The Trump movement's most revealing and defining moments – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of a few weeks, the American president started showing everyone his intentions for a gilded ballroom two times larger of the White House and then began independently demolishing the eastern section to construct it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the existing assessment of fatalities from his cuts to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and growing, and recently an analysis predicted his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No former leader would have attempted – genuinely, no previous leader would have imagined – independently wrecking large sections of the White House in order to erect a royal-themed celebration hall, with the direct cooperation of multiple the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom maintain dealings with the government.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the world' toward 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to witness the president try to upend the traditional concept regarding democracy and replace it with its complete 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 raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have observed across decades as politically conservative religious groups converted the Savior we learned about into the complete reverse of our perception of his character. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of compassion into a figure of hate who blesses exactly the harshness that he condemned in the Gospel; this change developed more slowly, over decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless unsettling through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
Hence I shall explain the Christ that I grew up with, since in theory Christ is the focus of Christian religion, and because the rapidly expanding group of Americans may possess limited understanding regarding him because they identify as skeptics or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that there are pearls of great price within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically not the narrative of an authoritative monarch arising; instead, an infant arrives to homeless parents in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to avoid covert authorities. The infant develops in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his message focuses on affection for others, especially for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, demonstrated through nourishing and housing. The Savior's reaction to violence is to turn the opposite cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a way to instruct the assailant; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever someone steals your outer garment you must offer them your pullover as well.
The obvious and direct truth that the Savior in biblical accounts advocates for a type of radical love focused on the poor has perpetually caused Christianity something of a controversial faith: appealing to the populace, but because of its inherent radicalness requiring to be restrained. During the 1950s it was restrained via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Conflict for the Highest of Us
Hence I have become heartened to observe the steadfast resistance to Trump arise over the last twelve months. It has been significant comfort to assist in constructing the campaign that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, 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 ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you welcome them and receive them or not?
The country is optimally secured, to put it differently, by relationship to the finest within national tradition, just as Christianity is optimally secured by relationship to elements that cause it to be unique and beautiful, which is the example of the Savior. In both situations does it suggest acting as if the most negative regarding America and Christian faith was nonexistent; it means both humility and belief, a combination that serious American Christians should embrace.
