The Trump movement's most telling and defining moments – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of multiple weeks, the American president began displaying the public his designs for a gilded ballroom twice the size than the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to build it.
He has done things countless times more severe – the present calculation of fatalities due to his slashing to USAID amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and recently a study predicted his energy policies would cause deaths 1.3 million more. But nothing as definitional. No former leader would have risked – really, no former commander would have imagined – solo demolishing major areas of the executive mansion to build a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of numerous the richest Americans, the majority of whom conduct transactions with the government.
We transitioned from 'the gentle will obtain the planet' toward 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As bewildering as it is to witness the leader try to upend the old idea regarding democracy and exchange it with its direct contrary, there exists a significant segment among Americans who should not find it entirely new. That encompasses people such as ourselves – among senior generations almost a majority – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations converted the Savior we learned about into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of compassion into a symbol of animosity who approves precisely the cruelties that he condemned in biblical teachings; this has happened more slowly, through multiple decades as opposed to months, yet it remains disturbing via comparable methods, a confusing personal impact for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Christ from my upbringing, as conceptually Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and given that the quickly increasing segment of Americans could have minimal awareness about him because they identify as skeptics or uncertain individuals or spiritual independents. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with different religions; but I do think that contain precious wisdom of significant worth in biblical accounts.
It is emphatically absolutely not the story of a mighty king arising; rather, a baby is born to parents without shelter in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to avoid covert authorities. The baby grows up in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his doctrine is about love for fellow humans, particularly for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but practical compassion, shown by providing food and housing. The Savior's reaction to aggression is to offer the other cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a means to teach the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing states that when an individual takes your coat you must offer the person your additional clothing as well.
The obvious and direct truth that Christ from scripture calls for a kind of extreme compassion centered on the poor is what has always made Christian religion something of a provocative belief system: attractive to the masses, but because of its intrinsic extremism demanding to be contained. During the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – Protestant Christianity was so widespread that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Highest of Us
So I have been heartened to observe the determined opposition to Trump develop over the last twelve months. It has served as great solace to help build the movement that has protested openly in rally after rally, and likely has encouraged electorate to turn out in numbers in interim political contests. We will need to maintain it, and with identical determination, with American flags during all protests and appeals to the best parts in US history.
We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the immigrant? Did you welcome them and welcome him or reject?
The nation is most protected, in other words, by relationship to the best within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is best defended through connection to what makes it unique and wonderful, which is the example of Jesus. In neither case does it imply feigning the most damaging of both America and Christian faith was nonexistent; it signifies both humility and belief, a combination that genuine US believers ought to accept.
