The Trump movement's most revealing and defining moments – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. During the period of a few weeks, the nation's leader began displaying the public his intentions for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions of the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the eastern section to construct it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of fatalities resulting from his reductions to international aid stands at 600,000 and growing, and recently an analysis forecast his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have dared – truly, no former commander would have imagined – unilaterally destroying major areas of the executive mansion in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the enthusiastic participation of some of the richest Americans, almost all of whom have business with the government.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' to 'the humble will perish of cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the chief executive try to upend the established notion of democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there is one large group of Americans who should not find 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 witnessed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we learned about into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. At its most basic, they converted a persona of affection into a symbol of hostility who blesses precisely the cruelties that he denounced in biblical teachings; this has happened more slowly, through multiple decades instead of months, yet it remains disturbing through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Christ that I grew up with, because theoretically Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and given that the quickly increasing segment within America could have minimal awareness of him because they identify as non-believers or agnostics or spiritual independents. I raise no objection with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that exist valuable insights of significant worth in biblical accounts.
It is emphatically absolutely not the story of a mighty king emerging; rather, an infant arrives to homeless parents in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to avoid undercover officers. The baby grows up in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his doctrine concerns compassion for others, specifically for the poor – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and sheltering. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to offer the additional cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a means to teach the assailant; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever someone steals your outer garment you must offer the person your additional clothing as well.
The apparent and clear truth that the Savior in biblical accounts advocates for a type of extreme compassion centered on the needy is what has always made Christianity somewhat of a scandalous religion: attractive to the general public, but due to its inherent radicalness needing to be controlled. In the 1950s it was contained by dilution – Protestantism was so prevalent that it basically baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Finest Among Us
So I have been heartened to observe the persistent defiance regarding Trump develop over the last twelve months. It has provided significant comfort to participate in developing the initiative that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated electorate to show up in large quantities in interim political contests. We will need to persist with it, and with identical determination, displaying national flags at every demonstration and calls to the highest qualities in US history.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the foreigner? Did you accept these individuals and welcome him or reject?
The nation is most protected, in other words, by reference to the best in US heritage, similar to Christianity is best defended by relationship to what makes it unique and magnificent, specifically the model of Christ. In all circumstances does it mean pretending the worst of both America and religious tradition was nonexistent; it means both meekness and faith, a blend that serious national faithful should be comfortable with.
