Trumpism's most telling and characteristic moments – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of a few weeks, the nation's leader began displaying all observers his intentions for a lavish reception room double the dimensions compared to the White House and then began solo dismantling the East Wing to construct it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the existing assessment of fatalities due to his slashing to foreign assistance amounts to 600,000 and rising, and this week a study projected his energy policies would cause deaths an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have dared – really, no former commander would have imagined – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the White House to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of numerous the richest Americans, nearly all of which maintain dealings with public institutions.
We moved from 'the gentle will obtain the Earth' into 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the president try to upend the old idea regarding democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there exists a significant segment within America who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched across decades while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we grew up with into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. Essentially, they transformed an image of love into a symbol of animosity who approves exactly the harshness that he condemned in the Gospel; this change developed more slowly, over decades instead of months, yet it remains unsettling via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Savior from my upbringing, as conceptually the Savior is the core of Christian religion, and given that the quickly increasing segment among Americans may possess limited understanding of him since they are skeptics or doubters or spiritual independents. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that exist valuable insights of significant worth in the Christian story.
It is emphatically not the account of a powerful ruler emerging; conversely, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to evade undercover officers. The child matures in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his message concerns compassion for fellow humans, specifically for the disadvantaged – not simply tender feelings, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and sheltering. Christ's response to hostility is to present the other cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a means to educate the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing states that when a person pilfers your coat you must offer him your sweater as well.
The obvious and straightforward truth that the Jesus of the gospels advocates for a type of radical love focused on the impoverished has perpetually caused Christianity something of a scandalous religion: appealing to the masses, but owing to its intrinsic extremism demanding to be contained. In the fifties it was contained through watering down – Protestantism was so prevalent that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Battle for the Highest Among Us
So I have been heartened to see the persistent defiance to Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has been great solace to assist in constructing the campaign that has protested openly in rally after rally, and likely has encouraged electorate to participate in large quantities during minor elections. We will need to maintain it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and appeals to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and receive them or not?
America is best defended, in other words, by relationship to the finest in US heritage, just as Christianity is most protected by relationship to that which renders it special and wonderful, which is the example of the Savior. In neither case does it suggest feigning the worst regarding America and religious tradition did not happen; it represents both meekness and conviction, a blend that genuine US believers should embrace.
