The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and characteristic occasions – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most dangerous, nor most foolish, but perhaps its most illuminating – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of several weeks, the nation's leader began displaying the public his plans for a lavish reception room double the dimensions of the White House and then began independently demolishing the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of casualties resulting from his reductions to foreign assistance is 600,000 and rising, and this week an analysis forecast his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have risked – really, no previous leader would have contemplated – independently wrecking significant portions of the White House in order to erect a royal-themed celebration hall, with the active collaboration of some of the nation's most affluent, nearly all of which maintain dealings with the government.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' into 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the leader try to upend the old idea regarding democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment among Americans who wouldn't consider it completely novel. 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 while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we were raised with into the total contrary of our understanding of him. At its most basic, they converted a persona of compassion into an icon of hostility who approves exactly the harshness that he condemned in the Gospel; this change developed more gradually, through multiple decades as opposed to months, however it is still disconcerting in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.
A Harmful Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Christ from my childhood, because theoretically Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and since the fastest-growing cadre of Americans may possess limited understanding of him since they are non-believers or doubters or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; yet I maintain that there are pearls of significant worth in biblical accounts.
It is decidedly not the account of a powerful ruler emerging; instead, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in an automotive shelter, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to escape undercover officers. The infant develops in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his message concerns compassion for fellow humans, particularly for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, demonstrated through nourishing and sheltering. Jesus' answer to hostility is to offer the additional cheek – not as an act of submissive tolerance, but as a means to instruct the assailant; his crime policy states that when an individual takes your outer garment you should give him your sweater as well.
The evident and direct reality that the Jesus of the gospels requests a kind of extreme compassion focused on the impoverished has consistently rendered Christian religion something of a provocative belief system: engaging for the masses, but owing to its natural unconventionality needing to be restrained. In the fifties it was controlled through watering down – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it practically sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Finest of Us
Hence I have become heartened to observe the determined opposition to Trump arise in this past year. It has been significant comfort to participate in developing the campaign that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and seems to have inspired citizens to turn out in significant amounts during minor elections. We will need to persist with it, and in the same spirit, with American flags throughout each rally and calls to the best parts in US history.
We're going to be asked ... about how you treated the immigrant? Did you receive him and embrace them or reject?
America is best defended, in other words, by reference to the best about American history, just as Christianity is optimally secured through connection to what makes it unique and wonderful, particularly the pattern of Christ. In both situations does it suggest pretending the most negative of both America and Christian faith was nonexistent; it signifies both meekness and belief, a blend that genuine US believers ought to accept.
