Trumpism's most telling and defining instances – not its most crucial, nor most harsh, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of multiple weeks, the American president commenced revealing everyone his designs for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions of the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the East Wing portion to build it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the present calculation of fatalities resulting from his reductions to USAID stands at 600,000 and rising, and presently an analysis forecast his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths an additional 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No other president would have risked – truly, no former commander would have conceived – unilaterally destroying large sections of the White House to construct a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of some of America's wealthiest, the majority of whom maintain dealings with public institutions.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the world' to 'the gentle will succumb from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to witness the leader try to upend the established notion regarding democracy and replace it with its polar opposite, there is one large group of Americans who might not perceive it totally unfamiliar. This includes individuals like us – within elder demographics almost a majority – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have watched throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we were raised with into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. Fundamentally, they converted a persona of affection into an icon of hostility who endorses exactly the harshness that he condemned in the Gospel; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, through multiple decades rather than months, yet it remains disconcerting via comparable methods, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Jesus from my upbringing, as conceptually Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and because the fastest-growing cadre within America could have minimal awareness of him because they identify as skeptics or agnostics or nones. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that contain precious wisdom of great price in the Christian story.
It is emphatically not the account of a mighty king arising; rather, an infant arrives to displaced parents in a storage space, who must quickly flee to a different country to evade secret police. The child matures in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his teaching is about love for others, particularly for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but tangible care, shown by providing food and housing. Jesus' answer to hostility is to turn the opposite cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a means to educate the assailant; his approach to wrongdoing states that when a person pilfers your coat you must offer him your sweater as well.
The evident and straightforward fact that the Savior from scripture requests a form of profound affection focused on the needy is what has always made Christian religion somewhat of a scandalous religion: appealing to the masses, but due to its natural unconventionality demanding to be controlled. In the fifties it was controlled by dilution – Protestant Christianity was so prevalent that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Best Within Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to observe the persistent defiance to Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has served as significant comfort to participate in developing the campaign that has taken to the streets in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated electorate to show up in numbers in the off-year elections. We will need to continue it, and through comparable resolve, displaying national flags during all protests and appeals to the best parts of American history.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the foreigner? Did you receive him and welcome him or not?
The country is optimally secured, to put it differently, through connection to the best within national tradition, similar to Christianity is most protected through connection to what makes it special and wonderful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In neither case does it imply acting as if the most damaging about the nation and Christianity never occurred; it signifies both meekness and belief, a blend that committed national faithful should embrace.
