Trumpism's most revealing and characteristic instances – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – occurred earlier this fall. During the period of several weeks, the US president began displaying everyone his intentions for a lavish reception room double the dimensions than the White House and then began solo dismantling the East Wing to construct it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of casualties resulting from his reductions to international aid amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and this week research projected his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities 1.3 million more. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have dared – genuinely, no former commander would have conceived – solo demolishing major areas of the executive mansion to construct a royal-themed celebration hall, with the active collaboration of multiple the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom conduct transactions with federal agencies.
We went from 'the gentle will obtain the world' to 'the meek shall die of cholera'
As confusing as it is to watch the president try to upend the established notion of democracy and replace it with its polar opposite, there is one large group within America who wouldn't consider it entirely new. That is those of us – in older age cohorts close to half – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed over the years as rightwing evangelical churches transformed the Christ we learned about into the complete reverse of our perception of his character. Fundamentally, they converted a persona of affection into a figure of hate who blesses precisely the cruelties that he criticized in the Gospel; this change developed more slowly, over decades rather than months, however it is still unsettling via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Jesus from my childhood, as conceptually Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and given that the quickly increasing segment among Americans may possess limited understanding of him since they are skeptics or agnostics or spiritual independents. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with any other faith; but I do think that exist valuable insights of great price within Christian narrative.
It is unquestionably absolutely not the story of a mighty king emerging; rather, a baby is born to displaced parents in a garage, who must quickly flee to another nation to escape secret police. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his teaching is about love for fellow humans, particularly for the disadvantaged – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and sheltering. The Savior's reaction to aggression is to present the other cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a means to educate the aggressor; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever a person pilfers your jacket you should give them your pullover too.
The evident and clear fact that the Jesus from scripture requests a type of extreme compassion centered on the needy has consistently rendered Christianity rather a provocative belief system: engaging for the masses, but because of its intrinsic extremism needing to be controlled. During the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – Protestantism was so prevalent that it basically sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Finest of Us
So I have been heartened to see the determined opposition against Trump arise in this past year. It has served as great solace to assist in constructing the campaign that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and likely has encouraged citizens to participate in numbers in interim political contests. We will need to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags at every demonstration and appeals to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you receive him and embrace them or not?
The country is optimally secured, in other words, through connection to the finest within national tradition, similar to Christianity is optimally secured by reference to that which renders it unique and magnificent, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In both situations does it suggest feigning the most damaging of both America and Christianity was nonexistent; it signifies both modesty and faith, a mixture that genuine American Christians should embrace.
