Trumpism's most illuminating and characteristic moments – not its most important, nor most harsh, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of several weeks, the American president started showing the public his intentions for a gilded ballroom twice the size of the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the East Wing to erect it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of casualties resulting from his reductions to USAID amounts to 600,000 and rising, and presently an analysis projected his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have risked – genuinely, no other president would have imagined – solo demolishing large sections of the presidential residence to construct a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of multiple America's wealthiest, the majority of whom maintain dealings with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' to 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the chief executive try to upend the old idea regarding democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment among Americans who should not find it entirely new. That is those of us – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were raised as conventional Protestant believers.
We have witnessed across decades as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we grew up with into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they transformed an image of love into a symbol of hostility who endorses exactly the harshness that he criticized in biblical teachings; this has happened at a slower pace, across decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless unsettling through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Christ from my upbringing, as conceptually Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and given that the fastest-growing cadre within America might have little sense regarding him as they consider themselves atheists or agnostics or spiritual independents. I raise no objection with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; however I believe that contain precious wisdom of great price in biblical accounts.
It is decidedly definitely not the account of a powerful ruler emerging; instead, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to avoid secret police. The child matures in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his message focuses on affection for fellow humans, specifically for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but tangible care, shown by providing food and housing. Christ's response to aggression is to offer the other cheek – not as a demonstration of passive acceptance, but as a way to instruct the aggressor; his crime policy is that if someone steals your jacket you must offer them your pullover as well.
The obvious and direct truth that the Savior in biblical accounts requests a kind of profound affection centered on the poor has consistently rendered the Christian faith something of a scandalous religion: attractive to the populace, but because of its intrinsic extremism demanding to be contained. In the fifties it was controlled via weakening – Protestantism was so widespread that it basically sanctified existing conditions.
A Conflict for the Best of Us
Hence I have become inspired to see the persistent defiance to Trump emerge in this past year. It has provided great solace to participate in developing the initiative that has taken to the streets in rally after rally, and likely has encouraged citizens to participate in numbers during minor elections. We must have to continue it, and with identical determination, with American flags during all protests and calls to the highest qualities within national heritage.
We're going to be asked ... about how you treated the immigrant? Did you welcome them and receive them or not?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by reference to the best in US heritage, similar to Christianity is best defended by reference to elements that cause it to be distinctive and wonderful, specifically the model of the Savior. In all circumstances does it imply acting as if the most damaging regarding America and Christianity never occurred; it means both meekness and faith, a combination that committed US believers should be comfortable with.
