The Trump phenomenon's most telling and defining moments – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of several weeks, the US president started showing the public his plans for a gilded ballroom two times larger of the White House and then began independently demolishing the eastern section to build it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of deaths from his cuts to international aid stands at 600,000 and increasing, and this week an analysis forecast his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities another 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No former leader would have risked – really, no other president would have conceived – independently wrecking large sections of the White House in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of multiple the richest Americans, the majority of whom conduct transactions with the government.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' toward 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As bewildering as it is to observe the chief executive try to upend the established notion about democracy and replace it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion within America who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were educated as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have observed throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we learned about into the total contrary of our perception of his character. Essentially, they turned a figure of love into an icon of hostility who approves precisely the cruelties that he condemned in the Gospel; this change developed more slowly, over decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disturbing through similar means, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Christ from my upbringing, because theoretically Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and since the fastest-growing cadre among Americans might have little sense about him as they consider themselves atheists or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that there are pearls of great price in the Christian story.
It is emphatically not the narrative of a powerful ruler emerging; rather, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to evade undercover officers. The child matures in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine is about love for others, specifically for the disadvantaged – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and protecting. Christ's response to aggression is to present the opposite cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a means to instruct the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing is that if a person pilfers your outer garment you should give the person your additional clothing as well.
The obvious and straightforward fact that the Jesus from scripture calls for a form of radical love centered on the impoverished has perpetually caused Christian religion somewhat of a controversial faith: engaging for the general public, but due to its natural unconventionality needing to be restrained. In the fifties it was contained via weakening – The Protestant faith was so prevalent that it essentially blessed current circumstances.
A Struggle for the Highest Within Us
Hence I have become encouraged to see the steadfast resistance against Trump arise over the last twelve months. It has been great solace to assist in constructing the campaign that has protested openly via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired voters to show up in large quantities during minor elections. We shall require to continue it, and with identical determination, with American flags throughout each rally and appeals to the finest aspects of American history.
We're going to be asked ... about how you treated the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and welcome him or not?
The nation is most protected, to put it differently, by reference to the finest in US heritage, similar to Christianity is most protected by reference to elements that cause it to be unique and beautiful, which is the example of Christ. In neither case does it suggest pretending the most negative of both America and Christian faith never occurred; it represents both meekness and conviction, a combination that serious national faithful ought to accept.
