The Trump movement's most illuminating and characteristic instances – not its most significant, nor most harsh, nor most dangerous, nor most foolish, but perhaps its most illuminating – came earlier this autumn. During the period of a few weeks, the American president commenced revealing the public his plans for a lavish reception room two times larger compared to the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to build it.
He has done things countless times more severe – the existing assessment of deaths resulting from his reductions to USAID is 600,000 and increasing, and recently an analysis predicted his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have risked – genuinely, no other president would have imagined – unilaterally destroying large sections of the presidential residence to build a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of multiple the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom conduct transactions with public institutions.
We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' into 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the president try to upend the old idea regarding democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there is one large group within America who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – in older age cohorts close to half – who were brought up as conventional Protestant believers.
We have watched across decades while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we grew up with into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. At its most basic, they transformed an image of affection into an icon of animosity who endorses specifically the brutality that he condemned in the Gospel; this change developed at a slower pace, across decades rather than months, yet it remains disturbing through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Gains Ground
Hence I shall explain the Savior that I grew up with, as conceptually Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and given that the fastest-growing cadre of Americans might have little sense about him as they consider themselves skeptics or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that contain precious wisdom of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is unquestionably absolutely not the account of a mighty king arising; instead, an infant arrives to homeless parents in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to evade secret police. The baby grows up in simple surroundings, a laboring woodworker; his teaching is about love for other people, specifically for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and sheltering. The Savior's reaction to violence is to offer the opposite cheek – not as a demonstration of submissive tolerance, but as a way to teach the aggressor; his method regarding offenses states that when an individual takes your coat you ought to provide them your pullover as well.
The evident and straightforward reality that the Jesus from scripture requests a form of extreme compassion focused on the needy is what has always made the Christian faith something of a scandalous religion: engaging for the populace, but due to its intrinsic extremism needing to be restrained. In the fifties it was restrained by dilution – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Highest of Us
Therefore I have felt heartened to witness the determined opposition to Trump arise in this past year. It has been substantial consolation to participate in developing the campaign that has protested openly via continuous gatherings, and appears to have motivated electorate to turn out in large quantities during minor elections. We must have to persist with it, and in the same spirit, displaying national flags during all protests and appeals to the highest qualities of American history.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you receive him and embrace them or refuse?
America is best defended, in other words, by relationship to the best within national tradition, similar to Christianity is best defended through connection to that which renders it distinctive and wonderful, particularly the pattern of Jesus. In neither case does it imply pretending the most negative about the nation and Christianity never occurred; it signifies both meekness and belief, a mixture that serious US believers should be comfortable with.
