The Trump movement's most telling and distinctive instances – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most dangerous, nor most senseless, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. During the period of multiple weeks, the US president started showing the public his designs for an ornate dance hall twice the size of the White House and then began solo dismantling the East Wing portion to build it.
He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of deaths from his cuts to USAID is 600,000 and increasing, and recently an analysis forecast his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No other president would have dared – genuinely, no former commander would have imagined – independently wrecking large sections of the executive mansion in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of some of the richest Americans, nearly all of which conduct transactions with public institutions.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the world' to 'the humble will perish from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to witness the president try to upend the established notion of democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there is one large group of Americans who might not perceive it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – among senior generations a near majority – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have watched throughout the years as politically conservative religious groups turned the Jesus we grew up with into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they turned a figure of compassion into a figure of animosity who endorses precisely the cruelties that he condemned in the Gospel; this has happened at a slower pace, through multiple decades as opposed to months, however it is still unsettling through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Jesus from my upbringing, because theoretically the Savior is the core of any Christian faith, and because the rapidly expanding group of Americans could have minimal awareness of him as they consider themselves skeptics or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with any of these traditions, nor with different religions; however I believe that there are pearls of substantial value in biblical accounts.
It is unquestionably not the story of an authoritative monarch arising; instead, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in a storage space, who must quickly flee to another nation to avoid covert authorities. The baby grows up in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his message focuses on affection for others, specifically for the disadvantaged – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and protecting. The Savior's reaction to aggression is to offer the additional cheek – not as a gesture of submissive tolerance, but as a way to instruct the assailant; his crime policy indicates that whenever an individual takes your coat you must offer the person your additional clothing also.
The apparent and clear reality that Christ of the gospels advocates for a form of extreme compassion centered on the impoverished is what has always made Christianity somewhat of a scandalous religion: engaging for the masses, but owing to its natural unconventionality requiring to be controlled. During the 1950s it was contained through watering down – Protestantism was so widespread that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Highest Within Us
Therefore I have felt heartened to see the persistent defiance against Trump arise in this past year. It has provided substantial consolation to help build the movement that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and likely has encouraged electorate to turn out in numbers in the off-year elections. We will need to continue it, and with identical determination, featuring US banners at every demonstration and appeals to the best parts within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the foreigner? Did you receive him and welcome him or reject?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by relationship to the best within national tradition, similar to Christianity is optimally secured by reference to what makes it distinctive and magnificent, particularly the pattern of Christ. In neither case does it imply feigning the worst about the nation and religious tradition never occurred; it signifies both modesty and faith, a mixture that committed US believers should embrace.
