Trumpism's most illuminating and characteristic moments – not its most important, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of several weeks, the American president started showing the public his plans for a lavish reception room twice the size compared to the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the East Wing to construct it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the existing assessment of casualties from his cuts to international aid amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and presently an analysis projected his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No former leader would have risked – genuinely, no former commander would have conceived – solo demolishing major areas of the White House to build a royal-themed celebration hall, with the direct cooperation of some of America's wealthiest, nearly all of which have business with public institutions.
We moved from 'the gentle will obtain the world' toward 'the humble will perish from cholera'
As disorienting as it is to witness the chief executive attempt to overturn the old idea about democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there is one large group within America who wouldn't consider it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – among senior generations almost a majority – who were educated as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have observed throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches transformed the Christ we grew up with into the total contrary of our understanding of him. Essentially, they converted a persona of love into a figure of hostility who endorses precisely the cruelties that he denounced in the Gospel; this transformation occurred more slowly, across decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless unsettling in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Establishes Itself
Therefore allow me to outline the Christ from my childhood, as conceptually Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and because the quickly increasing segment among Americans could have minimal awareness regarding him because they identify as skeptics or doubters or spiritual independents. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; but I do think that there are pearls of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is decidedly absolutely not the account of a powerful ruler appearing; conversely, a baby is born to displaced parents in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to escape covert authorities. The baby grows up in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his message concerns compassion for fellow humans, specifically for the poor – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and protecting. Christ's response to aggression is to present the opposite cheek – not as a gesture of submissive tolerance, but as a way to instruct the aggressor; his method regarding offenses states that when someone steals your outer garment you should give him your sweater as well.
The evident and clear fact that Christ from scripture calls for a form of extreme compassion centered on the needy has consistently rendered Christianity something of a provocative belief system: engaging for the general public, but due to its intrinsic extremism needing to be contained. In the 1950s it was restrained via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it basically blessed current circumstances.
A Conflict for the Finest Within Us
So I have been encouraged to observe the persistent defiance regarding Trump develop over the last twelve months. It has provided substantial consolation to help build the movement that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired voters to show up in numbers in interim political contests. We will need to continue it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners during all protests and calls to the finest aspects in US history.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you accept these individuals and receive them or not?
The country is optimally secured, essentially, through connection to the best about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is best defended through connection to that which renders it distinctive and wonderful, which is the example of Christ. In neither case does it mean pretending the most negative of both America and Christianity was nonexistent; it signifies both modesty and conviction, a blend that genuine American Christians should embrace.
