The Trump movement's most illuminating and distinctive instances – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. During the period of multiple weeks, the American president started showing the public his designs for an ornate dance hall twice the size of the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the East Wing to construct it.
He has done things countless times more severe – the existing assessment of casualties due to his slashing to foreign assistance amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and presently research predicted his energy policies would cause deaths 1.3 million more. But nothing as definitional. No former leader would have risked – genuinely, no previous leader would have imagined – unilaterally destroying large sections of the White House to construct a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of multiple the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom have business with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the humble will receive the world' into 'the gentle will succumb of cholera'
As confusing as it is to watch the president try to upend the traditional concept of democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there remains a substantial portion of Americans who should not find it entirely new. That is those of us – within elder demographics almost a majority – who were educated within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have watched throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we learned about into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they turned a figure of love into an icon of hostility who approves precisely the cruelties that he criticized in the Gospel; this has happened more slowly, through multiple decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless unsettling in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Savior from my childhood, since in theory Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and since the fastest-growing cadre of Americans might have little sense regarding him because they identify as non-believers or agnostics or nones. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that there are pearls of great price within Christian narrative.
It is unquestionably absolutely not the story of a mighty king arising; instead, a baby is born to homeless parents in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to evade covert authorities. The child matures in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his teaching focuses on affection for other people, specifically for the disadvantaged – not simply tender feelings, but tangible care, shown by providing food and sheltering. Christ's response to aggression is to present the other cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a means to instruct the assailant; his method regarding offenses states that when a person pilfers your coat you ought to provide the person your additional clothing as well.
The evident and direct fact that the Jesus in biblical accounts requests a kind of radical love centered on the impoverished has perpetually caused Christian religion something of a provocative belief system: appealing to the populace, but due to its inherent radicalness needing to be controlled. During the 1950s it was controlled via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so widespread that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Conflict for the Best Within Us
Hence I have become heartened to observe the persistent defiance to Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has served as substantial consolation to help build the campaign that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and seems to have inspired electorate to turn out in numbers during minor elections. We must have to persist with it, and with identical determination, featuring US banners at every demonstration and appeals to the finest aspects in US history.
We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the stranger? Did you receive him and welcome him or reject?
America is best defended, in other words, through connection to the finest about American history, just as Christianity is best defended by relationship to elements that cause it to be special and beautiful, specifically the model of Christ. In both situations does it mean feigning the most damaging about the nation and religious tradition was nonexistent; it represents both humility and belief, a combination that committed national faithful should embrace.
