The Trump movement's most illuminating and defining moments – not its most crucial, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. Over the span of several weeks, the American president commenced revealing everyone his designs for an ornate dance hall twice the size compared to the White House and then commenced unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to construct it.
He has done things countless times more severe – the present calculation of deaths due to his slashing to USAID is 600,000 and rising, and presently a study predicted his energy policies would kill another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have attempted – truly, no previous leader would have imagined – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the White House to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of some of the richest Americans, almost all of whom conduct transactions with public institutions.
We went from 'the humble will receive the planet' toward 'the humble will perish of cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the chief executive attempt to overturn the traditional concept of democracy and replace it with its direct contrary, there exists a significant segment of Americans who wouldn't consider 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 across decades as rightwing evangelical churches transformed the Christ we were raised with into the total contrary of our understanding of him. Essentially, they transformed an image of love into a symbol of hostility who blesses specifically the brutality that he condemned in biblical teachings; this has happened more slowly, across decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Savior that I grew up with, since in theory the Savior is the core within Christian belief, and because the rapidly expanding group among Americans may possess limited understanding about him because they identify as skeptics or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that there are pearls of substantial value in biblical accounts.
It is emphatically absolutely not the narrative of a powerful ruler appearing; rather, an infant arrives to homeless parents in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to evade undercover officers. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his teaching focuses on affection for fellow humans, specifically for the disadvantaged – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, demonstrated through nourishing and housing. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to offer the additional cheek – not as a gesture of submissive tolerance, but as a means to educate the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing states that when someone steals your jacket you must offer the person your additional clothing too.
The apparent and clear fact that Christ from scripture advocates for a form of extreme compassion centered on the needy is what has always made Christianity something of a provocative belief system: appealing to the general public, but due to its natural unconventionality demanding to be restrained. During the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – Protestantism was so dominant that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Highest of Us
Hence I have become inspired to witness the persistent defiance regarding Trump develop during the previous year. It has been significant comfort to help build the initiative that has taken to the streets in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated citizens to participate in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We shall require to continue it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners at every demonstration and requests to the finest aspects of American history.
We're going to be asked ... how did you receive the foreigner? Did you welcome them and receive them or reject?
The country is optimally secured, in other words, by relationship to the best in US heritage, exactly as the Christian faith is best defended by relationship to elements that cause it to be special and wonderful, which is the example of Jesus. In all circumstances does it suggest pretending the most damaging regarding America and Christianity was nonexistent; it signifies both modesty and conviction, a mixture that committed US believers should embrace.
