Trumpism's most revealing and characteristic moments – not its most significant, nor most harsh, nor most dangerous, nor most senseless, but possibly its most revealing – occurred earlier this fall. During the period of multiple weeks, the American president started showing the public his intentions for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions compared to the White House and then began solo dismantling the East Wing to construct it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the existing assessment of casualties from his cuts to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and rising, and this week research projected 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 imagined – unilaterally destroying major areas of the executive mansion to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of numerous America's wealthiest, nearly all of which have business with the government.
We moved from 'the gentle will obtain the Earth' toward 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the leader try to upend the old idea about democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there is one large group among Americans who should not find it entirely new. That encompasses people such as ourselves – in older age cohorts close to half – who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched across decades as politically conservative religious groups transformed the Christ we were raised with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of love into a figure of hostility who blesses precisely the cruelties that he condemned in scripture; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, through multiple decades as opposed to months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
Hence I shall explain the Savior that I grew up with, because theoretically Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and because the rapidly expanding group within America could have minimal awareness regarding him since they are skeptics or agnostics or nones. I raise no objection with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that exist valuable insights of significant worth in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably definitely not the story of a mighty king appearing; instead, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in a garage, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to avoid secret police. The baby grows up in simple surroundings, a working carpenter; his teaching concerns compassion for fellow humans, particularly for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Christ's response to hostility is to present the other cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a means to educate the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever a person pilfers your coat you should give them your pullover as well.
The evident and straightforward reality that Christ of the gospels advocates for a type of profound affection centered on the needy has perpetually caused Christianity something of a scandalous religion: attractive to the masses, but because of its inherent radicalness demanding to be contained. During the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – Protestantism was so prevalent that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Battle for the Best of Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to observe the steadfast resistance to Trump arise over the last twelve months. It has served as great solace to help build the campaign that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired voters to participate in significant amounts in interim political contests. We will need to persist with it, and with identical determination, displaying national flags during all protests and appeals to the highest qualities in US history.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you receive him and embrace them or refuse?
America is best defended, to put it differently, through connection to the highest about American history, just as Christianity is optimally secured by reference to what makes it special and wonderful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In neither case does it mean feigning the most damaging of both America and Christian faith was nonexistent; it signifies both humility and belief, a mixture that committed US believers ought to accept.
