The Trump movement's most revealing and defining moments β not its most crucial, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating β came earlier this autumn. In the course of several weeks, the nation's leader commenced revealing the public his intentions for an ornate dance hall two times larger than the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the East Wing to construct it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse β the current estimate of fatalities from his cuts to foreign assistance amounts to 600,000 and rising, and recently an analysis predicted his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have dared β genuinely, no former commander would have contemplated β solo demolishing significant portions of the White House in order to erect a royal-themed celebration hall, with the active collaboration of multiple America's wealthiest, almost all of whom conduct transactions with the government.
We moved from 'the gentle will obtain the Earth' toward 'the humble will perish from cholera'
As bewildering as it is to witness the leader seek toι’ θ¦ the old idea of democracy and substitute it with its polar opposite, there is one large group among Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves β in older age cohorts close to half β who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we grew up with into exactly the opposite of our perception of his character. Essentially, they turned a figure of affection into an icon of hostility who endorses specifically the brutality that he denounced in the Gospel; this has happened more gradually, through multiple decades as opposed to months, yet it remains unsettling in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Christ that I grew up with, as conceptually Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and given that the rapidly expanding group among Americans might have little sense of him as they consider themselves atheists or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with any other faith; however I believe that there are pearls of great price in biblical accounts.
It is emphatically not the story of a mighty king arising; instead, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a garage, who must quickly flee to a different country to escape covert authorities. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his teaching concerns compassion for other people, especially for the disadvantaged β not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, shown by providing food and housing. The Savior's reaction to aggression is to offer the additional cheek β not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a means to teach the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever someone steals your outer garment you should give them your pullover also.
The evident and clear reality that the Savior from scripture requests a type of profound affection focused on the impoverished has consistently rendered the Christian faith something of a scandalous religion: appealing to the masses, but owing to its natural unconventionality requiring to be restrained. In the fifties it was controlled through watering down β Protestant Christianity was so widespread that it basically baptized the status quo.
A Battle for the Highest of Us
So I have been encouraged to see the steadfast resistance regarding Trump arise over the last twelve months. It has been significant comfort to assist in constructing the initiative that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and likely has encouraged electorate to turn out in significant amounts in interim political contests. We shall require to continue it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and requests to the finest aspects of American history.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you welcome them and receive them or reject?
America is best defended, in other words, through connection to the finest in US heritage, similar to Christianity is most protected through connection to what makes it unique and beautiful, specifically the model of Jesus. In neither case does it imply acting as if the worst regarding America and Christianity did not happen; it represents both modesty and conviction, a combination that serious US believers should embrace.
