The Trump movement's most revealing and characteristic moments – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but possibly its most revealing – came earlier this autumn. During the period of multiple weeks, the US president commenced revealing everyone his intentions for an ornate dance hall twice the size compared to the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to erect it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of deaths due to his slashing to international aid stands at 600,000 and increasing, and this week an analysis projected his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No former leader would have risked – truly, no former commander would have contemplated – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the executive mansion to construct a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the enthusiastic participation of multiple the nation's most affluent, nearly all of which conduct transactions with the government.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the world' to 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the president try to upend the old idea regarding democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there exists a significant segment among Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – within elder demographics close to half – who were raised as conventional Protestant believers.
We have watched throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches transformed the Christ we were raised with into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of compassion into a symbol of hate who endorses specifically the brutality that he criticized in scripture; this change developed at a slower pace, through multiple decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Establishes Itself
Therefore allow me to outline the Christ that I grew up with, because theoretically Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and given that the quickly increasing segment among Americans might have little sense about him because they identify as skeptics or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that there are pearls of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is emphatically not the story of an authoritative monarch appearing; rather, a child comes into the world to displaced parents in a storage space, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to evade undercover officers. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his message focuses on affection for fellow humans, particularly for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, shown by providing food and protecting. Jesus' answer to hostility is to turn the other cheek – not as a demonstration of submissive tolerance, but as a method to educate the aggressor; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever an individual takes your coat you should give the person your additional clothing also.
The obvious and direct fact that the Jesus from scripture requests a form of extreme compassion centered on the needy has consistently rendered the Christian faith something of a provocative belief system: engaging for the populace, but owing to its intrinsic extremism demanding to be controlled. In the 1950s it was contained through watering down – Protestantism was so prevalent that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Best Within Us
So I have been inspired to witness the steadfast resistance regarding Trump emerge during the previous year. It has been significant comfort to help build the campaign that has protested openly via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired citizens to turn out in numbers in the off-year elections. We must have to continue it, and with identical determination, displaying national flags at every demonstration and appeals to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and receive them or reject?
The country is optimally secured, in other words, by reference to the finest in US heritage, just as Christianity is optimally secured by relationship to that which renders it special and beautiful, which is the example of the Savior. In neither case does it mean feigning the most damaging regarding America and Christianity never occurred; it means both meekness and belief, a mixture that committed American Christians should embrace.
