The Trump phenomenon's most telling and characteristic instances – not its most important, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of several weeks, the American president commenced revealing all observers his plans for an ornate dance hall twice the size than the White House and then commenced solo dismantling the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of fatalities due to his slashing to international aid amounts to 600,000 and growing, and recently an analysis projected his petroleum strategies would result in fatalities another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have attempted – truly, no previous leader would have imagined – solo demolishing large sections of the White House to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of numerous America's wealthiest, almost all of whom maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We went from 'the humble will receive the world' toward 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to witness the president try to upend the established notion about democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there exists a significant segment within America who wouldn't consider it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched across decades as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we were raised with into the complete reverse of our perception of his character. Essentially, they turned a figure of love into an icon of hostility who blesses exactly the harshness that he denounced in the Gospel; this transformation occurred more gradually, through multiple decades rather than months, yet it remains disturbing via comparable methods, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Jesus from my upbringing, since in theory Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and given that the fastest-growing cadre of Americans could have minimal awareness about him because they identify as non-believers or uncertain individuals or nones. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with different religions; yet I maintain that there are pearls of great price in biblical accounts.
It is emphatically not the story of an authoritative monarch emerging; instead, an infant arrives to displaced parents in a garage, who are forced to hastily depart to a foreign land to avoid secret police. The child matures in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his message concerns compassion for others, specifically for the disadvantaged – not simply tender feelings, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and housing. Christ's response to aggression is to turn the opposite cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a method to teach the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing is that if someone steals your coat you ought to provide the person your additional clothing as well.
The apparent and clear truth that the Savior in biblical accounts advocates for a form of profound affection focused on the poor is what has always made Christianity something of a provocative belief system: appealing to the general public, but because of its intrinsic extremism 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 Struggle for the Highest Among Us
So I have been inspired to see the steadfast resistance to Trump develop over the last twelve months. It has provided significant comfort to participate in developing the movement that has taken to the streets in rally after rally, and seems to have inspired citizens to show up in large quantities in the off-year elections. We must have to continue it, and with identical determination, with American flags throughout each rally and calls to the highest qualities within national heritage.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you welcome them and receive them or reject?
The nation is most protected, to put it differently, through connection to the finest about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is most protected through connection to that which renders it distinctive and beautiful, specifically the model of Jesus. In all circumstances does it imply pretending the most negative about the nation and Christianity was nonexistent; it signifies both meekness and belief, a mixture that committed American Christians should be comfortable with.
