Trumpism's most telling and distinctive instances – not its most crucial, nor cruelest, nor most dangerous, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of a few weeks, the US president started showing everyone his plans for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions than the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of casualties from his cuts to foreign assistance amounts to 600,000 and rising, and this week a study predicted his energy policies would kill another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have attempted – truly, no other president would have conceived – independently wrecking significant portions of the executive mansion in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of multiple the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom have business with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the humble will receive the Earth' into 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the president try to upend the established notion regarding democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment among Americans who wouldn't consider it entirely new. This includes individuals like us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have watched throughout the years while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we learned about into exactly the opposite of our perception of his character. Fundamentally, they converted a persona of compassion into an icon of animosity who endorses exactly the harshness that he criticized in scripture; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, through multiple decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disturbing via comparable methods, a confusing personal impact for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Jesus from my upbringing, because theoretically Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and because the fastest-growing cadre of Americans might have little sense of him because they identify as non-believers or uncertain individuals or nones. I have no problem with any of these traditions, nor with any other faith; but I do think that contain precious wisdom of substantial value in biblical accounts.
It is decidedly not the story of a powerful ruler emerging; instead, an infant arrives to displaced parents in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to escape secret police. The child matures in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his message concerns compassion for fellow humans, particularly for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but practical compassion, demonstrated through nourishing and housing. The Savior's reaction to aggression is to present the opposite cheek – not as an act of submissive tolerance, but as a means to educate the aggressor; his method regarding offenses states that when a person pilfers your outer garment you should give him your sweater also.
The apparent and straightforward fact that the Jesus from scripture requests a kind of extreme compassion centered on the poor is what has always made the Christian faith something of a provocative belief system: attractive to the populace, but due to its inherent radicalness demanding to be controlled. In the 1950s it was controlled by dilution – Protestantism was so prevalent that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Conflict for the Highest of Us
Therefore I have felt encouraged to see the determined opposition to Trump arise in this past year. It has been substantial consolation to assist in constructing the initiative that has taken to the streets through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated citizens to show up in significant amounts in interim political contests. We must have to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, featuring US banners throughout each rally and calls to the finest aspects in US history.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you welcome them and embrace them or reject?
America is best defended, in other words, through connection to the best within national tradition, just as Christianity is best defended by relationship to elements that cause it to be special and wonderful, specifically the model of Christ. In all circumstances does it mean acting as if the most negative about the nation and religious tradition never occurred; it means both modesty and conviction, a combination that committed national faithful ought to accept.
