The Trump phenomenon's most telling and characteristic moments – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. In the course of several weeks, the American president started showing all observers his plans for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions of the White House and then began independently demolishing the East Wing portion to construct it.
He has done things countless times more severe – the present calculation of casualties from his cuts to international aid stands at 600,000 and increasing, and presently a study predicted his energy policies would result in fatalities another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have dared – genuinely, no former commander would have conceived – unilaterally destroying major areas of the White House to construct a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of some of America's wealthiest, nearly all of which conduct transactions with public institutions.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the world' to 'the humble will perish from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the chief executive seek to颠覆 the old idea of democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there is one large group among Americans who wouldn't consider it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – among senior generations close to half – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have watched over the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we were raised with into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they transformed an image of compassion into a figure of animosity who approves exactly the harshness that he denounced in biblical teachings; this transformation occurred more gradually, through multiple decades as opposed to months, yet it remains disturbing through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Savior from my childhood, because theoretically Jesus is the center of Christian religion, and since the fastest-growing cadre among Americans may possess limited understanding of him as they consider themselves atheists or uncertain individuals or nones. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that there are pearls of great price in biblical accounts.
It is unquestionably not the narrative of a powerful ruler emerging; instead, a baby is born to parents without shelter in a garage, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to evade secret police. The child matures in simple surroundings, an employed craftsman; his message is about love for others, particularly for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and housing. Christ's response to violence is to offer the other cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a method to instruct the assailant; his crime policy indicates that whenever a person pilfers your jacket you should give him your sweater as well.
The apparent and clear reality that the Savior of the gospels advocates for a type of profound affection centered on the impoverished has consistently rendered the Christian faith rather a scandalous religion: engaging for the general public, but owing to its natural unconventionality needing to be contained. During the 1950s it was contained through watering down – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Conflict for the Best Within Us
So I have been encouraged to witness the persistent defiance against Trump emerge during the previous year. It has provided great solace to help build the initiative that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired citizens to turn out in large quantities in the off-year elections. We will need to continue it, and in the same spirit, displaying national flags at every demonstration and calls to the highest qualities within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the foreigner? Did you receive him and embrace them or refuse?
America is best defended, in other words, by relationship to the finest about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured by relationship to what makes it distinctive and beautiful, specifically the model of Christ. In neither case does it suggest feigning the most damaging regarding America and Christianity did not happen; it signifies both meekness and belief, a mixture that serious US believers ought to accept.
