Trumpism's most illuminating and defining instances – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most dangerous, nor most foolish, but perhaps its most illuminating – came earlier this autumn. In the course of a few weeks, the American president began displaying all observers his intentions for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions compared to the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has committed acts countless times more severe – the present calculation of deaths due to his slashing to international aid amounts to 600,000 and growing, and recently a study forecast his petroleum strategies would kill 1.3 million more. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have attempted – genuinely, no previous leader would have conceived – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the presidential residence to construct a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the enthusiastic participation of multiple the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom have business with public institutions.
We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the world' into 'the humble will perish of cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the president attempt to overturn the established notion regarding democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment among Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we were raised with into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of love into a symbol of hate who blesses exactly the harshness that he condemned in scripture; this change developed at a slower pace, across decades as opposed to months, yet it remains disturbing in the same ways, a confusing personal impact for many of us.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Christ that I grew up with, because theoretically the Savior is the core of any Christian faith, and because the quickly increasing segment among Americans could have minimal awareness of him since they are non-believers or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that there are pearls of significant worth within Christian narrative.
It is unquestionably absolutely not the narrative of a powerful ruler emerging; rather, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to avoid undercover officers. The infant develops in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine concerns compassion for fellow humans, specifically for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, demonstrated through nourishing and housing. The Savior's reaction to violence is to present the additional cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a way to instruct the assailant; his approach to wrongdoing is that if someone steals your coat you should give the person your additional clothing also.
The evident and direct reality that the Jesus of the gospels calls for a kind of radical love centered on the impoverished is what has always made Christianity something of a scandalous religion: engaging for the masses, but because of its inherent radicalness needing to be controlled. In the 1950s it was restrained via weakening – Protestantism was so widespread that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Conflict for the Highest of Us
So I have been encouraged to see the determined opposition to Trump develop in this past year. It has provided great solace to help build the initiative that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and seems to have inspired citizens to turn out in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We shall require to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, featuring US banners during all protests and calls to the highest qualities within national heritage.
We're going to be asked ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you accept these individuals and receive them or reject?
America is best defended, in other words, by reference to the highest about American history, similar to Christianity is best defended by relationship to what makes it special and beautiful, specifically the model of Christ. In neither case does it mean pretending the most damaging about the nation and religious tradition was nonexistent; it represents both modesty and conviction, a combination that serious American Christians should be comfortable with.
