Trumpism's most telling and characteristic moments – not its most crucial, nor most harsh, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of multiple weeks, the US president began displaying the public his plans for an ornate dance hall double the dimensions than the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the East Wing to build it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of fatalities due to his slashing to foreign assistance is 600,000 and growing, and recently an analysis projected his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities 1.3 million more. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have risked – genuinely, no former commander would have conceived – independently wrecking major areas of the executive mansion to build a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the enthusiastic participation of some of America's wealthiest, almost all of whom maintain dealings with the government.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the planet' into 'the gentle will succumb from cholera'
As bewildering as it is to observe the leader try to upend the established notion about democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there is one large group among Americans who might not perceive it entirely new. This includes individuals like us – among senior generations almost a majority – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have watched over the years as politically conservative religious groups converted the Savior we were raised with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they converted a persona of affection into a symbol of hate who blesses specifically the brutality that he condemned in the Gospel; this change developed more gradually, through multiple decades as opposed to months, yet it remains unsettling via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
Hence I shall explain the Christ from my childhood, since in theory the Savior is the core of any Christian faith, and because the rapidly expanding group within America might have little sense about him because they identify as skeptics or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with different religions; yet I maintain that contain precious wisdom of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is unquestionably definitely not the account of a mighty king appearing; rather, a child comes into the world to displaced parents in a garage, who must quickly flee to a different country to escape secret police. The child matures in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his message is about love for other people, specifically for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and protecting. Christ's response to aggression is to turn the opposite cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a way to educate the assailant; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever someone steals your jacket you should give him your sweater as well.
The obvious and clear reality that Christ in biblical accounts requests a type of radical love centered on the impoverished has consistently rendered Christian religion rather a controversial faith: engaging for the populace, but because of its intrinsic extremism needing to be controlled. In the 1950s it was contained through watering down – Protestantism was so prevalent that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Struggle for the Best Among Us
So I have been heartened to see the persistent defiance against Trump arise in this past year. It has been great solace to participate in developing the movement that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated citizens to turn out in significant amounts in interim political contests. We shall require to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags at every demonstration and calls to the highest qualities within national heritage.
We're going to be asked ... how did you receive the foreigner? Did you welcome them and receive them or reject?
America is best defended, in other words, by reference to the finest about American history, just as Christianity is optimally secured through connection to elements that cause it to be unique and magnificent, specifically the model of Jesus. In both situations does it imply pretending the worst about the nation and religious tradition never occurred; it means both modesty and belief, a blend that committed American Christians should be comfortable with.
