The Trump movement's most illuminating and distinctive moments – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of several weeks, the US president began displaying everyone his intentions for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions than the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the East Wing portion to construct it.
He has done things 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of deaths from his cuts to foreign assistance amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and this week an analysis projected his energy policies would result in fatalities another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No former leader would have attempted – really, no previous leader would have imagined – independently wrecking major areas of the White House to build a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of numerous the nation's most affluent, nearly all of which have business with the government.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the planet' toward 'the gentle will succumb from cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the president attempt to overturn the traditional concept about democracy and substitute 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 a near majority – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have watched over the years while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we grew up with into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they turned a figure of compassion into a symbol of hate who approves specifically the brutality that he criticized in biblical teachings; this has happened more slowly, across decades instead of months, yet it remains unsettling in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Christ from my upbringing, because theoretically Christ is the focus within Christian belief, and given that the rapidly expanding group among Americans may possess limited understanding of him since they are skeptics or uncertain individuals or nones. I raise no objection with these different approaches, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that there are pearls of significant worth in the Christian story.
It is decidedly definitely not the account of a powerful ruler emerging; conversely, a baby is born to parents without shelter in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to avoid covert authorities. The child matures in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine focuses on affection for fellow humans, particularly for the poor – not merely emotional affection, but a concrete one, demonstrated through nourishing and protecting. The Savior's reaction to violence is to turn the other cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a way to teach the assailant; his crime policy indicates that whenever someone steals your coat you should give him your sweater also.
The apparent and direct reality that Christ in biblical accounts calls for a form of extreme compassion focused on the impoverished has consistently rendered the Christian faith somewhat of a controversial faith: engaging for the masses, but due to its natural unconventionality needing to be restrained. During the 1950s it was restrained through watering down – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it basically blessed current circumstances.
A Battle for the Highest Within Us
So I have been heartened to see the persistent defiance regarding Trump arise during the previous year. It has provided substantial consolation to assist in constructing the movement that has demonstrated publicly via continuous gatherings, and appears to have motivated electorate to participate in significant amounts in interim political contests. We will need to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags at every demonstration and appeals to the finest aspects in US history.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you accept these individuals and embrace them or reject?
The country is optimally secured, essentially, by reference to the finest about American history, similar to Christianity is optimally secured by reference to elements that cause it to be distinctive and magnificent, which is the example of Jesus. In neither case does it mean acting as if the most negative regarding America and religious tradition was nonexistent; it signifies both humility and conviction, a mixture that committed US believers ought to accept.
