The Trump movement's most revealing and distinctive instances – 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 multiple weeks, the nation's leader began displaying the public his designs for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions of the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the East Wing portion to build it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of deaths resulting from his reductions to international aid is 600,000 and rising, and recently a study forecast his energy policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have risked – truly, no other president would have conceived – unilaterally destroying major areas of the White House to build a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of numerous America's wealthiest, nearly all of which maintain dealings with the government.
We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the planet' into 'the humble will perish of cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the leader try to upend the old idea regarding democracy and substitute it with its polar opposite, there remains a substantial portion within America who might not perceive it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed over the years as politically conservative religious groups turned the Jesus we learned about into the total contrary of our perception of his character. Fundamentally, they converted a persona of compassion into an icon of animosity who approves exactly the harshness that he criticized in scripture; this has happened more slowly, across decades rather than months, yet it remains disturbing through similar means, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Gains Ground
Hence I shall explain the Savior that I grew up with, since in theory the Savior is the core of any Christian faith, and since the fastest-growing cadre among Americans might have little sense regarding him since they are skeptics or uncertain individuals or nones. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that exist valuable insights of great price within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically absolutely not the story of a mighty king appearing; rather, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a storage space, who must quickly flee to another nation to evade covert authorities. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his teaching concerns compassion for other people, particularly for the poor – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, demonstrated through nourishing and sheltering. Christ's response to aggression is to present the opposite cheek – not as a demonstration of passive acceptance, but as a way to instruct the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing is that if someone steals your coat you ought to provide him your sweater as well.
The evident and straightforward reality that the Savior of the gospels calls for a form of extreme compassion focused on the needy is what has always made Christianity rather a scandalous religion: engaging for the general public, but because of its inherent radicalness needing to be controlled. In the 1950s it was contained by dilution – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it basically blessed current circumstances.
A Struggle for the Best of Us
Hence I have become inspired to witness the persistent defiance against Trump develop during the previous year. It has served as great solace to participate in developing the initiative that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and likely has encouraged citizens to show up in numbers in interim political contests. We must have to maintain it, and with identical determination, with American flags throughout each rally and requests to the best parts within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the foreigner? Did you welcome them and receive them or refuse?
America is best defended, to put it differently, through connection to the best within national tradition, similar to Christianity is most protected through connection to that which renders it special and wonderful, which is the example of Jesus. In neither case does it suggest pretending the worst regarding America and religious tradition did not happen; it represents both modesty and faith, a mixture that genuine US believers should be comfortable with.
