The Trump movement's most telling and distinctive occasions – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of several weeks, the American president commenced revealing the public his intentions for a gilded ballroom twice the size than the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the East Wing portion to construct 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 a study predicted his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths 1.3 million more. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have dared – genuinely, no previous leader would have imagined – unilaterally destroying major areas of the presidential residence to construct a royal-themed celebration hall, with the enthusiastic participation of some of the richest Americans, the majority of whom maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We transitioned from 'the gentle will obtain the world' toward 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the president try to upend the established notion of democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion among Americans who should not find it completely novel. This includes individuals like us – among senior generations a near majority – who were raised as conventional Protestant believers.
We have witnessed over the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we learned about into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they transformed an image of compassion into a symbol of hate who endorses specifically the brutality that he denounced in the Gospel; this has happened more slowly, through multiple decades instead of months, however it is still disconcerting via comparable methods, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Damaging Christianity Establishes Itself
Hence I shall explain the Christ from my childhood, as conceptually Christ is the focus of Christian religion, and since the rapidly expanding group within America may possess limited understanding about him as they consider themselves non-believers or doubters or nones. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with different religions; yet I maintain that there are pearls of significant worth in the Christian story.
It is decidedly definitely not the story of a mighty king appearing; instead, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in an automotive shelter, who are forced to hastily depart to a foreign land to escape secret police. The infant develops in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his teaching concerns compassion for fellow humans, specifically for the disadvantaged – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, expressed by feeding and housing. Jesus' answer to aggression is to offer the opposite cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a method to educate the attacker; his crime policy states that when a person pilfers your coat you must offer him your sweater also.
The apparent and clear reality that the Savior in biblical accounts advocates for a type of profound affection focused on the poor is what has always made Christianity somewhat of a provocative belief system: attractive to the masses, but due to its natural unconventionality needing to be contained. In the 1950s it was controlled via weakening – The Protestant faith was so dominant that it basically baptized the status quo.
A Battle for the Finest Among Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to see the determined opposition to Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has been significant comfort to participate in developing the campaign that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and likely has encouraged electorate to turn out in significant amounts during minor elections. We will need to maintain it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and requests to the finest aspects in US history.
We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the stranger? Did you receive him and embrace them or reject?
America is best defended, essentially, by relationship to the best within national tradition, similar to Christianity is best defended by relationship to what makes it unique and beautiful, specifically the model of the Savior. In both situations does it imply feigning the worst about the nation and Christian faith never occurred; it means both humility and faith, a mixture that genuine American Christians should be comfortable with.
