The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and characteristic moments – not its most important, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. In the course of multiple weeks, the nation's leader started showing the public his intentions for a lavish reception room twice the size compared to the White House and then commenced solo dismantling the East Wing to build it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the existing assessment of casualties from his cuts to international aid amounts to 600,000 and rising, and recently an analysis projected his fossil fuel policies would kill another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have attempted – truly, no previous leader would have conceived – independently wrecking significant portions of the executive mansion to construct a royal-themed celebration hall, with the direct cooperation of numerous the richest Americans, nearly all of which maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We went from 'the gentle will obtain the Earth' to 'the humble will perish of cholera'
As bewildering as it is to observe the president try to upend the traditional concept about democracy and exchange it with its complete opposite, there remains a substantial portion of Americans who wouldn't consider it completely novel. That encompasses people such as ourselves – among senior generations a near majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched across decades as politically conservative religious groups converted the Savior we grew up with into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they converted a persona of affection into a figure of animosity who endorses specifically the brutality that he criticized in scripture; this has happened more gradually, across decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless unsettling in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Jesus that I grew up with, as conceptually Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and since the rapidly expanding group within America may possess limited understanding about him as they consider themselves atheists or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that there are pearls of significant worth within Christian narrative.
It is decidedly not the narrative of a mighty king appearing; rather, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to evade secret police. The baby grows up in simple surroundings, an employed craftsman; his message focuses on affection for others, particularly for the disadvantaged – not simply tender feelings, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and housing. Christ's response to aggression is to turn the other cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a means to educate the assailant; his crime policy states that when a person pilfers your jacket you ought to provide the person your additional clothing too.
The apparent and straightforward truth that the Savior of the gospels advocates for a form of profound affection centered on the poor has perpetually caused the Christian faith rather a controversial faith: attractive to the general public, but because of its intrinsic extremism needing to be controlled. In the 1950s it was controlled via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it basically baptized the status quo.
A Conflict for the Finest Within Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to see the steadfast resistance against Trump emerge during the previous year. It has provided great solace to help build the campaign that has taken to the streets through repeated demonstrations, and likely has encouraged voters to show up in numbers in the off-year elections. We must have to continue it, and in the same spirit, displaying national flags at every demonstration and requests to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We're going to be asked ... how did you receive the foreigner? Did you accept these individuals and embrace them or not?
The nation is most protected, essentially, by reference to the highest in US heritage, similar to Christianity is best defended through connection to what makes it unique and wonderful, specifically the model of Christ. In neither case does it imply pretending the most damaging regarding America and Christianity did not happen; it represents both meekness and conviction, a blend that committed national faithful ought to accept.
