Trumpism's most illuminating and distinctive moments – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of a few weeks, the nation's leader started showing all observers his designs for a lavish reception room double the dimensions of the White House and then commenced unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to erect it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the existing assessment of deaths resulting from his reductions to international aid is 600,000 and growing, and this week a study predicted his petroleum strategies would cause deaths an additional 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have dared – really, no other president would have contemplated – independently wrecking large sections of the presidential residence in order to erect a royal-themed celebration hall, with the enthusiastic participation of some of the richest Americans, almost all of whom have business with public institutions.
We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the planet' into 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As confusing as it is to witness the president try to upend the traditional concept of democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there is one large group of Americans who wouldn't consider it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were educated within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches transformed the Christ we grew up with into the total contrary of our perception of his character. Fundamentally, they turned a figure of affection into a symbol of hate who endorses specifically the brutality that he criticized in the Gospel; this transformation occurred more slowly, over decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Christ from my childhood, since in theory Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and because the quickly increasing segment of Americans may possess limited understanding of him because they identify as non-believers or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that contain precious wisdom of significant worth in the Christian story.
It is decidedly not the account of a powerful ruler arising; conversely, a baby is born to parents without shelter in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to escape covert authorities. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his message is about love for others, particularly for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, shown by providing food and sheltering. The Savior's reaction to violence is to offer the additional cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a way to instruct the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing is that if someone steals your coat you ought to provide him your sweater too.
The apparent and straightforward fact that the Savior of the gospels requests a type of extreme compassion centered on the impoverished has perpetually caused the Christian faith somewhat of a provocative belief system: appealing to the masses, but because of its inherent radicalness requiring to be restrained. In the fifties it was controlled through watering down – The Protestant faith was so prevalent that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Finest of Us
So I have been inspired to witness the determined opposition to Trump arise during the previous year. It has been great solace to help build the movement that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and likely has encouraged citizens to turn out in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We shall require to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags during all protests and requests to the best parts of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the foreigner? Did you welcome them and welcome him or not?
America is best defended, in other words, by relationship to the highest about American history, just as Christianity is most protected by reference to that which renders it unique and beautiful, particularly the pattern of Christ. In both situations does it suggest feigning the worst of both America and Christian faith was nonexistent; it represents both meekness and faith, a mixture that serious American Christians should embrace.
