The Trump movement's most telling and distinctive moments – not its most crucial, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of a few weeks, the US president began displaying everyone his plans for a lavish reception room two times larger than the White House and then began solo dismantling the eastern section to construct it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of deaths from his cuts to international aid stands at 600,000 and growing, and presently a study projected his fossil fuel policies would kill another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have dared – genuinely, no other president would have contemplated – solo demolishing large sections of the White House to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of some of America's wealthiest, nearly all of which maintain dealings with public institutions.
We moved from 'the gentle will obtain the world' to 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the chief executive try to upend the old idea about democracy and substitute it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment within America who might not perceive it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were educated as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed across decades as politically conservative religious groups turned the Jesus we were raised with into the total contrary of our perception of his character. Essentially, they transformed an image of love into a figure of hostility who blesses precisely the cruelties that he criticized in scripture; this change developed more slowly, through multiple decades as opposed to months, but it is nonetheless disturbing through similar means, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Savior from my upbringing, because theoretically Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and because the rapidly expanding group among Americans may possess limited understanding of him since they are atheists or agnostics or spiritual independents. I have no problem with any of these traditions, nor with different religions; but I do think that there are pearls of substantial value in biblical accounts.
It is unquestionably not the account of an authoritative monarch emerging; conversely, an infant arrives to displaced parents in an automotive shelter, who are forced to hastily depart to a foreign land to escape covert authorities. The infant develops in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his message focuses on affection for others, specifically for the disadvantaged – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and protecting. Christ's response to hostility is to turn the other cheek – not as a demonstration of submissive tolerance, but as a method to instruct the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever an individual takes your outer garment you ought to provide him your sweater as well.
The obvious and direct reality that the Savior of the gospels advocates for a type of extreme compassion focused on the impoverished has consistently rendered Christian religion somewhat of a scandalous religion: attractive to the populace, but because of its intrinsic extremism demanding to be contained. During the 1950s it was restrained via weakening – The Protestant faith was so prevalent that it basically sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Finest Within Us
So I have been heartened to witness the determined opposition against Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has served as great solace to help build the movement that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and appears to have motivated electorate to show up in numbers in interim political contests. We will need to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, featuring US banners at every demonstration and appeals to the highest qualities of American history.
We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the foreigner? Did you welcome them and embrace them or refuse?
The country is optimally secured, in other words, by relationship to the best in US heritage, similar to Christianity is most protected by relationship to elements that cause it to be special and wonderful, which is the example of Christ. In all circumstances does it mean pretending the worst of both America and religious tradition never occurred; it signifies both modesty and belief, a blend that serious American Christians should embrace.
