The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and distinctive occasions – not its most crucial, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. During the period of multiple weeks, the American president commenced revealing everyone his intentions for an ornate dance hall two times larger compared to the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the eastern section to build it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of fatalities resulting from his reductions to foreign assistance is 600,000 and growing, and presently an analysis predicted his energy policies would kill 1.3 million more. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have attempted – truly, no other president would have contemplated – independently wrecking large sections of the White House to construct a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of numerous America's wealthiest, the majority of whom maintain dealings with public institutions.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the planet' to 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to observe the chief executive try to upend the established notion regarding democracy and exchange it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion within America who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have watched over the years as politically conservative religious groups converted the Savior we learned about into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they converted a persona of love into an icon of hostility who blesses exactly the harshness that he denounced in biblical teachings; this has happened more gradually, over decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless unsettling in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Christ from my childhood, because theoretically Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and given that the quickly increasing segment of Americans may possess limited understanding of him since they are skeptics or uncertain individuals or spiritual independents. I raise no objection with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that contain precious wisdom of great price in the Christian story.
It is emphatically not the narrative of a mighty king emerging; instead, a baby is born to parents without shelter in a storage space, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to avoid undercover officers. The infant develops in simple surroundings, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine focuses on affection for others, specifically for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but tangible care, shown by providing food and protecting. Jesus' answer to hostility is to offer the opposite cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a means to teach the attacker; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever a person pilfers your outer garment you must offer the person your additional clothing also.
The obvious and straightforward reality that the Savior of the gospels advocates for a kind of radical love centered on the poor is what has always made the Christian faith somewhat of a scandalous religion: engaging for the masses, but because of its intrinsic extremism demanding to be contained. During the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – Protestantism was so widespread that it essentially blessed current circumstances.
A Conflict for the Highest Among Us
Therefore I have felt encouraged to observe the determined opposition regarding Trump emerge in this past year. It has provided significant comfort to assist in constructing the campaign that has taken to the streets through repeated demonstrations, and likely has encouraged citizens to show up in large quantities in the off-year elections. We must have to continue it, and in the same spirit, with American flags throughout each rally and appeals to the finest aspects of American history.
We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the stranger? Did you receive him and embrace them or refuse?
The country is optimally secured, to put it differently, by relationship to the highest about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is most protected by relationship to elements that cause it to be distinctive and beautiful, specifically the model of the Savior. In neither case does it imply acting as if the most damaging of both America and Christianity did not happen; it represents both modesty and belief, a combination that committed US believers should embrace.