The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and defining instances – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of several weeks, the nation's leader began displaying everyone his plans for a gilded ballroom twice the size than the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the eastern section to erect it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of deaths resulting from his reductions to USAID is 600,000 and growing, and this week an analysis predicted his petroleum strategies would result in fatalities 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have attempted – truly, no other president would have contemplated – solo demolishing large sections of the executive mansion to construct a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of some of America's wealthiest, almost all of whom conduct transactions with federal agencies.
We went from 'the humble will receive the Earth' into 'the humble will perish from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the president try to upend the traditional concept regarding democracy and replace it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion of Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – among senior generations close to half – who were brought up as conventional Protestant believers.
We have observed over the years as politically conservative religious groups converted the Savior we learned about into the complete reverse of our perception of his character. At its most basic, they turned a figure of love into an icon of hate who blesses precisely the cruelties that he denounced in the Gospel; this has happened more gradually, through multiple decades as opposed to months, however it is still disconcerting in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
Therefore allow me to outline the Christ from my childhood, because theoretically Christ is the focus within Christian belief, and given that the fastest-growing cadre of Americans could have minimal awareness about him since they are atheists or agnostics or spiritual independents. I raise no objection with any of these traditions, nor with different religions; however I believe that contain precious wisdom of great price in the Christian story.
It is decidedly not the story of a powerful ruler emerging; rather, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to avoid secret police. The infant develops in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his doctrine concerns compassion for fellow humans, specifically for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but a concrete one, shown by providing food 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 crime policy states that when a person pilfers your outer garment you must offer the person your additional clothing also.
The evident and straightforward truth that Christ of the gospels requests a type of radical love concentrated on the impoverished has perpetually caused the Christian faith something of a provocative belief system: attractive to the masses, but owing to its natural unconventionality demanding to be contained. During the 1950s it was contained via weakening – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Finest Within Us
So I have been inspired to witness the steadfast resistance against Trump arise in this past year. It has provided great solace to help build the initiative that has taken to the streets in rally after rally, and seems to have inspired electorate to show up in large quantities in interim political contests. We will need to continue it, and in the same spirit, with American flags during all protests and appeals to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the foreigner? Did you receive him and receive them or not?
America is best defended, essentially, by relationship to the finest in US heritage, similar to Christianity is optimally secured by reference to elements that cause it to be unique and beautiful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In neither case does it suggest feigning the most damaging regarding America and religious tradition never occurred; it signifies both humility and conviction, a combination that genuine national faithful should be comfortable with.
