The Trump movement's most revealing and distinctive occasions – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. Over the span of several weeks, the American president started showing everyone his intentions for a lavish reception room double the dimensions of the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the eastern section to erect it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of casualties from his cuts to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and growing, and this week a study forecast his energy policies would kill an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have attempted – really, no previous leader would have imagined – independently wrecking significant portions of the presidential residence to construct a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of numerous the nation's most affluent, nearly all of which have business with public institutions.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the planet' into 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to witness the chief executive attempt to overturn the established notion of democracy and exchange it with its complete opposite, there remains a substantial portion among Americans who wouldn't consider it totally unfamiliar. This includes individuals like us – among senior generations close to half – who were educated as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed throughout the years while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we were raised with into the complete reverse of our perception of his character. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of love into an icon of hostility who blesses precisely the cruelties that he criticized in biblical teachings; this has happened more gradually, through multiple decades rather than months, yet it remains unsettling via comparable methods, a confusing personal impact for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
Therefore allow me to outline the Savior that I grew up with, because theoretically Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and because the rapidly expanding group of Americans might have little sense about him because they identify as non-believers or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; but I do think that exist valuable insights of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is decidedly not the story of an authoritative monarch arising; instead, an infant arrives to displaced parents in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to evade covert authorities. The infant develops in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his doctrine focuses on affection for others, specifically for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but tangible care, demonstrated through nourishing and sheltering. Jesus' answer to aggression is to turn the opposite cheek – not as a gesture of submissive tolerance, but as a way to instruct the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing states that when someone steals your coat you must offer them your pullover too.
The obvious and clear fact that the Jesus of the gospels advocates for a type of radical love focused on the needy is what has always made the Christian faith something of a controversial faith: engaging for the masses, but owing to its natural unconventionality demanding to be restrained. During the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – Protestantism was so prevalent that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Battle for the Best Within Us
Therefore I have felt heartened to observe the determined opposition against Trump develop over the last twelve months. It has served as significant comfort to participate in developing the campaign that has protested openly via continuous gatherings, and appears to have motivated citizens to turn out in numbers in the off-year elections. We will need to persist with it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and appeals to the best parts of American history.
We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the immigrant? Did you receive him and receive them or reject?
America is best defended, to put it differently, through connection to the finest in US heritage, similar to Christianity is best defended through connection to that which renders it unique and magnificent, which is the example of the Savior. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the most damaging about the nation and Christian faith never occurred; it signifies both humility and belief, a blend that serious US believers should be comfortable with.
