The Trump phenomenon's most telling and distinctive moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of a few weeks, the US president began displaying the public his intentions for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions than the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the East Wing to erect it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the existing assessment of casualties due to his slashing to USAID is 600,000 and increasing, and presently a study projected his energy policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have risked – truly, no previous leader would have conceived – unilaterally destroying large sections of the presidential residence in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of multiple the richest Americans, nearly all of which maintain dealings with the government.
We transitioned from 'the humble will receive the planet' into 'the gentle will succumb from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to witness the leader try to upend the traditional concept regarding democracy and replace it with its direct contrary, there exists a significant segment among Americans who might not perceive it completely novel. That encompasses people such as ourselves – among senior generations a near majority – who were raised as conventional Protestant believers.
We have observed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we grew up with into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they turned a figure of affection into a figure of hostility who approves specifically the brutality that he condemned in scripture; this has happened more gradually, through multiple decades instead of months, yet it remains unsettling in the same ways, a confusing personal impact for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Christ from my childhood, because theoretically Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and given that the fastest-growing cadre of Americans could have minimal awareness of him because they identify as skeptics or doubters or nones. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with any other faith; but I do think that contain precious wisdom of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is emphatically not the story of an authoritative monarch emerging; conversely, an infant arrives to displaced parents in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to a different country to escape undercover officers. The child matures in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine concerns compassion for fellow humans, specifically for the disadvantaged – not simply tender feelings, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and sheltering. The Savior's reaction to violence is to turn the opposite cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a way to teach the aggressor; his method regarding offenses states that when a person pilfers your outer garment you must offer them your pullover too.
The evident and clear reality that Christ from scripture calls for a type of extreme compassion centered on the needy has perpetually caused the Christian faith something of a scandalous religion: attractive to the masses, but due to its natural unconventionality demanding to be restrained. In the fifties it was restrained via weakening – Protestantism was so dominant that it basically blessed current circumstances.
A Conflict for the Best Among Us
Hence I have become heartened to witness the persistent defiance against Trump arise over the last twelve months. It has provided great solace to participate in developing the movement that has demonstrated publicly via continuous gatherings, and appears to have motivated voters to participate in numbers during minor elections. We will need to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, featuring US banners at every demonstration and calls 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 not?
America is best defended, essentially, by relationship to the highest in US heritage, similar to Christianity is most protected by relationship to that which renders it special and magnificent, particularly the pattern of Christ. In both situations does it mean feigning the most negative of both America and religious tradition never occurred; it signifies both meekness and belief, a combination that committed US believers should be comfortable with.
