The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and defining instances – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most dangerous, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of a few weeks, the American president started showing the public his designs for an ornate dance hall double the dimensions than the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the East Wing portion to construct it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of fatalities due to his slashing to USAID is 600,000 and rising, and recently an analysis forecast his energy policies would kill 1.3 million more. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have dared – really, no previous leader would have contemplated – independently wrecking large sections of the presidential residence to build a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of multiple the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom have business with the government.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the world' into 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As confusing as it is to watch the chief executive attempt to overturn the established notion regarding democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there exists a significant segment of Americans who wouldn't consider it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – within elder demographics almost a majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched over the years as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we grew up with into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they transformed an image of love into a figure of hate who approves exactly the harshness that he denounced in scripture; this has happened more gradually, across decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting in the same ways, a confusing personal impact for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Christ that I grew up with, because theoretically the Savior is the core of Christian religion, and because the rapidly expanding group among Americans could have minimal awareness of him since they are non-believers or agnostics or nones. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that contain precious wisdom of great price in biblical accounts.
It is decidedly not the story of a powerful ruler emerging; instead, a baby is born to displaced parents in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to a different country to avoid covert authorities. The child matures in simple surroundings, a laboring woodworker; his teaching is about love for others, especially for the disadvantaged – and not a sentimental love, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and housing. Christ's response to violence is to present the other cheek – not as a demonstration of passive acceptance, but as a way to instruct the aggressor; his crime policy is that if someone steals your coat you ought to provide him your sweater too.
The obvious and clear reality that Christ in biblical accounts calls for a form of radical love concentrated on the impoverished has perpetually caused Christianity rather a controversial faith: engaging for the masses, but owing to its natural unconventionality needing to be controlled. During the 1950s it was contained by dilution – Protestant Christianity was so widespread that it basically baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Best of Us
Hence I have become heartened to observe the determined opposition against Trump arise during the previous year. It has been great solace to assist in constructing the initiative that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and likely has encouraged citizens to show up in large quantities in interim political contests. We must have to persist with it, and in the same spirit, displaying national flags during all protests and appeals to the finest aspects of American history.
We're going to be asked ... regarding how you welcomed the foreigner? Did you receive him and welcome him or refuse?
The nation is most protected, essentially, by reference to the finest within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is most protected by relationship to elements that cause it to be special and beautiful, particularly the pattern of Jesus. In neither case does it mean pretending the most damaging about the nation and religious tradition was nonexistent; it means both modesty and conviction, a mixture that committed national faithful ought to accept.
