Trumpism's most telling and distinctive instances – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of several weeks, the American president began displaying all observers his intentions for a gilded ballroom twice the size compared to the White House and then commenced unilaterally ripping down the East Wing portion to construct it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of casualties from his cuts to USAID is 600,000 and growing, and presently a study forecast his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No former leader would have attempted – really, no previous leader would have conceived – solo demolishing large sections of the presidential residence to build a royal-themed celebration hall, with the enthusiastic participation of some of the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom have business with federal agencies.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the Earth' to 'the gentle will succumb from cholera'
As confusing as it is to witness the president attempt to overturn the traditional concept of democracy and substitute it with its polar opposite, there is one large group of Americans who should not find it entirely new. That is those of us – among senior generations almost a majority – who were educated as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have observed over the years while conservative evangelical congregations converted the Savior we grew up with into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they turned a figure of compassion into a symbol of animosity who endorses precisely the cruelties that he criticized in the Gospel; this transformation occurred more slowly, through multiple decades instead of months, however it is still unsettling via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.
A Toxic Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Jesus that I grew up with, as conceptually Jesus is the center of Christian religion, and because the fastest-growing cadre within America could have minimal awareness of him since they are non-believers or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that exist valuable insights of significant worth in biblical accounts.
It is unquestionably not the story of a powerful ruler arising; instead, an infant arrives to displaced parents in a garage, who must quickly flee to another nation to evade secret police. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his doctrine is about love for fellow humans, especially for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and housing. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to offer the opposite cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a way to teach the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing states that when someone steals your jacket you should give him your sweater too.
The evident and straightforward reality that the Savior from scripture advocates for a type of radical love concentrated on the poor is what has always made Christian religion something of a scandalous religion: attractive to the masses, but owing to its inherent radicalness demanding to be contained. In the 1950s it was contained through watering down – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it basically blessed current circumstances.
A Conflict for the Highest of Us
Hence I have become encouraged to witness the determined opposition to Trump develop in this past year. It has served as great solace to assist in constructing the campaign that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated citizens to show up in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We shall require to persist with it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and calls to the finest aspects in US history.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the foreigner? Did you accept these individuals and embrace them or not?
America is best defended, in other words, by reference to the best within national tradition, similar to Christianity is best defended by reference to that which renders it unique and wonderful, which is the example of Jesus. In all circumstances does it suggest acting as if the most damaging regarding America and religious tradition was nonexistent; it signifies both meekness and belief, a mixture that committed American Christians should be comfortable with.
