The Trump movement's most revealing and characteristic moments – not its most significant, nor most harsh, nor most dangerous, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating – came earlier this autumn. In the course of multiple weeks, the American president started showing everyone his designs for an ornate dance hall double the dimensions than the White House and then commenced unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to build it.
He has done things countless times more severe – the present calculation of fatalities from his cuts to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and increasing, and presently a study forecast his energy policies would result in fatalities 1.3 million more. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have dared – genuinely, no other president would have imagined – independently wrecking major areas of the presidential residence to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of some of America's wealthiest, nearly all of which conduct transactions with federal agencies.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' into 'the humble will perish from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the leader try to upend the established notion of democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there remains a substantial portion of Americans who wouldn't consider it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – within elder demographics a near majority – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we were raised with into the complete reverse of our perception of his character. At its most basic, they transformed an image of compassion into a figure of hate who approves specifically the brutality that he criticized in the Gospel; this has happened more gradually, through multiple decades as opposed to months, yet it remains disturbing in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Savior from my upbringing, since in theory Christ is the focus within Christian belief, and since the rapidly expanding group among Americans may possess limited understanding regarding him because they identify as skeptics or uncertain individuals or spiritual independents. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that exist valuable insights of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is decidedly not the account of a mighty king appearing; instead, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in an automotive shelter, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to evade undercover officers. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his teaching is about love for others, particularly for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and housing. Jesus' answer to aggression is to turn the additional cheek – not as a demonstration of submissive tolerance, but as a method to educate the assailant; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever a person pilfers your coat you must offer the person your additional clothing also.
The evident and straightforward truth that Christ in biblical accounts calls for a type of radical love focused on the poor is what has always made the Christian faith somewhat of a provocative belief system: attractive to the masses, but due to its natural unconventionality requiring to be contained. In the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – Protestant Christianity was so prevalent that it basically blessed current circumstances.
A Struggle for the Finest of Us
So I have been encouraged to witness the determined opposition to Trump develop over the last twelve months. It has been significant comfort to help build the movement that has protested openly via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired voters to participate in large quantities in interim political contests. We will need to continue it, and with identical determination, featuring US banners during all protests and appeals to the best parts in US history.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you receive him and welcome him or refuse?
America is best defended, in other words, through connection to the finest about American history, similar to Christianity is best defended by relationship to what makes it unique and magnificent, specifically the model of Christ. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the most damaging of both America and Christian faith never occurred; it means both meekness and faith, a combination that genuine national faithful should be comfortable with.
