The Trump movement's most illuminating and distinctive occasions – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of multiple weeks, the US president commenced revealing the public his designs for a lavish reception room twice the size than the White House and then began independently demolishing the East Wing to erect it.
He has performed deeds countless times more severe – the existing assessment of casualties resulting from his reductions to foreign assistance amounts to 600,000 and rising, and recently a study projected his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have dared – truly, no former commander would have contemplated – solo demolishing significant portions of the White House in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of numerous the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom have business with the government.
We moved from 'the gentle will obtain the world' into 'the humble will perish from cholera'
As bewildering as it is to observe the president attempt to overturn the established notion regarding democracy and exchange it with its complete opposite, there exists a significant segment among Americans who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – among senior generations close to half – who were educated as conventional Protestant believers.
We have witnessed throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we were raised with into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of affection into a symbol of animosity who blesses specifically the brutality that he condemned in the Gospel; this transformation occurred more slowly, through multiple decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless disturbing through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
Therefore allow me to outline the Christ that I grew up with, since in theory Christ is the focus within Christian belief, and because the quickly increasing segment among Americans could have minimal awareness about him as they consider themselves non-believers or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that exist valuable insights of great price within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically absolutely not the narrative of an authoritative monarch emerging; instead, a baby is born to homeless parents in a storage space, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to evade undercover officers. The infant develops in simple surroundings, an employed craftsman; his message focuses on affection for other people, especially for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and housing. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to offer the additional cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a way to teach the attacker; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever someone steals your outer garment you must offer the person your additional clothing too.
The evident and straightforward reality that the Savior in biblical accounts requests a kind of extreme compassion focused on the needy has perpetually caused Christianity somewhat of a provocative belief system: appealing to the masses, but because of its intrinsic extremism demanding to be contained. During the 1950s it was contained via weakening – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it basically baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Best Within Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to observe the steadfast resistance against Trump arise over the last twelve months. It has served as great solace to help build the movement that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated citizens to turn out in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We must have to persist with it, and in the same spirit, displaying national flags at every demonstration and appeals to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the foreigner? Did you welcome them and embrace them or reject?
The country is optimally secured, to put it differently, by reference to the highest in US heritage, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured by relationship to what makes it special and magnificent, particularly the pattern of Jesus. In all circumstances does it imply pretending the most negative of both America and Christianity never occurred; it represents both modesty and faith, a combination that genuine American Christians should be comfortable with.
