The Trump movement's most telling and defining instances – not its most crucial, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – came earlier this autumn. Over the span of multiple weeks, the American president started showing all observers his designs for a gilded ballroom two times larger of the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to erect it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of fatalities resulting from his reductions to international aid is 600,000 and increasing, and this week an analysis forecast his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have dared – genuinely, no other president would have conceived – solo demolishing large sections of the presidential residence in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the enthusiastic participation of numerous America's wealthiest, nearly all of which conduct transactions with the government.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the world' to 'the gentle will succumb from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to witness the president attempt to overturn the traditional concept of democracy and substitute it with its polar opposite, there is one large group within America who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were brought up as conventional Protestant believers.
We have witnessed across decades as politically conservative religious groups turned the Jesus we grew up with into exactly the opposite of our perception of his character. At its most basic, they converted a persona of love into a symbol of animosity who approves specifically the brutality that he condemned in the Gospel; this change developed more slowly, over decades as opposed to months, however it is still disconcerting through similar means, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Savior from my childhood, since in theory Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and given that the quickly increasing segment of Americans might have little sense about him because they identify as non-believers or uncertain individuals or nones. I raise no objection with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that exist valuable insights of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is emphatically absolutely not the story of an authoritative monarch arising; rather, a baby is born to homeless parents in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to evade secret police. The child matures in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his message is about love for fellow humans, especially for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but tangible care, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Jesus' answer to violence is to turn the other cheek – not as an act of submissive tolerance, but as a method to educate the aggressor; his crime policy states that when an individual takes your jacket you ought to provide the person your additional clothing as well.
The evident and direct truth that the Savior in biblical accounts advocates for a type of radical love focused on the poor has consistently rendered Christian religion something of a controversial faith: appealing to the populace, but owing to its natural unconventionality needing to be restrained. In the 1950s it was contained through watering down – The Protestant faith was so prevalent that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Best Among Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to see the steadfast resistance against Trump emerge in this past year. It has been great solace to participate in developing the campaign that has taken to the streets in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated electorate to turn out in numbers in interim political contests. We must have to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, featuring US banners throughout each rally and requests to the best parts of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the immigrant? Did you receive him and embrace them or reject?
The country is optimally secured, essentially, through connection to the highest within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is best defended through connection to elements that cause it to be unique and wonderful, specifically the model of Jesus. In neither case does it imply pretending the most damaging of both America and Christianity did not happen; it represents both meekness and conviction, a mixture that genuine US believers should embrace.
