The Trump movement's most illuminating and defining moments – not its most crucial, nor most harsh, nor most dangerous, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of multiple weeks, the US president commenced revealing all observers his intentions for an ornate dance hall two times larger compared to the White House and then commenced unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to construct it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of fatalities resulting from his reductions to international aid is 600,000 and increasing, and presently research forecast his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have dared – genuinely, no previous leader would have imagined – independently wrecking significant portions of the White House to build a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of some of the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom have business with federal agencies.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the Earth' toward 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As confusing as it is to witness the leader try to upend the old idea about democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there is one large group within America who should not find it completely novel. This includes individuals like us – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were brought up as conventional Protestant believers.
We have witnessed throughout the years while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we grew up with into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of love into an icon of animosity who endorses specifically the brutality that he denounced in biblical teachings; this has happened more slowly, over decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Jesus from my childhood, since in theory Christ is the focus of Christian religion, and since the fastest-growing cadre of Americans may possess limited understanding of him because they identify as atheists or agnostics or nones. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with different religions; however I believe that exist valuable insights of significant worth in biblical accounts.
It is decidedly not the narrative of an authoritative monarch arising; conversely, a child comes into the world to displaced parents in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to evade undercover officers. The child matures in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his teaching concerns compassion for others, particularly for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and protecting. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to turn the additional cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a means to educate the assailant; his approach to wrongdoing is that if someone steals your coat you ought to provide the person your additional clothing also.
The evident and straightforward fact that the Savior of the gospels requests a form of radical love focused on the impoverished is what has always made Christian religion something of a scandalous religion: engaging for the masses, but owing to its inherent radicalness requiring to be contained. In the 1950s it was controlled via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so widespread that it basically sanctified existing conditions.
A Conflict for the Finest of Us
Hence I have become heartened to see the steadfast resistance to Trump emerge during the previous year. It has provided substantial consolation to assist in constructing the movement that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and seems to have inspired citizens to participate in numbers in interim political contests. We must have to continue it, and with identical determination, displaying national flags at every demonstration and appeals to the best parts within national heritage.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the immigrant? Did you welcome them and receive them or not?
The country is optimally secured, to put it differently, by relationship to the best within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured by reference to elements that cause it to be distinctive and beautiful, particularly the pattern of Christ. In both situations does it imply acting as if the most damaging of both America and religious tradition never occurred; it means both humility and faith, a blend that genuine US believers should embrace.
