The Trump movement's most telling and defining moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – occurred earlier this fall. In the course of a few weeks, the American president commenced revealing everyone his plans for a gilded ballroom two times larger than the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the East Wing portion to construct it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of fatalities due to his slashing to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and growing, and this week a study predicted his petroleum strategies would kill another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have dared – really, no other president would have imagined – unilaterally destroying major areas of the White House in order to erect a royal-themed celebration hall, with the direct cooperation of numerous the richest Americans, almost all of whom maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the world' into 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the leader attempt to overturn the old idea of democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there remains a substantial portion among Americans who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts close to half – who were educated as conventional Protestant believers.
We have watched throughout the years as politically conservative religious groups transformed the Christ we were raised with into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. Essentially, they converted a persona of affection into an icon of hostility who blesses exactly the harshness that he condemned in the Gospel; this change developed more slowly, through multiple decades rather than months, however it is still disconcerting in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Damaging Christianity Establishes Itself
Therefore allow me to outline the Savior from my upbringing, as conceptually Christ is the focus of Christian religion, and because the fastest-growing cadre of Americans might have little sense of him as they consider themselves atheists or doubters or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with different religions; but I do think that there are pearls of significant worth in the Christian story.
It is decidedly not the account of a mighty king emerging; rather, a baby is born to parents without shelter in a storage space, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to avoid secret police. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his message is about love for others, particularly for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but tangible care, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Christ's response to aggression is to present the additional cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a way to instruct the assailant; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever an individual takes your outer garment you must offer them your pullover also.
The obvious and direct truth that Christ from scripture calls for a form of radical love centered on the poor is what has always made Christian religion somewhat of a provocative belief system: appealing to the masses, but owing to its intrinsic extremism requiring to be controlled. During the 1950s it was contained through watering down – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it essentially blessed current circumstances.
A Struggle for the Best Among Us
Hence I have become encouraged to see the steadfast resistance against Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has been significant comfort to assist in constructing the campaign that has taken to the streets via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired electorate to participate in large quantities in interim political contests. We must have to persist with it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners throughout each rally and requests to the highest qualities within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you welcome them and receive them or reject?
America is best defended, in other words, through connection to the highest within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured by reference to that which renders it unique and magnificent, specifically the model of Christ. In neither case does it mean acting as if the most damaging of both America and religious tradition did not happen; it means both humility and belief, a combination that committed American Christians should embrace.
