The Trump phenomenon's most telling and defining instances – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. In the course of several weeks, the American president commenced revealing everyone his designs for a gilded ballroom two times larger than the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has committed acts countless times more severe – the existing assessment of casualties resulting from his reductions to international aid amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and this week a study predicted his petroleum strategies would result in fatalities another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have dared – truly, no former commander would have imagined – unilaterally destroying major areas of the White House to build a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of multiple the richest Americans, the majority of whom maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We transitioned from 'the humble will receive the world' toward 'the gentle will succumb of cholera'
As confusing as it is to witness the chief executive try to upend the established notion of democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there exists a significant segment among Americans who wouldn't consider it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – among senior generations a near majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched across decades as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we grew up with into the total contrary of our understanding of him. At its most basic, they turned a figure of love into a figure of hostility who blesses precisely the cruelties that he criticized in the Gospel; this has happened at a slower pace, through multiple decades instead of months, however it is still unsettling via comparable methods, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
Therefore allow me to outline the Christ that I grew up with, because theoretically the Savior is the core of any Christian faith, and since the quickly increasing segment within America could have minimal awareness of him because they identify as non-believers or agnostics or spiritual independents. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; however I believe that exist valuable insights of great price in biblical accounts.
It is unquestionably not the story of a powerful ruler arising; rather, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to escape secret police. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his teaching focuses on affection for other people, especially for the poor – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, demonstrated through nourishing and sheltering. Christ's response to aggression is to turn the other cheek – not as a gesture of submissive tolerance, but as a way to instruct the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing states that when a person pilfers your coat you should give them your pullover too.
The evident and direct reality that the Jesus in biblical accounts calls for a type of radical love concentrated on the poor has consistently rendered the Christian faith rather a scandalous religion: attractive to the general public, but due to its natural unconventionality requiring to be contained. In the 1950s it was contained by dilution – Protestantism was so prevalent that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Best Among Us
So I have been heartened to observe the persistent defiance regarding Trump emerge during the previous year. It has served as substantial consolation to participate in developing the campaign that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and likely has encouraged citizens to turn out in large quantities during minor elections. We will need to persist with it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and appeals to the finest aspects in US history.
We're going to be asked ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you accept these individuals and receive them or reject?
The nation is most protected, essentially, through connection to the finest about American history, just as Christianity is best defended through connection to that which renders it special and wonderful, specifically the model of Jesus. In both situations does it imply feigning the most negative of both America and Christianity never occurred; it signifies both humility and conviction, a mixture that committed national faithful should embrace.
