The Trump movement's most telling and distinctive instances – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of multiple weeks, the US president began displaying the public his plans for an ornate dance hall two times larger compared to the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to construct it.
He has done things countless times more severe – the present calculation of casualties due to his slashing to international aid is 600,000 and growing, and recently research predicted his fossil fuel policies would kill an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No former leader would have dared – genuinely, no other president would have imagined – unilaterally destroying large sections of the White House in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of some of America's wealthiest, almost all of whom maintain dealings with the government.
We went from 'the gentle will obtain the world' into 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the president attempt to overturn the traditional concept of democracy and replace it with its direct contrary, there is one large group within America who should not find it entirely new. That encompasses people such as ourselves – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed over the years while conservative evangelical congregations converted the Savior we learned about into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. Fundamentally, they turned a figure of compassion into a symbol of hostility who approves specifically the brutality that he criticized in biblical teachings; this transformation occurred more gradually, over decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disturbing via comparable methods, a confusing personal impact for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
Therefore allow me to outline the Savior from my childhood, since in theory Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and because the fastest-growing cadre within America may possess limited understanding about him because they identify as atheists or doubters or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with any other faith; but I do think that exist valuable insights of significant worth in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably absolutely not the story of an authoritative monarch arising; instead, a baby is born to homeless parents in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to escape secret police. The child matures in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his teaching is about love for fellow humans, particularly for the disadvantaged – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and housing. Christ's response to hostility is to present the other cheek – not as a gesture of submissive tolerance, but as a means to instruct the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing states that when an individual takes your jacket you ought to provide him your sweater as well.
The apparent and clear truth that the Savior in biblical accounts requests a type of radical love focused on the poor is what has always made Christianity somewhat of a controversial faith: engaging for the general public, but because of its inherent radicalness demanding to be contained. In the fifties it was controlled by dilution – Protestantism was so prevalent that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Best Within Us
Hence I have become encouraged to see the steadfast resistance against Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has served as great solace to help build the movement that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and appears to have motivated voters to turn out in numbers in interim political contests. We shall require to continue it, and in the same spirit, with American flags during all protests and calls to the finest aspects of American history.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you receive him and welcome him or not?
The country is optimally secured, essentially, by reference to the highest in US heritage, similar to Christianity is optimally secured by reference to elements that cause it to be unique and magnificent, which is the example of Jesus. In neither case does it imply feigning the most negative of both America and religious tradition was nonexistent; it represents both humility and faith, a blend that genuine US believers should embrace.
