The Trump movement's most telling and distinctive moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – occurred earlier this fall. In the course of multiple weeks, the US president began displaying the public his intentions for a lavish reception room twice the size than the White House and then began independently demolishing the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has performed deeds countless times more severe – the current estimate of casualties from his cuts to USAID stands at 600,000 and increasing, and presently an analysis predicted his petroleum strategies would cause deaths 1.3 million more. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have dared – truly, no former commander would have conceived – solo demolishing major areas of the executive mansion to build a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of multiple the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom maintain dealings with public institutions.
We moved from 'the gentle will obtain the planet' into 'the meek shall die of cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the chief executive try to upend the old idea regarding democracy and substitute it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment among Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were educated as conventional Protestant believers.
We have observed across decades as politically conservative religious groups converted the Savior we grew up with into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of affection into a symbol of hate who blesses precisely the cruelties that he denounced in the Gospel; this transformation occurred more slowly, across decades rather than months, yet it remains disconcerting in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Christ that I grew up with, as conceptually Christ is the focus within Christian belief, and since the fastest-growing cadre within America could have minimal awareness of him since they are atheists or doubters or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that there are pearls of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is emphatically not the account of a powerful ruler arising; conversely, an infant arrives to homeless parents in a garage, who must quickly flee to another nation to escape covert authorities. The baby grows up in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his message concerns compassion for others, specifically for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and housing. Jesus' answer to aggression is to turn the other cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a method to instruct the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing is that if a person pilfers your jacket you must offer them your pullover also.
The evident and direct reality that Christ from scripture advocates for a kind of profound affection concentrated on the needy has perpetually caused Christianity rather a scandalous religion: attractive to the general public, but due to its intrinsic extremism demanding to be controlled. In the 1950s it was controlled through watering down – Protestantism was so prevalent that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Battle for the Best of Us
Hence I have become inspired to witness the steadfast resistance regarding Trump develop in this past year. It has been great solace to participate in developing the movement that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and likely has encouraged electorate to participate in numbers in interim political contests. We will need to continue it, and with identical determination, with American flags at every demonstration and calls to the highest qualities of American history.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the immigrant? Did you welcome them and embrace them or refuse?
The nation is most protected, to put it differently, by reference to the highest in US heritage, similar to Christianity is most protected through connection to elements that cause it to be distinctive and beautiful, which is the example of Jesus. In all circumstances does it suggest acting as if the most damaging about the nation and religious tradition did not happen; it signifies both meekness and faith, a blend that genuine national faithful ought to accept.
