The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and characteristic moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. During the period of multiple weeks, the US president started showing everyone his designs for a gilded ballroom twice the size than the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the East Wing portion to build it.
He has done things countless times more severe – the existing assessment of deaths from his cuts to international aid is 600,000 and increasing, and recently research forecast his energy policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have risked – truly, no other president would have imagined – unilaterally destroying major areas of the presidential residence to build a royal-themed celebration hall, with the enthusiastic participation of multiple the richest Americans, the majority of whom have business with the government.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the planet' to 'the gentle will succumb from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to witness the chief executive attempt to overturn the traditional concept about democracy and substitute it with its polar opposite, there remains a substantial portion within America who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – within elder demographics a near majority – who were educated as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed throughout the years while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we were raised with into the total contrary of our understanding of him. Essentially, they transformed an image of love into an icon of hostility who endorses specifically the brutality that he denounced in biblical teachings; this has happened more gradually, through multiple decades instead of months, yet it remains disconcerting in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
Hence I shall explain the Christ that I grew up with, because theoretically the Savior is the core of Christian religion, and since the rapidly expanding group within America may possess limited understanding of him since they are skeptics or agnostics or nones. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that contain precious wisdom of significant worth in the Christian story.
It is decidedly not the narrative of a mighty king appearing; instead, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to escape covert authorities. The infant develops in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his message concerns compassion for others, particularly for the disadvantaged – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, shown by providing food and housing. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to turn the additional cheek – not as a gesture of submissive tolerance, but as a means to instruct the assailant; his crime policy states that when someone steals your outer garment you ought to provide him your sweater also.
The evident and straightforward truth that the Savior in biblical accounts calls for a kind of radical love focused on the impoverished has perpetually caused Christian religion somewhat of a controversial faith: engaging for the masses, but due to its natural unconventionality needing to be controlled. In the fifties it was contained through watering down – Protestantism was so dominant that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Conflict for the Highest Within Us
So I have been inspired to see the persistent defiance to Trump arise in this past year. It has been great solace to help build the initiative that has protested openly via continuous gatherings, and likely has encouraged citizens to participate in large quantities during minor elections. We will need to maintain it, and with identical determination, displaying national flags during all protests and requests to the highest qualities within national heritage.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the foreigner? Did you receive him and receive them or not?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by reference to the highest in US heritage, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured by relationship to elements that cause it to be unique and wonderful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In neither case does it imply pretending the worst of both America and religious tradition never occurred; it means both humility and conviction, a mixture that serious national faithful should be comfortable with.
