Trumpism's most revealing and distinctive moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of multiple weeks, the American president started showing all observers his designs for an ornate dance hall twice the size compared to the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to construct it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the present calculation of casualties resulting from his reductions to international aid is 600,000 and growing, and presently an analysis projected his energy policies would result in fatalities another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have attempted – truly, no former commander would have conceived – solo demolishing significant portions of the presidential residence to build a royal-themed celebration hall, with the active collaboration of some of the nation's most affluent, nearly all of which have business with federal agencies.
We transitioned from 'the humble will receive the planet' to 'the humble will perish from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the leader try to upend the old idea about democracy and exchange it with its complete opposite, there remains a substantial portion of Americans who might not perceive it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were raised as conventional Protestant believers.
We have witnessed over the years as politically conservative religious groups turned the Jesus we were raised with into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. Fundamentally, they converted a persona of love into an icon of hostility who approves precisely the cruelties that he denounced in scripture; this change developed more slowly, across decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting through similar means, a confusing personal impact for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Jesus that I grew up with, because theoretically Jesus is the center of Christian religion, and since the fastest-growing cadre within America may possess limited understanding regarding him because they identify as skeptics or doubters or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that there are pearls of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably not the story of an authoritative monarch emerging; instead, an infant arrives to displaced parents in an automotive shelter, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to evade undercover officers. The child matures in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his message concerns compassion for fellow humans, specifically for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Jesus' answer to violence is to present the additional cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a way to teach the attacker; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever an individual takes your coat you should give the person your additional clothing too.
The apparent and direct fact that Christ in biblical accounts calls for a form of profound affection focused on the impoverished is what has always made Christian religion rather a provocative belief system: attractive to the populace, but owing to its natural unconventionality needing to be restrained. In the fifties it was restrained through watering down – Protestantism was so prevalent that it essentially blessed current circumstances.
A Struggle for the Best of Us
Hence I have become heartened to witness the determined opposition to Trump arise in this past year. It has been significant comfort to participate in developing the campaign that has protested openly in rally after rally, and likely has encouraged citizens to turn out in numbers in interim political contests. We will need to continue it, and with identical determination, displaying national flags during all protests and requests to the best parts in US history.
We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the stranger? Did you receive him and welcome him or refuse?
The country is optimally secured, to put it differently, by reference to the finest about American history, similar to Christianity is optimally secured by relationship to that which renders it unique and magnificent, specifically the model of the Savior. In neither case does it imply feigning the worst of both America and Christianity never occurred; it means both humility and faith, a combination that serious American Christians ought to accept.
