The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and defining occasions – 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 nation's leader started showing all observers his intentions for a lavish reception room double the dimensions compared to the White House and then commenced unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to erect it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of fatalities due to his slashing to international aid is 600,000 and growing, and recently research projected his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities 1.3 million more. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have risked – really, no previous leader would have conceived – unilaterally destroying large sections of the executive mansion in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of multiple America's wealthiest, the majority of whom conduct transactions with federal agencies.
We transitioned from 'the gentle will obtain the planet' to 'the gentle will succumb from cholera'
As confusing as it is to witness the president attempt to overturn the traditional concept about democracy and exchange it with its complete opposite, there remains a substantial portion within America who should not find it entirely new. That is those of us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were educated as conventional Protestant believers.
We have witnessed across decades as politically conservative religious groups turned the Jesus we learned about into exactly the opposite of our perception of his character. At its most basic, they converted a persona of love into a figure of hate who endorses precisely the cruelties that he condemned in the Gospel; this has happened more gradually, through multiple decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless unsettling in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.
A Toxic Christianity Gains Ground
Hence I shall explain the Jesus that I grew up with, because theoretically Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and because the rapidly expanding group of Americans may possess limited understanding about him as they consider themselves atheists or doubters or nones. I raise no objection with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that contain precious wisdom of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is decidedly definitely not the narrative of a mighty king appearing; rather, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in a storage space, who must quickly flee to a different country to escape undercover officers. The infant develops in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his message is about love for others, specifically for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but tangible care, demonstrated through nourishing and housing. Christ's response to violence is to offer the other cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a means to instruct the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever a person pilfers your coat you ought to provide them your pullover also.
The obvious and straightforward fact that the Savior from scripture requests a form of extreme compassion concentrated on the impoverished is what has always made Christian religion rather a provocative belief system: appealing to the general public, but due to its natural unconventionality needing to be restrained. In the fifties it was controlled via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so prevalent that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Finest Within Us
So I have been heartened to observe the persistent defiance against Trump develop during the previous year. It has provided great solace to participate in developing the campaign that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated citizens to participate in significant amounts in interim political contests. We must have to continue it, and in the same spirit, displaying national flags during all protests and calls to the highest qualities within national heritage.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the foreigner? Did you welcome them and receive them or reject?
America is best defended, to put it differently, through connection to the highest about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is most protected by relationship to what makes it unique and beautiful, specifically the model of Christ. In both situations does it suggest acting as if the most damaging of both America and religious tradition was nonexistent; it represents both modesty and faith, a combination that genuine US believers ought to accept.
