The Trump movement's most revealing and characteristic instances – not its most important, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but possibly its most revealing – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of multiple weeks, the nation's leader commenced revealing everyone his designs for a gilded ballroom twice the size than the White House and then commenced solo dismantling the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has performed deeds countless times more severe – the present calculation of casualties resulting from his reductions to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and increasing, and recently an analysis predicted his petroleum strategies would cause deaths 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have risked – truly, no former commander would have imagined – unilaterally destroying large sections of the White House in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of multiple America's wealthiest, almost all of whom have business with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the gentle will obtain the planet' to 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As confusing as it is to watch the chief executive try to upend the old idea about democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there is one large group within America who should not find it completely novel. That encompasses people such as ourselves – within elder demographics almost a majority – who were educated as conventional Protestant believers.
We have watched across decades as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we grew up with into the total contrary of our understanding of him. At its most basic, they converted a persona of love into a symbol of animosity who blesses precisely the cruelties that he condemned in biblical teachings; this has happened at a slower pace, across decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless unsettling through similar means, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Gains Ground
Therefore allow me to outline the Christ from my upbringing, since in theory Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and given that the fastest-growing cadre of Americans might have little sense about him since they are skeptics or doubters or spiritual independents. I raise no objection with any of these traditions, nor with different religions; yet I maintain that there are pearls of significant worth in the Christian story.
It is emphatically absolutely not the story of a powerful ruler appearing; conversely, a baby is born to parents without shelter in a garage, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to evade covert authorities. The infant develops in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine focuses on affection for others, specifically for the disadvantaged – not merely emotional affection, but a concrete one, demonstrated through nourishing and protecting. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to offer the other cheek – not as a gesture of submissive tolerance, but as a method to instruct the aggressor; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever an individual takes your jacket you should give the person your additional clothing too.
The apparent and direct reality that the Jesus from scripture advocates for a kind of radical love centered on the needy has consistently rendered the Christian faith somewhat of a provocative belief system: appealing to the general public, but due to its intrinsic extremism needing to be contained. In the fifties it was restrained through watering down – Protestant Christianity was so widespread that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Finest Within Us
So I have been inspired to witness the determined opposition to Trump emerge during the previous year. It has been great solace to assist in constructing the campaign that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and seems to have inspired voters to show up in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We must have to maintain it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners throughout each rally and appeals to the best parts in US history.
We're going to be asked ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you welcome them and embrace them or reject?
The country is optimally secured, to put it differently, through connection to the highest in US heritage, similar to Christianity is best defended through connection to elements that cause it to be unique and wonderful, particularly the pattern of Christ. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the most negative about the nation and religious tradition never occurred; it means both modesty and conviction, a mixture that committed national faithful should embrace.
