Trumpism's most telling and distinctive moments – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but possibly its most revealing – came earlier this autumn. During the period of multiple weeks, the American president started showing the public his intentions for a lavish reception room twice the size of the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the eastern section to construct it.
He has performed deeds countless times more severe – the current estimate of casualties from his cuts to USAID amounts to 600,000 and rising, and recently research projected his energy policies would kill another 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No other president would have dared – genuinely, no former commander would have imagined – independently wrecking significant portions of the executive mansion to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of multiple America's wealthiest, the majority of whom have business with federal agencies.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the world' toward 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the chief executive attempt to overturn the traditional concept of democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there remains a substantial portion among Americans who should not find it completely novel. This includes individuals like us – within elder demographics close to half – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches transformed the Christ we grew up with into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of compassion into an icon of hate who approves exactly the harshness that he condemned in scripture; this has happened more slowly, through multiple decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Christ that I grew up with, since in theory Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and because the fastest-growing cadre among Americans may possess limited understanding regarding him as they consider themselves atheists or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue 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 unquestionably not the account of a mighty king appearing; conversely, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to evade undercover officers. The child matures in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine focuses on affection for other people, especially for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but tangible care, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Christ's response to hostility is to turn the other cheek – not as a demonstration of submissive tolerance, but as a way to teach the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever an individual takes your coat you should give them your pullover also.
The apparent and direct reality that Christ in biblical accounts requests a form of extreme compassion focused on the impoverished is what has always made the Christian faith something of a provocative belief system: attractive to the populace, but because of its natural unconventionality needing to be controlled. During the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – Protestantism was so widespread that it basically baptized the status quo.
A Conflict for the Finest Among Us
Hence I have become inspired to witness the determined opposition to Trump develop in this past year. It has provided great solace to assist in constructing the movement that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired citizens to turn out in large quantities during minor elections. We must have to continue it, and with identical determination, featuring US banners throughout each rally and appeals to the highest qualities in US history.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the foreigner? Did you receive him and welcome him or reject?
The country is optimally secured, essentially, by relationship to the finest in US heritage, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured by reference to elements that cause it to be distinctive and magnificent, which is the example of the Savior. In all circumstances does it suggest acting as if the worst of both America and Christianity was nonexistent; it represents both humility and conviction, a mixture that serious national faithful ought to accept.
