Trumpism's most revealing and distinctive occasions – not its most crucial, nor most harsh, nor most threatening, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of several weeks, the American president started showing the public his designs for a gilded ballroom twice the size than the White House and then began independently demolishing the eastern section to build it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the present calculation of fatalities due to his slashing to international aid stands at 600,000 and rising, and this week a study forecast his petroleum strategies would result in fatalities another 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have dared – truly, no previous leader would have contemplated – solo demolishing major areas of the presidential residence to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of some of America's wealthiest, almost all of whom conduct transactions with federal agencies.
We transitioned from 'the gentle will obtain the world' into 'the humble will perish of cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the president attempt to overturn the traditional concept of democracy and replace it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment among Americans who wouldn't consider it completely novel. That is those of us – among senior generations a near majority – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed throughout the years while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we were raised with into the total contrary of our perception of his character. Essentially, they converted a persona of love into an icon of hate who endorses precisely the cruelties that he condemned in biblical teachings; this change developed more slowly, over decades rather than months, yet it remains unsettling in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Establishes Itself
Hence I shall explain the Jesus from my upbringing, because theoretically Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and given that the rapidly expanding group within America may possess limited understanding regarding him as they consider themselves skeptics or uncertain individuals or spiritual independents. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that there are pearls of great price in the Christian story.
It is decidedly not the narrative of a mighty king arising; rather, a baby is born to homeless parents in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to evade undercover officers. The baby grows up in simple surroundings, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine concerns compassion for fellow humans, particularly for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and sheltering. The Savior's reaction to violence is to present the additional cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a means to instruct the assailant; his crime policy states that when a person pilfers your coat you must offer them your pullover also.
The apparent and straightforward fact that the Savior in biblical accounts requests a kind of radical love concentrated on the needy has consistently rendered Christian religion rather a provocative belief system: attractive to the masses, but because of its inherent radicalness needing to be restrained. In the fifties it was contained via weakening – Protestantism was so widespread that it essentially blessed current circumstances.
A Battle for the Best Within Us
So I have been heartened to see the persistent defiance regarding Trump arise over the last twelve months. It has served as great solace to participate in developing the campaign that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and seems to have inspired citizens to participate in numbers in interim political contests. We shall require to continue it, and in the same spirit, displaying national flags during all protests and requests to the finest aspects of American history.
We're going to be asked ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and welcome him or reject?
The nation is most protected, essentially, through connection to the finest in US heritage, exactly as the Christian faith is best defended by relationship to that which renders it distinctive and beautiful, specifically the model of the Savior. In neither case does it mean feigning the most negative regarding America and religious tradition did not happen; it means both modesty and belief, a mixture that committed US believers should embrace.
