Trumpism's most revealing and defining instances – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. Over the span of a few weeks, the US president started showing the public his intentions for a gilded ballroom twice the size compared to the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the existing assessment of fatalities resulting from his reductions to USAID is 600,000 and growing, and this week research predicted his energy policies would result in fatalities 1.3 million more. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have risked – genuinely, no previous leader would have conceived – solo demolishing significant portions of the executive mansion to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of multiple the nation's most affluent, nearly all of which maintain dealings with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the humble will receive the planet' to 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the president try to upend the old idea of democracy and replace it with its direct contrary, there is one large group within America who wouldn't consider it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – in older age cohorts close to half – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we learned about into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of compassion into an icon of hostility who endorses precisely the cruelties that he condemned in scripture; this has happened more gradually, across decades rather than months, yet it remains disconcerting through similar means, a bewildering emotional blow for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Christ from my upbringing, because theoretically Christ is the focus within Christian belief, and because the fastest-growing cadre among Americans may possess limited understanding of him because they identify as atheists or uncertain individuals or nones. I raise no objection with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; however I believe that exist valuable insights of great price within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically definitely not the narrative of an authoritative monarch arising; instead, a baby is born to parents without shelter in a garage, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to evade secret police. The infant develops in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his message focuses on affection for others, especially for the disadvantaged – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, shown by providing food and housing. Jesus' answer to aggression is to turn the additional cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a way to educate the assailant; his crime policy indicates that whenever a person pilfers your coat you must offer him your sweater as well.
The apparent and direct fact that Christ from scripture calls for a kind of extreme compassion centered on the poor has consistently rendered the Christian faith rather a controversial faith: engaging for the populace, but due to its intrinsic extremism needing to be controlled. In the fifties it was controlled through watering down – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it practically blessed current circumstances.
A Conflict for the Best Among Us
Hence I have become encouraged to observe the steadfast resistance against Trump develop in this past year. It has provided great solace to participate in developing the campaign that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated electorate to participate in large quantities in the off-year elections. We shall require to continue it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and calls to the highest qualities within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you welcome them and receive them or refuse?
America is best defended, in other words, by reference to the best in US heritage, similar to Christianity is most protected by reference to elements that cause it to be distinctive and wonderful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In all circumstances does it mean acting as if the worst regarding America and religious tradition was nonexistent; it signifies both meekness and faith, a combination that genuine American Christians should embrace.
