Trumpism's most telling and defining moments – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most dangerous, nor stupidest, but possibly its most revealing – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of a few weeks, the US president began displaying all observers his intentions for a lavish reception room two times larger compared to the White House and then commenced unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to erect it.
He has done things countless times more severe – the existing assessment of deaths resulting from his reductions to international aid amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and recently an analysis predicted his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have attempted – really, no other president would have conceived – independently wrecking major areas of the presidential residence to construct a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of some of the nation's most affluent, nearly all of which maintain dealings with federal agencies.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the world' into 'the meek shall die of cholera'
As disorienting as it is to witness the president try to upend the traditional concept regarding democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there is one large group of Americans who might not perceive it entirely new. This includes individuals like us – within elder demographics almost a majority – who were educated as conventional Protestant believers.
We have witnessed throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we learned about into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they turned a figure of compassion into an icon of animosity who blesses precisely the cruelties that he criticized in biblical teachings; this has happened more slowly, through multiple decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting via comparable methods, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
Therefore allow me to outline the Jesus that I grew up with, as conceptually Christ is the focus of Christian religion, and because the rapidly expanding group among Americans may possess limited understanding about him since they are non-believers or agnostics or spiritual independents. I raise no objection with these different approaches, nor with any other faith; but I do think that contain precious wisdom of great price in the Christian story.
It is emphatically absolutely not the story of a mighty king appearing; rather, a baby is born to displaced parents in an automotive shelter, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to avoid secret police. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, a working carpenter; his message is about love for fellow humans, especially for the poor – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, demonstrated through nourishing and housing. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to turn the other cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a way to teach the assailant; his crime policy states that when a person pilfers your jacket you must offer the person your additional clothing too.
The obvious and straightforward truth that the Savior in biblical accounts calls for a type of extreme compassion focused on the impoverished has consistently rendered the Christian faith something of a provocative belief system: attractive to the masses, but due to its natural unconventionality demanding to be controlled. In the 1950s it was restrained through watering down – The Protestant faith was so prevalent that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Highest of Us
So I have been heartened to see the persistent defiance to Trump arise during the previous year. It has served as significant comfort to help build the campaign that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated voters to show up in numbers in the off-year elections. We must have to maintain it, and with identical determination, featuring US banners at every demonstration and appeals to the finest aspects in US history.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the foreigner? Did you receive him and embrace them or reject?
America is best defended, in other words, by relationship to the best in US heritage, just as Christianity is optimally secured by relationship to what makes it distinctive and magnificent, specifically the model of Jesus. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the most damaging about the nation and religious tradition never occurred; it means both humility and belief, a mixture that genuine US believers ought to accept.
