The Trump movement's most illuminating and defining moments – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. During the period of several weeks, the US president began displaying all observers his intentions for an ornate dance hall double the dimensions of the White House and then began independently demolishing the eastern section to construct it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the existing assessment of fatalities resulting from his reductions to international aid amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and recently research forecast his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths an additional 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No former leader would have risked – truly, no other president would have contemplated – solo demolishing significant portions of the presidential residence in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the enthusiastic participation of multiple the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom conduct transactions with the government.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' into 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the chief executive try to upend the established notion regarding democracy and replace it with its polar opposite, there remains a substantial portion within America who might not perceive it totally unfamiliar. This includes individuals like us – within elder demographics a near majority – who were brought up as conventional Protestant believers.
We have observed over the years as politically conservative religious groups transformed the Christ we were raised with into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. At its most basic, they transformed an image of compassion into a figure of animosity who endorses exactly the harshness that he denounced in biblical teachings; this change developed more slowly, across decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.
A Harmful Christianity Establishes Itself
Therefore allow me to outline the Savior that I grew up with, because theoretically the Savior is the core of Christian religion, and given that the fastest-growing cadre of Americans could have minimal awareness about him because they identify as skeptics or agnostics or spiritual independents. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; however I believe that there are pearls of great price within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically absolutely not the account of an authoritative monarch arising; rather, an infant arrives to displaced parents in a storage space, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to avoid secret police. The child matures in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his message concerns compassion for others, specifically for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Christ's response to violence is to present the other cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a method to instruct the assailant; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever a person pilfers your outer garment you should give him your sweater as well.
The apparent and clear reality that Christ from scripture advocates for a form of radical love centered on the poor has consistently rendered Christianity somewhat of a provocative belief system: attractive to the masses, but because of its natural unconventionality demanding to be restrained. During the 1950s it was contained via weakening – The Protestant faith was so prevalent that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Conflict for the Highest of Us
Hence I have become encouraged to witness the determined opposition against Trump arise during the previous year. It has served as significant comfort to help build the initiative that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and likely has encouraged citizens to turn out in large quantities in interim political contests. We will need to maintain it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and calls to the highest qualities in US history.
We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the immigrant? Did you welcome them and receive them or not?
The country is optimally secured, to put it differently, by reference to the best about American history, similar to Christianity is best defended by reference to what makes it unique and magnificent, specifically the model of Jesus. In neither case does it suggest pretending the most damaging about the nation and Christianity was nonexistent; it means both modesty and conviction, a combination that serious American Christians ought to accept.
