus' answer to hostility is to offer the additional cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a way to teach the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing is that if someone steals your jacket you ought to provide him your sweater also.
The obvious and straightforward reality that Christ of the gospels calls for a form of radical love centered on the poor has consistently rendered the Christian faith somewhat of a scandalous religion: appealing to the general public, but because of its natural unconventionality requiring to be contained. During the 1950s it was controlled by dilution – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Best Within Us
Therefore I have felt heartened to witness the persistent defiance against Trump emerge in this past year. It has provided significant comfort to participate in developing the initiative that has protested openly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated voters to show up in large quantities during minor elections. We shall require to continue it, and with identical determination, featuring US banners throughout each rally and appeals to the highest qualities of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you receive him and embrace them or reject?
The country is optimally secured, essentially, by reference to the best within national tradition, similar to Christianity is optimally secured by reference to that which renders it unique and beautiful, which is the example of Jesus. In neither case does it mean pretending the most negative of both America and religious tradition was nonexistent; it signifies both meekness and conviction, a mixture that genuine American Christians should be comfortable with.
