The Trump movement's most telling and distinctive instances – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of several weeks, the nation's leader began displaying the public his designs for a lavish reception room double the dimensions than the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has done things countless times more severe – the existing assessment of fatalities from his cuts to international aid stands at 600,000 and rising, and presently a study projected his energy policies would cause deaths an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have attempted – truly, no previous leader would have imagined – independently wrecking significant portions of the White House to construct a royal-themed celebration hall, with the enthusiastic participation of some of the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom maintain dealings with the government.
We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the planet' toward 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to witness the leader attempt to overturn the traditional concept of democracy and replace it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment among Americans who might not perceive it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – among senior generations close to half – who were educated within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed throughout the years as politically conservative religious groups transformed the Christ we learned about into the total contrary of our perception of his character. At its most basic, they turned a figure of compassion into an icon of hate who blesses exactly the harshness that he criticized in scripture; this has happened more slowly, through multiple decades instead of months, yet it remains unsettling through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
Therefore allow me to outline the Christ from my upbringing, since in theory Jesus is the center of Christian religion, and since the rapidly expanding group within America could have minimal awareness about him because they identify as skeptics or agnostics or spiritual independents. I raise no objection with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that contain precious wisdom of great price in biblical accounts.
It is decidedly not the story of an authoritative monarch appearing; rather, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to avoid covert authorities. The baby grows up in simple surroundings, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine is about love for fellow humans, specifically for the poor – not merely emotional affection, but a concrete one, demonstrated through nourishing and sheltering. Christ's response to aggression is to turn the opposite cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a way to educate the aggressor; his method regarding offenses states that when a person pilfers your jacket you should give them your pullover too.
The obvious and direct fact that Christ of the gospels requests a type of extreme compassion centered on the poor is what has always made Christianity something of a controversial faith: appealing to the populace, but owing to its natural unconventionality demanding to be contained. During the 1950s it was contained via weakening – The Protestant faith was so prevalent that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Highest Among Us
So I have been heartened to see the persistent defiance against Trump arise during the previous year. It has provided significant comfort to help build the movement that has protested openly via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired citizens to participate in large quantities in the off-year elections. We will need to persist with it, and in the same spirit, with American flags throughout each rally and calls to the highest qualities of American history.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you receive him and receive them or reject?
The nation is most protected, essentially, by relationship to the finest about American history, just as Christianity is most protected through connection to what makes it distinctive and beautiful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In all circumstances does it imply pretending the worst about the nation and Christian faith was nonexistent; it means both meekness and belief, a combination that serious US believers should embrace.
