The Trump phenomenon's most telling and characteristic occasions – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. In the course of a few weeks, the American president began displaying everyone his plans for an ornate dance hall two times larger compared to the White House and then commenced unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to construct it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the existing assessment of fatalities due to his slashing to international aid is 600,000 and increasing, and presently an analysis predicted his petroleum strategies would result in fatalities 1.3 million more. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have dared – truly, no other president would have imagined – independently wrecking large sections of the presidential residence to construct a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of multiple America's wealthiest, the majority of whom maintain dealings with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the humble will receive the world' toward 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the president try to upend the traditional concept about democracy and substitute it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment among Americans who should not find it entirely new. That is those of us – among senior generations almost a majority – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have watched over the years while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we were raised with into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they turned a figure of compassion into a symbol of hostility who endorses exactly the harshness that he condemned in biblical teachings; this transformation occurred more gradually, over decades rather than months, yet it remains unsettling in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Jesus from my childhood, because theoretically the Savior is the core within Christian belief, and since the fastest-growing cadre of Americans could have minimal awareness of him because they identify as atheists or agnostics or spiritual independents. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that exist valuable insights of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is decidedly absolutely not the narrative of an authoritative monarch emerging; conversely, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to evade secret police. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his doctrine is about love for fellow humans, specifically for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Christ's response to hostility is to turn the other cheek – not as a gesture of submissive tolerance, but as a method to teach the assailant; his crime policy is that if someone steals your jacket you should give them your pullover also.
The apparent and clear fact that Christ from scripture calls for a type of extreme compassion concentrated on the impoverished has consistently rendered Christian religion something of a provocative belief system: attractive to the general public, but owing to its intrinsic extremism requiring to be controlled. During the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – The Protestant faith was so prevalent that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Battle for the Highest Within Us
Therefore I have felt encouraged to observe the steadfast resistance to Trump arise 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 participate in large quantities during minor elections. We shall require to continue it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners throughout each rally and calls to the finest aspects of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you receive him and receive them or refuse?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by relationship to the best within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is best defended by reference to elements that cause it to be unique and magnificent, specifically the model of the Savior. In neither case does it suggest pretending the most negative regarding America and Christian faith did not happen; it represents both modesty and belief, a mixture that committed national faithful should embrace.
