The Trump movement's most revealing and defining moments – not its most significant, nor most harsh, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating – occurred earlier this fall. In the course of a few weeks, the nation's leader commenced revealing all observers his plans for a gilded ballroom two times larger than the White House and then commenced unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to build it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of casualties resulting from his reductions to USAID amounts to 600,000 and growing, and presently an analysis projected his fossil fuel policies would kill another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No former leader would have risked – genuinely, no former commander would have imagined – solo demolishing major areas of the White House to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of multiple America's wealthiest, almost all of whom have business with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the humble will receive the world' toward 'the meek shall die of cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the president try to upend the established notion of democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there is one large group among Americans who should not find it completely novel. That encompasses people such as ourselves – among senior generations a near majority – who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed across decades as politically conservative religious groups converted the Savior we were raised with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they transformed an image of love into a figure of hostility who blesses exactly the harshness that he condemned in biblical teachings; this has happened more slowly, through multiple decades as opposed to months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting through similar means, a confusing personal impact for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Establishes Itself
Therefore allow me to outline the Christ from my upbringing, since in theory the Savior is the core of any Christian faith, and because the rapidly expanding group among Americans could have minimal awareness about him as they consider themselves non-believers or agnostics or spiritual independents. I have no problem with any of these traditions, nor with any other faith; however I believe that there are pearls of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is unquestionably absolutely not the narrative of a powerful ruler appearing; rather, an infant arrives to homeless parents in a garage, who are forced to hastily depart to a foreign land to escape secret police. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his message concerns compassion for other people, specifically for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but tangible care, demonstrated through nourishing and sheltering. Christ's response to hostility is to turn the opposite cheek – not as an act of submissive tolerance, but as a method to teach the attacker; his method regarding offenses states that when an individual takes your outer garment you must offer the person your additional clothing as well.
The apparent and direct fact that Christ of the gospels requests a form of extreme compassion focused on the poor has consistently rendered Christianity rather a provocative belief system: engaging for the masses, but owing to its natural unconventionality demanding to be restrained. During the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Conflict for the Best of Us
So I have been inspired to witness the determined opposition against Trump arise during the previous year. It has provided significant comfort to assist in constructing the initiative that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired voters to turn out in large quantities during minor elections. We will need to persist with it, and with identical determination, featuring US banners during all protests and calls to the finest aspects of American history.
We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the stranger? Did you welcome them and welcome him or not?
America is best defended, to put it differently, through connection to the finest within national tradition, just as Christianity is most protected through connection to elements that cause it to be unique and wonderful, specifically the model of Christ. In neither case does it suggest pretending the most negative of both America and religious tradition was nonexistent; it signifies both modesty and belief, a combination that serious American Christians ought to accept.
