The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and defining instances – not its most significant, nor most harsh, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. During the period of multiple weeks, the American president began displaying everyone his designs for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions of the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the East Wing portion to construct it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the existing assessment of deaths from his cuts to USAID amounts to 600,000 and growing, and presently an analysis predicted his energy policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have dared – really, no previous leader would have imagined – solo demolishing major areas of the White House in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of numerous the richest Americans, almost all of whom have business with public institutions.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the Earth' into 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to witness the leader attempt to overturn the old idea about democracy and substitute it with its polar opposite, there is one large group within America who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – in older age cohorts close to half – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed over the years as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we were raised with into the total contrary of our perception of his character. Fundamentally, they turned a figure of love into an icon of hostility who approves precisely the cruelties that he denounced in the Gospel; this change developed more gradually, over decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disturbing via comparable methods, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Savior that I grew up with, because theoretically the Savior is the core of Christian religion, and since the rapidly expanding group of Americans might have little sense of him since they are atheists or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with any other faith; however I believe that there are pearls of significant worth in the Christian story.
It is emphatically definitely not the story of an authoritative monarch appearing; conversely, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in an automotive shelter, who are forced to hastily depart to a different country to escape secret police. The infant develops in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his message is about love for fellow humans, especially for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, demonstrated through nourishing and protecting. Christ's response to violence is to present the opposite cheek – not as a demonstration of passive acceptance, but as a way to educate the aggressor; his crime policy is that if a person pilfers your jacket you ought to provide them your pullover too.
The evident and clear fact that Christ in biblical accounts calls for a type of radical love focused on the poor has consistently rendered Christianity rather a provocative belief system: attractive to the general public, but due to its inherent radicalness needing to be controlled. During the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – Protestantism was so dominant that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Best Among Us
So I have been encouraged to see the persistent defiance to Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has provided significant comfort to assist in constructing the initiative that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and likely has encouraged citizens to participate in large quantities during minor elections. We shall require to continue it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners throughout each rally and appeals to the best parts of American history.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you welcome them and welcome him or refuse?
The nation is most protected, to put it differently, by reference to the best in US heritage, just as Christianity is optimally secured by relationship to that which renders it distinctive and wonderful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the most damaging regarding America and religious tradition never occurred; it means both modesty and conviction, a blend that committed US believers should be comfortable with.
