Trumpism's most illuminating and characteristic occasions – not its most significant, nor most harsh, nor most dangerous, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of a few weeks, the American president commenced revealing the public his designs for a lavish reception room twice the size of the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the East Wing to build it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of casualties due to his slashing to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and growing, and recently research predicted his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have dared – truly, no previous leader would have imagined – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the executive mansion to build a royal-themed celebration hall, with the enthusiastic participation of numerous the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom have business with public institutions.
We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' toward 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the chief executive try to upend the old idea regarding democracy and replace it with its polar opposite, there is one large group within America who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – among senior generations close to half – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed over the years as politically conservative religious groups transformed the Christ we learned about into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. Essentially, they transformed an image of love into a figure of hate who approves exactly the harshness that he criticized in the Gospel; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, through multiple decades as opposed to months, but it is nonetheless disturbing through similar means, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Christ from my childhood, because theoretically Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and because the rapidly expanding group among Americans might have little sense of him because they identify as atheists or agnostics or spiritual independents. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with any other faith; but I do think that there are pearls of significant worth in the Christian story.
It is decidedly definitely not the story of an authoritative monarch arising; conversely, an infant arrives to displaced parents in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to evade secret police. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his teaching is about love for others, specifically for the poor – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, demonstrated through nourishing and sheltering. Jesus' answer to hostility is to present the other cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a method to educate the assailant; his approach to wrongdoing is that if an individual takes your jacket you ought to provide the person your additional clothing too.
The apparent and straightforward fact that Christ in biblical accounts calls for a kind of radical love focused on the impoverished has consistently rendered Christian religion rather a provocative belief system: engaging for the populace, but owing to its intrinsic extremism needing to be contained. In the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – Protestantism was so widespread that it basically baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Best Within Us
Hence I have become inspired to see the persistent defiance against Trump emerge in this past year. It has been substantial consolation to assist in constructing the initiative that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and likely has encouraged citizens to show up in large quantities during minor elections. We will need to persist with it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners throughout each rally and appeals to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and embrace them or reject?
The country is optimally secured, to put it differently, through connection to the finest within national tradition, just as Christianity is best defended by relationship to what makes it unique and wonderful, which is the example of Christ. In neither case does it mean pretending the most damaging regarding America and Christianity was nonexistent; it represents both humility and conviction, a combination that committed national faithful ought to accept.
