The Trump phenomenon's most telling and defining moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most dangerous, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. During the period of a few weeks, the American president started showing everyone his designs for an ornate dance hall two times larger of the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to construct it.
He has done things countless times more severe – the existing assessment of casualties resulting from his reductions to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and growing, and presently an analysis forecast his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have dared – truly, no previous leader would have contemplated – unilaterally destroying large sections of the executive mansion to construct a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the enthusiastic participation of numerous America's wealthiest, the majority of whom maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the planet' to 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the president attempt to overturn the traditional concept of democracy and exchange it with its direct contrary, there exists a significant segment of Americans who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were educated within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed over the years while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we were raised with into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. At its most basic, they turned a figure of love into an icon of hate who approves precisely the cruelties that he denounced in the Gospel; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, through multiple decades instead of months, yet it remains disturbing via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
Hence I shall explain the Jesus that I grew up with, since in theory Jesus is the center of Christian religion, and given that the fastest-growing cadre of Americans might have little sense about him since they are skeptics or agnostics or nones. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that exist valuable insights of great price in the Christian story.
It is decidedly definitely not the story of an authoritative monarch appearing; rather, a baby is born to homeless parents in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to a different country to escape undercover officers. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his teaching concerns compassion for others, specifically for the poor – not simply tender feelings, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and housing. Christ's response to aggression is to present the additional cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a method to educate the aggressor; his method regarding offenses states that when an individual takes your jacket you ought to provide him your sweater too.
The evident and clear fact that Christ from scripture calls for a kind of extreme compassion centered on the impoverished has perpetually caused Christianity somewhat of a scandalous religion: attractive to the general public, but due to its natural unconventionality demanding to be contained. In the fifties it was controlled through watering down – The Protestant faith was so dominant that it basically sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Best of Us
Hence I have become inspired to see the determined opposition regarding Trump arise over the last twelve months. It has served as significant comfort to participate in developing the movement that has protested openly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated voters to turn out in numbers in interim political contests. We must have to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags during all protests and requests 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 nation is most protected, essentially, by relationship to the highest within national tradition, just as Christianity is most protected by relationship to that which renders it special and beautiful, particularly the pattern of Jesus. In neither case does it suggest pretending the worst of both America and religious tradition did not happen; it signifies both humility and conviction, a blend that committed national faithful should embrace.
