The Trump movement's most illuminating and characteristic instances – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of a few weeks, the US president commenced revealing the public his designs for an ornate dance hall twice the size compared to the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the East Wing to build it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the existing assessment of casualties due to his slashing to USAID stands at 600,000 and increasing, and this week research predicted his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have attempted – truly, no previous leader would have imagined – solo demolishing major areas of the White House in order to erect a royal-themed celebration hall, with the active collaboration of multiple America's wealthiest, nearly all of which maintain dealings with public institutions.
We went from 'the humble will receive the planet' to 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the leader try to upend the traditional concept of democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there is one large group within America who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – among senior generations almost a majority – who were educated as conventional Protestant believers.
We have observed across decades as politically conservative religious groups converted the Savior we were raised with into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. Essentially, they transformed an image of love into an icon of hate who endorses specifically the brutality that he denounced in scripture; this has happened more slowly, through multiple decades instead of months, however it is still disconcerting in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Jesus from my childhood, as conceptually Jesus is the center of Christian religion, and because the quickly increasing segment of Americans might have little sense of him because they identify as non-believers or agnostics or nones. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that exist valuable insights of substantial value in biblical accounts.
It is decidedly not the narrative of a powerful ruler emerging; conversely, a baby is born to displaced parents in a storage space, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to escape secret police. The baby grows up in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his message focuses on affection for fellow humans, especially for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and protecting. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to offer the opposite cheek – not as a gesture of submissive tolerance, but as a method to teach the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever an individual takes your coat you must offer him your sweater also.
The apparent and clear fact that Christ in biblical accounts calls for a form of extreme compassion concentrated on the impoverished has perpetually caused Christianity rather a controversial faith: attractive to the masses, but owing to its intrinsic extremism requiring to be contained. In the fifties it was restrained by dilution – Protestantism was so widespread that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Highest of Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to see the determined opposition to Trump emerge in this past year. It has been significant comfort to help build the movement that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and likely has encouraged electorate to participate in significant amounts during minor elections. We shall require to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, featuring US banners at every demonstration and calls to the highest qualities of American history.
We're going to be asked ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you receive him and embrace them or reject?
The nation is most protected, in other words, by relationship to the best about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is best defended by relationship to elements that cause it to be unique and wonderful, which is the example of Jesus. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the worst regarding America and Christianity did not happen; it signifies both meekness and conviction, a mixture that committed American Christians should be comfortable with.
