The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and defining moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. During the period of multiple weeks, the US president started showing all observers his designs for a gilded ballroom two times larger of the White House and then commenced solo dismantling the eastern section to construct it.
He has done things 10,000 times as bad – the present calculation of deaths due to his slashing to USAID stands at 600,000 and growing, and recently research projected his energy policies would kill an additional 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No former leader would have risked – truly, no former commander would have conceived – solo demolishing large sections of the executive mansion to build a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of some of the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' to 'the meek shall die of cholera'
As bewildering as it is to observe the president try to upend the traditional concept about democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there remains a substantial portion within America who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed over the years while conservative evangelical congregations converted the Savior we were raised with into the total contrary of our perception of his character. Essentially, they transformed an image of compassion into a figure of animosity who blesses precisely the cruelties that he condemned in scripture; this change developed more slowly, through multiple decades instead of months, however it is still disconcerting via comparable methods, a confusing personal impact for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Jesus from my upbringing, because theoretically the Savior is the core within Christian belief, and given that the quickly increasing segment of Americans could have minimal awareness regarding him as they consider themselves non-believers or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with these different approaches, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that contain precious wisdom of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is decidedly definitely not the story of a powerful ruler emerging; rather, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to avoid covert authorities. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his teaching is about love for others, specifically for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but tangible care, expressed by feeding and protecting. The Savior's reaction to aggression is to turn the opposite cheek – not as an act of submissive tolerance, but as a method to teach the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing states that when someone steals your coat you must offer the person your additional clothing also.
The obvious and clear truth that the Savior in biblical accounts requests a form of radical love centered on the poor has perpetually caused the Christian faith rather a scandalous religion: engaging for the masses, but owing to its natural unconventionality needing to be restrained. In the 1950s it was restrained through watering down – The Protestant faith was so dominant that it essentially blessed current circumstances.
A Battle for the Best Within Us
Therefore I have felt encouraged to witness the persistent defiance regarding Trump emerge during the previous year. It has been great solace to assist in constructing the initiative that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired electorate to show up in large quantities in interim political contests. We must have to persist with it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners at every demonstration and calls to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you receive him and embrace them or refuse?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by reference to the finest within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured through connection to that which renders it distinctive and wonderful, particularly the pattern of Jesus. In neither case does it suggest pretending the most damaging regarding America and Christianity was nonexistent; it represents both humility and faith, a mixture that serious American Christians ought to accept.
