Trumpism's most illuminating and defining instances – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but perhaps its most illuminating – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of several weeks, the American president commenced revealing all observers his intentions for an ornate dance hall two times larger compared to the White House and then began solo dismantling the East Wing portion to build it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of casualties due to his slashing to international aid is 600,000 and rising, and this week research predicted his petroleum strategies would kill 1.3 million more. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have risked – genuinely, no previous leader would have imagined – solo demolishing large sections of the presidential residence in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of some of the richest Americans, the majority of whom have business with the government.
We transitioned from 'the humble will receive the planet' into 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the leader try to upend the traditional concept about democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there is one large group of Americans who wouldn't consider it completely novel. That encompasses people such as ourselves – within elder demographics a near majority – who were raised as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations converted the Savior we learned about into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they converted a persona of compassion into a symbol of animosity who endorses exactly the harshness that he criticized in biblical teachings; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, across decades rather than months, yet it remains disconcerting through similar means, a confusing personal impact for many of us.
A Damaging Christianity Establishes Itself
So let me first describe the Jesus from my upbringing, since in theory Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and since the rapidly expanding group within America could have minimal awareness about him as they consider themselves skeptics or agnostics or nones. I raise no objection with these various perspectives, nor with any other faith; but I do think that contain precious wisdom of great price in the Christian story.
It is emphatically not the story of a mighty king arising; conversely, an infant arrives to displaced parents in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to another nation to avoid covert authorities. The child matures in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his message concerns compassion for others, particularly for the disadvantaged – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, demonstrated through nourishing and protecting. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to turn the opposite cheek – not as a gesture of passive acceptance, but as a means to instruct the attacker; his method regarding offenses is that if someone steals your outer garment you must offer them your pullover too.
The apparent and clear reality that the Jesus in biblical accounts advocates for a form of extreme compassion focused on the impoverished is what has always made Christian religion somewhat of a controversial faith: attractive to the populace, but due to its inherent radicalness demanding to be contained. In the 1950s it was restrained via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so prevalent that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Battle for the Finest Within Us
So I have been inspired to see the persistent defiance against Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has provided substantial consolation to assist in constructing the initiative that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and likely has encouraged citizens to show up in large quantities in interim political contests. We will need to persist with it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners throughout each rally and appeals to the best parts of American history.
We will be questioned ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you welcome them and embrace them or reject?
The nation is most protected, essentially, through connection to the best in US heritage, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured by relationship to what makes it special and wonderful, specifically the model of Jesus. In all circumstances does it suggest pretending the most negative regarding America and religious tradition never occurred; it means both humility and faith, a combination that serious US believers ought to accept.
