Trumpism's most illuminating and defining moments – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of multiple weeks, the nation's leader started showing the public his plans for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions than the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the East Wing portion to construct it.
He has done things 10,000 times as bad – the present calculation of deaths due to his slashing to international aid stands at 600,000 and growing, and recently an analysis predicted his fossil fuel policies would kill another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have attempted – truly, no previous leader would have imagined – solo demolishing significant portions of the presidential residence to build a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of multiple America's wealthiest, almost all of whom have business with federal agencies.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the world' into 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to witness the leader try to upend the traditional concept regarding democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there is one large group of Americans who should not find it entirely new. That encompasses people such as ourselves – among senior generations a near majority – who were educated within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have watched throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we learned about into the total contrary of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of love into a symbol of hate who approves specifically the brutality that he condemned in scripture; this has happened more slowly, across decades instead of months, however it is still unsettling via comparable methods, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Savior from my childhood, as conceptually Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and given that the rapidly expanding group among Americans may possess limited understanding about him since they are non-believers or agnostics or nones. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that exist valuable insights of significant worth within Christian narrative.
It is decidedly definitely not the account of a powerful ruler emerging; conversely, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to avoid secret police. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine is about love for other people, specifically for the disadvantaged – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, shown by providing food and protecting. The Savior's reaction to violence is to turn the other cheek – not as an act of submissive tolerance, but as a means to teach the assailant; his crime policy is that if an individual takes your outer garment you should give them your pullover too.
The evident and direct fact that the Savior in biblical accounts requests a form of radical love centered on the poor has consistently rendered the Christian faith rather a provocative belief system: appealing to the general public, but because of its natural unconventionality requiring to be restrained. In the 1950s it was contained via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it basically blessed current circumstances.
A Struggle for the Finest of Us
So I have been heartened to observe the determined opposition against Trump emerge during the previous year. It has served as great solace to participate in developing the campaign that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired electorate to show up in numbers in the off-year elections. We must have to continue it, and with identical determination, featuring US banners during all protests and appeals to the best parts of American history.
We're going to be asked ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you accept these individuals and receive them or refuse?
The nation is most protected, essentially, through connection to the finest about American history, just as Christianity is best defended by relationship to that which renders it special and magnificent, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In all circumstances does it imply feigning the most negative about the nation and Christian faith was nonexistent; it represents both humility and conviction, a blend that committed American Christians should be comfortable with.
