The Trump movement's most revealing and characteristic occasions – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of multiple weeks, the American president began displaying the public his intentions for an ornate dance hall twice the size of the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to construct it.
He has performed deeds countless times more severe – the existing assessment of deaths due to his slashing to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and increasing, and recently an analysis forecast his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No former leader would have attempted – really, no previous leader would have conceived – solo demolishing significant portions of the presidential residence to construct a royal-themed celebration hall, with the active collaboration of some of the nation's most affluent, nearly all of which have business with the government.
We went from 'the humble will receive the Earth' toward 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the president try to upend the established notion about democracy and replace it with its polar opposite, there remains a substantial portion within America who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – within elder demographics a near majority – who were brought up as conventional Protestant believers.
We have watched over the years as politically conservative religious groups converted the Savior we were raised with into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they transformed an image of compassion into an icon of hostility who endorses specifically the brutality that he condemned in biblical teachings; this change developed at a slower pace, over decades instead of months, yet it remains unsettling through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
Therefore allow me to outline the Jesus from my upbringing, because theoretically Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and because the fastest-growing cadre within America might have little sense about him because they identify as atheists or doubters or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that exist valuable insights of substantial value in biblical accounts.
It is emphatically definitely not the story of a powerful ruler arising; instead, a baby is born to homeless parents in a storage space, who must quickly flee to another nation to avoid covert authorities. The child matures in simple surroundings, a working carpenter; his teaching is about love for other people, particularly for the disadvantaged – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, shown by providing food and sheltering. Jesus' answer to aggression is to turn the other cheek – not as a demonstration of passive acceptance, but as a means to instruct the attacker; his crime policy indicates that whenever an individual takes your jacket you must offer them your pullover as well.
The evident and straightforward reality that the Jesus of the gospels requests a form of radical love focused on the poor has consistently rendered Christian religion rather a scandalous religion: appealing to the general public, but because of its inherent radicalness demanding to be contained. During the 1950s it was contained by dilution – Protestantism was so prevalent that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Best Among Us
So I have been heartened to see the persistent defiance regarding Trump develop over the last twelve months. It has been substantial consolation to help build the movement that has taken to the streets in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated electorate to show up in numbers in the off-year elections. We must have to maintain it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners during all protests and appeals to the finest aspects of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you receive him and embrace them or refuse?
The country is optimally secured, in other words, by reference to the finest in US heritage, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured through connection to elements that cause it to be special and wonderful, which is the example of the Savior. In both situations does it imply acting as if the most damaging about the nation and Christianity was nonexistent; it signifies both humility and conviction, a mixture that serious US believers ought to accept.
