The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and characteristic moments – not its most crucial, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of multiple weeks, the nation's leader started showing everyone his designs for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions than the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the East Wing to construct it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the existing assessment of casualties from his cuts to foreign assistance amounts to 600,000 and rising, and this week an analysis predicted his petroleum strategies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No former leader would have risked – really, no other president would have contemplated – solo demolishing significant portions of the executive mansion in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of some of the richest Americans, the majority of whom have business with the government.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the world' to 'the meek shall die of cholera'
As confusing as it is to watch the leader attempt to overturn the established notion of democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there remains a substantial portion of Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed throughout the years as politically conservative religious groups converted the Savior we grew up with into the complete reverse of our perception of his character. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of affection into a symbol of hate who blesses precisely the cruelties that he denounced in scripture; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, over decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disturbing via comparable methods, a confusing personal impact for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Establishes Itself
Hence I shall explain the Savior from my upbringing, because theoretically the Savior is the core of any Christian faith, and since the fastest-growing cadre among Americans could have minimal awareness about him because they identify as non-believers or uncertain individuals or spiritual independents. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; but I do think that exist valuable insights of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is unquestionably not the narrative of an authoritative monarch arising; rather, a child comes into the world to displaced parents in a garage, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to evade secret police. The infant develops in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his teaching focuses on affection for other people, specifically for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but tangible care, demonstrated through nourishing and protecting. Christ's response to aggression is to turn the other cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a method to educate the assailant; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever a person pilfers your jacket you must offer him your sweater as well.
The apparent and straightforward truth that the Savior of the gospels advocates for a kind of extreme compassion centered on the impoverished is what has always made the Christian faith rather a controversial faith: appealing to the general public, but owing to its intrinsic extremism demanding to be restrained. In the 1950s it was restrained via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it essentially blessed current circumstances.
A Struggle for the Highest of Us
Therefore I have felt encouraged to observe the steadfast resistance to Trump develop during the previous year. It has been substantial consolation to help build the campaign that has protested openly via continuous gatherings, and appears to have motivated citizens to participate in numbers in interim political contests. We will need to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags at every demonstration and calls to the best parts in US history.
We're going to be asked ... regarding how you welcomed the foreigner? Did you accept these individuals and embrace them or not?
The country is optimally secured, to put it differently, through connection to the finest about American history, similar to Christianity is optimally secured by relationship to elements that cause it to be special and wonderful, which is the example of Jesus. In both situations does it imply pretending the most damaging of both America and Christian faith never occurred; it signifies both modesty and conviction, a mixture that committed national faithful should be comfortable with.
