The Trump movement's most illuminating and defining instances – not its most significant, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of a few weeks, the US president began displaying everyone his plans for an ornate dance hall twice the size than the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the eastern section to construct it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of casualties resulting from his reductions to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and rising, and this week research predicted his energy policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No former leader would have risked – truly, no previous leader would have conceived – solo demolishing significant portions of the executive mansion to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of numerous the nation's most affluent, nearly all of which conduct transactions with federal agencies.
We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the world' to 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the leader attempt to overturn the old idea regarding democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there exists a significant segment of Americans who might not perceive it entirely new. That is those of us – within elder demographics almost a majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed across decades as rightwing evangelical churches transformed the Christ we grew up with into exactly the opposite of our perception of his character. Essentially, they converted a persona of compassion into an icon of hate who approves precisely the cruelties that he condemned in biblical teachings; this change developed more gradually, through multiple decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting through similar means, a confusing personal impact for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Christ from my upbringing, since in theory Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and given that the fastest-growing cadre within America may possess limited understanding about him since they are non-believers or doubters or nones. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that there are pearls of great price within Christian narrative.
It is unquestionably not the story of a powerful ruler appearing; rather, a child comes into the world to displaced parents in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to evade covert authorities. The child matures in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his teaching focuses on affection for other people, specifically for the poor – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, shown by providing food and housing. Christ's response to hostility is to offer the additional cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a means to teach the assailant; his method regarding offenses states that when an individual takes your jacket you ought to provide him your sweater too.
The apparent and straightforward fact that the Jesus in biblical accounts calls for a kind of extreme compassion focused on the needy has perpetually caused the Christian faith something of a scandalous religion: attractive to the masses, but due to its intrinsic extremism requiring to be controlled. In the 1950s it was controlled by dilution – The Protestant faith was so dominant that it basically sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Finest Within Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to witness the steadfast resistance to Trump emerge during the previous year. It has been significant comfort to help build the movement that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated citizens to turn out in numbers in the off-year elections. We will need to maintain it, and with identical determination, featuring US banners throughout each rally and appeals to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the foreigner? Did you receive him and welcome him or reject?
The country is optimally secured, in other words, by reference to the finest about American history, just as Christianity is optimally secured through connection to what makes it unique and beautiful, which is the example of Jesus. In all circumstances does it mean acting as if the most negative of both America and Christian faith never occurred; it represents both modesty and conviction, a mixture that serious US believers ought to accept.
