Trumpism's most revealing and characteristic moments – not its most crucial, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. During the period of multiple weeks, the nation's leader began displaying the public his plans for a lavish reception room double the dimensions compared to the White House and then commenced solo dismantling the East Wing to build it.
He has performed deeds countless times more severe – the current estimate of fatalities resulting from his reductions to international aid is 600,000 and rising, and presently a study projected his fossil fuel policies would kill 1.3 million more. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have attempted – really, no previous leader would have imagined – solo demolishing large sections of the White House in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of numerous America's wealthiest, nearly all of which conduct transactions with the government.
We went from 'the humble will receive the Earth' to 'the gentle will succumb from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the president attempt to overturn the traditional concept of democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there is one large group among Americans who might not perceive it entirely new. That is those of us – among senior generations almost a majority – who were educated within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have watched over the years while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we grew up with into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. At its most basic, they turned a figure of compassion into a symbol of hate who blesses exactly the harshness that he criticized in scripture; this transformation occurred more slowly, over decades as opposed to months, however it is still disconcerting in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Damaging Christianity Establishes Itself
Therefore allow me to outline the Savior from my upbringing, as conceptually Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and given that the rapidly expanding group within America may possess limited understanding of him as they consider themselves skeptics or uncertain individuals or nones. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with any other faith; however I believe that there are pearls of great price in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably not the story of a powerful ruler arising; conversely, a baby is born to displaced parents in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to avoid secret police. The infant develops in simple surroundings, a working carpenter; his teaching is about love for others, especially for the disadvantaged – and not a sentimental love, but practical compassion, demonstrated through nourishing and sheltering. Jesus' answer to violence is to offer the other cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a means to educate the assailant; his method regarding offenses states that when an individual takes your coat you ought to provide them your pullover also.
The obvious and straightforward reality that the Savior from scripture requests a kind of extreme compassion focused on the impoverished is what has always made the Christian faith somewhat of a provocative belief system: engaging for the populace, but due to its intrinsic extremism requiring to be controlled. In the fifties it was controlled through watering down – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Battle for the Highest Within Us
Hence I have become inspired to witness the determined opposition to Trump develop during the previous year. It has been substantial consolation to help build the initiative that has protested openly in rally after rally, and seems to have inspired voters to participate in numbers in the off-year elections. We will need to maintain it, and with identical determination, displaying national flags at every demonstration and appeals to the finest aspects of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and embrace them or refuse?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by reference to the highest about American history, similar to Christianity is most protected by reference to what makes it unique and wonderful, specifically the model of Christ. In neither case does it mean acting as if the most negative of both America and Christian faith did not happen; it represents both humility and faith, a blend that genuine US believers should embrace.
