Trumpism's most revealing and distinctive instances – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. In the course of a few weeks, the American president started showing all observers his plans for an ornate dance hall twice the size compared to the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of fatalities from his cuts to international aid stands at 600,000 and growing, and recently research predicted his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No former leader would have dared – truly, no other president would have imagined – solo demolishing significant portions of the presidential residence to construct a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of some of the richest Americans, almost all of whom conduct transactions with the government.
We went from 'the humble will receive the planet' toward 'the gentle will succumb from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the president attempt to overturn the old idea regarding democracy and replace it with its direct contrary, there exists a significant segment of Americans who should not find it entirely new. This includes individuals like us – among senior generations close to half – who were raised as conventional Protestant believers.
We have watched over the years as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we learned about into the total contrary of our perception of his character. At its most basic, they transformed an image of compassion into an icon of hostility who blesses precisely the cruelties that he criticized in the Gospel; this change developed more slowly, through multiple decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting through similar means, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Christ from my upbringing, as conceptually Christ is the focus within Christian belief, and because the rapidly expanding group within America could have minimal awareness about him since they are non-believers or doubters or nones. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that contain precious wisdom of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically absolutely not the story of a powerful ruler emerging; rather, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to another nation to escape covert authorities. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his message concerns compassion for others, specifically for the disadvantaged – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, demonstrated through nourishing and housing. Jesus' answer to hostility is to offer the other cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a means to instruct the attacker; his crime policy states that when someone steals your outer garment you ought to provide him your sweater as well.
The obvious and direct truth that the Jesus in biblical accounts advocates for a form of radical love centered on the impoverished is what has always made the Christian faith rather a provocative belief system: appealing to the masses, but due to its intrinsic extremism requiring to be controlled. During the 1950s it was controlled via weakening – Protestantism was so dominant that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Conflict for the Highest Within Us
So I have been encouraged to see the determined opposition against Trump develop during the previous year. It has been great solace to assist in constructing the movement that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated citizens to turn out in large quantities in interim political contests. We shall require to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, featuring US banners throughout each rally and appeals to the best parts of American history.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you welcome them and embrace them or refuse?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by reference to the highest about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is most protected by relationship to elements that cause it to be special and beautiful, which is the example of Jesus. In neither case does it mean pretending the worst about the nation and Christianity was nonexistent; it signifies both meekness and conviction, a mixture that genuine US believers should embrace.
