The Trump movement's most illuminating and characteristic occasions – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most dangerous, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. In the course of a few weeks, the nation's leader started showing the public his plans for a gilded ballroom two times larger than the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the eastern section to build it.
He has performed deeds countless times more severe – the present calculation of casualties due to his slashing to USAID is 600,000 and increasing, and recently research forecast his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have risked – really, no former commander would have conceived – unilaterally destroying large sections of the White House to build a royal-themed celebration hall, with the active collaboration of numerous America's wealthiest, nearly all of which have business with the government.
We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the world' toward 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the chief executive try to upend the old idea regarding democracy and exchange it with its direct contrary, there is one large group among Americans who wouldn't consider it completely novel. That is those of us – among senior generations almost a majority – who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched throughout the years while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we learned about into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they transformed an image of affection into a symbol of animosity who approves specifically the brutality that he criticized in scripture; this transformation occurred more slowly, across decades rather than months, yet it remains unsettling in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Christ that I grew up with, because theoretically Jesus is the center of Christian religion, and because the fastest-growing cadre of Americans may possess limited understanding about him as they consider themselves skeptics or agnostics or nones. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; but I do think that there are pearls of significant worth within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically definitely not the narrative of an authoritative monarch appearing; conversely, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to avoid secret police. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his message concerns compassion for other people, especially for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and protecting. Christ's response to violence is to present the additional cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a means to teach the aggressor; his method regarding offenses states that when someone steals your jacket you must offer the person your additional clothing also.
The obvious and direct fact that the Savior from scripture calls for a kind of radical love centered on the poor has consistently rendered the Christian faith somewhat of a controversial faith: attractive to the masses, but owing to its intrinsic extremism demanding to be restrained. In the 1950s it was contained via weakening – Protestantism was so prevalent that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Conflict for the Highest of Us
So I have been inspired to witness the determined opposition to Trump emerge in this past year. It has provided great solace to assist in constructing the initiative that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired citizens to participate in large quantities during minor elections. We will need to continue it, and in the same spirit, displaying national flags at every demonstration and appeals to the highest qualities of American history.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you receive him and receive them or refuse?
America is best defended, in other words, by relationship to the highest about American history, just as Christianity is optimally secured through connection to that which renders it special and beautiful, which is the example of Christ. In neither case does it suggest pretending the worst regarding America and Christianity did not happen; it represents both meekness and belief, a mixture that serious national faithful should embrace.
