The Trump phenomenon's most telling and defining instances – not its most crucial, nor most harsh, nor most threatening, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – came earlier this autumn. Over the span of multiple weeks, the nation's leader commenced revealing everyone his intentions for an ornate dance hall two times larger of the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has done things 10,000 times as bad – the present calculation of casualties from his cuts to international aid amounts to 600,000 and growing, and this week research predicted his energy policies would kill 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No other president would have dared – truly, no previous leader would have imagined – independently wrecking major areas of the White House to build a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of some of America's wealthiest, nearly all of which maintain dealings with public institutions.
We went from 'the gentle will obtain the Earth' toward 'the meek shall die of cholera'
As confusing as it is to watch the leader try to upend the old idea about democracy and exchange it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion of Americans who should not find it entirely new. This includes individuals like us – among senior generations almost a majority – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have watched throughout the years as politically conservative religious groups transformed the Christ we learned about into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of compassion into an icon of hate who approves specifically the brutality that he criticized in biblical teachings; this change developed at a slower pace, across decades instead of months, yet it remains disturbing through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Establishes Itself
Hence I shall explain the Jesus from my upbringing, since in theory Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and since the fastest-growing cadre of Americans could have minimal awareness about him because they identify as non-believers or agnostics or spiritual independents. I raise no objection with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; but I do think that exist valuable insights of significant worth in the Christian story.
It is decidedly definitely not the narrative of a mighty king appearing; instead, an infant arrives to displaced parents in a storage space, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to escape undercover officers. The infant develops in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his teaching concerns compassion for others, particularly for the disadvantaged – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and housing. Christ's response to aggression is to present the opposite cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a means to instruct the assailant; his crime policy states that when a person pilfers your outer garment you must offer the person your additional clothing also.
The obvious and direct reality that Christ in biblical accounts calls for a type of extreme compassion focused on the poor is what has always made Christianity something of a controversial faith: engaging for the masses, but owing to its natural unconventionality needing to be controlled. In the fifties it was restrained through watering down – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Best Within Us
Hence I have become encouraged to witness the steadfast resistance regarding Trump arise in this past year. It has been great solace to assist in constructing the campaign that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired electorate to participate in numbers in the off-year elections. We shall require to continue it, and with identical determination, with American flags at every demonstration and appeals to the finest aspects of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you receive him and welcome him or not?
The nation is most protected, to put it differently, by reference to the best about American history, similar to Christianity is most protected by relationship to that which renders it distinctive and beautiful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In neither case does it suggest feigning the most damaging about the nation and Christian faith never occurred; it means both humility and belief, a combination that serious US believers should be comfortable with.
