Trumpism's most telling and characteristic moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. In the course of multiple weeks, the US president commenced revealing the public his plans for an ornate dance hall two times larger of the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the East Wing portion to construct it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the existing assessment of deaths from his cuts to USAID stands at 600,000 and increasing, and this week an analysis predicted his petroleum strategies would result in fatalities another 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No other president would have risked – genuinely, no other president would have imagined – independently wrecking large sections of the White House in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of some of the richest Americans, nearly all of which maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the planet' to 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the leader attempt to overturn the old idea of democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there exists a significant segment within America who should not find it completely novel. This includes individuals like us – among senior generations a near majority – who were brought up as conventional Protestant believers.
We have witnessed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus 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 an icon of hostility who endorses precisely the cruelties that he denounced in the Gospel; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, through multiple decades as opposed to months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting through similar means, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Jesus from my upbringing, as conceptually Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and given that the rapidly expanding group of Americans might have little sense about him because they identify as non-believers or agnostics or spiritual independents. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with different religions; but I do think that there are pearls of great price in biblical accounts.
It is decidedly not the story of a powerful ruler arising; instead, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to a different country to escape undercover officers. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his message is about love for fellow humans, particularly for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, demonstrated through nourishing and protecting. Jesus' answer to violence is to present the opposite cheek – not as a demonstration of submissive tolerance, but as a means to instruct the assailant; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever someone steals your coat you should give the person your additional clothing also.
The evident and clear reality that the Jesus of the gospels calls for a type of radical love focused on the poor is what has always made the Christian faith rather a scandalous religion: appealing to the masses, but owing to its natural unconventionality needing to be contained. In the 1950s it was restrained via weakening – Protestantism was so dominant that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Finest of Us
So I have been inspired to witness the determined opposition regarding Trump emerge in this past year. It has served as significant comfort to assist in constructing the campaign that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and likely has encouraged voters to participate in numbers during minor elections. We shall require to continue it, and through comparable resolve, featuring US banners throughout each rally and appeals to the best parts in US history.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you welcome them and embrace them or reject?
The country is optimally secured, to put it differently, by relationship to the finest within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured through connection to that which renders it distinctive and beautiful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In neither case does it imply pretending the worst regarding America and Christian faith was nonexistent; it represents both humility and belief, a blend that serious American Christians should be comfortable with.
