Trumpism's most illuminating and defining moments – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of multiple weeks, the US president started showing the public his plans for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions compared to the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the East Wing portion to construct it.
He has committed acts countless times more severe – the present calculation of fatalities resulting from his reductions to USAID is 600,000 and increasing, and this week research projected his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have dared – genuinely, no former commander would have imagined – unilaterally destroying large sections of the White House to build a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the enthusiastic participation of some of the richest Americans, the majority of whom maintain dealings with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the world' toward 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to witness the president try to upend the old idea about democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there is one large group among Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – among senior generations a near majority – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed across decades as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we grew up with into the complete reverse of our perception of his character. Essentially, they turned a figure of compassion into a symbol of animosity who endorses specifically the brutality that he criticized in scripture; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, through multiple decades as opposed to months, however it is still disturbing in the same ways, a confusing personal impact for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Savior from my childhood, as conceptually the Savior is the core of Christian religion, and because the rapidly expanding group among Americans could have minimal awareness of him as they consider themselves atheists or doubters or nones. I raise no objection with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that there are pearls of great price in the Christian story.
It is decidedly absolutely not the account of a powerful ruler emerging; instead, a baby is born to homeless parents in a storage space, who are forced to hastily depart to a foreign land to evade secret police. The infant develops in simple surroundings, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine is about love for fellow humans, particularly for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Jesus' answer to aggression is to offer the other cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a means to teach the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever a person pilfers your coat you ought to provide them your pullover also.
The obvious and clear reality that the Savior from scripture requests a type of extreme compassion focused on the needy has perpetually caused Christianity somewhat of a scandalous religion: attractive to the masses, but because of its inherent radicalness demanding to be controlled. During the 1950s it was controlled by dilution – Protestant Christianity was so widespread that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Highest of Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to see the steadfast resistance regarding Trump develop over the last twelve months. It has served as significant comfort to help build the movement that has demonstrated publicly via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired citizens to turn out in numbers in interim political contests. We shall require to maintain it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners at every demonstration and requests to the best parts of American history.
We're going to be asked ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you accept these individuals and embrace them or reject?
The nation is most protected, essentially, by reference to the best within national tradition, similar to Christianity is most protected by reference to elements that cause it to be unique and wonderful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In neither case does it suggest feigning the most damaging of both America and religious tradition did not happen; it represents both modesty and faith, a blend that serious national faithful ought to accept.
