Trumpism's most telling and defining instances – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most dangerous, nor stupidest, but possibly its most revealing – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of several weeks, the American president commenced revealing everyone his intentions for a gilded ballroom twice the size than the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to build it.
He has performed deeds countless times more severe – the current estimate of deaths due to his slashing to USAID is 600,000 and rising, and recently research predicted his petroleum strategies would kill another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have risked – truly, no previous leader would have conceived – independently wrecking significant portions of the presidential residence to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of some of the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom conduct transactions with the government.
We went from 'the gentle will obtain the Earth' to 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As bewildering as it is to observe the leader try to upend the traditional concept about democracy and exchange it with its complete opposite, there remains a substantial portion of Americans who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations converted the Savior we learned about into the complete reverse of our perception of his character. At its most basic, they transformed an image of love into a figure of animosity who blesses specifically the brutality that he criticized in scripture; this has happened more gradually, through multiple decades as opposed to months, yet it remains disconcerting in the same ways, a confusing personal impact for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Jesus from my childhood, since in theory Christ is the focus of Christian religion, and given that the fastest-growing cadre among Americans may possess limited understanding about him since they are atheists or uncertain individuals or spiritual independents. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; yet I maintain that exist valuable insights of great price within Christian narrative.
It is decidedly not the narrative of an authoritative monarch emerging; instead, a child comes into the world to displaced parents in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to escape covert authorities. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine is about love for others, specifically for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and sheltering. The Savior's reaction to aggression is to turn the other cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a means to teach the attacker; his method regarding offenses is that if an individual takes your jacket you ought to provide the person your additional clothing as well.
The evident and direct reality that Christ of the gospels calls for a type of radical love centered on the impoverished has perpetually caused Christian religion rather a provocative belief system: attractive to the masses, but due to its inherent radicalness requiring to be restrained. In the 1950s it was controlled by dilution – Protestantism was so prevalent that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Struggle for the Highest Within Us
So I have been encouraged to see the steadfast resistance against Trump emerge in this past year. It has been substantial consolation to assist in constructing the initiative that has taken to the streets in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated citizens to participate in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We shall require to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags at every demonstration and requests to the best parts in US history.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you accept these individuals and receive them or reject?
The country is optimally secured, in other words, by reference to the highest in US heritage, just as Christianity is optimally secured by reference to that which renders it special and wonderful, which is the example of Christ. In both situations does it imply acting as if the worst of both America and Christianity did not happen; it means both modesty and belief, a combination that serious national faithful should be comfortable with.
