Trumpism's most illuminating and defining moments – not its most important, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. During the period of a few weeks, the US president started showing all observers his plans for a lavish reception room double the dimensions of the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the East Wing to construct it.
He has performed deeds countless times more severe – the present calculation of deaths due to his slashing to international aid amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and this week a study predicted his fossil fuel policies would kill 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have risked – truly, no previous leader would have imagined – unilaterally destroying major areas of the presidential residence to build a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of numerous America's wealthiest, nearly all of which conduct transactions with the government.
We transitioned from 'the humble will receive the planet' to 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to observe the president try to upend the established notion regarding democracy and exchange it with its complete opposite, there is one large group among Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have observed throughout the years as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we grew up with into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. Fundamentally, they converted a persona of affection into a symbol of hostility who blesses exactly the harshness that he condemned in scripture; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, across decades instead of months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Establishes Itself
Hence I shall explain the Savior from my upbringing, because theoretically Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and since the fastest-growing cadre among Americans may possess limited understanding of him since they are non-believers or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with different religions; yet I maintain that contain precious wisdom of significant worth within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically definitely not the story of a powerful ruler emerging; rather, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to a different country to escape undercover officers. The infant develops in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his teaching concerns compassion for fellow humans, specifically for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Jesus' answer to violence is to offer the opposite cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a method to instruct the attacker; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever a person pilfers your jacket you should give them your pullover also.
The evident and clear reality that Christ from scripture requests a form of radical love concentrated on the poor has consistently rendered Christianity rather a provocative belief system: engaging for the populace, but due to its intrinsic extremism requiring to be restrained. In the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – Protestantism was so dominant that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Battle for the Finest Within Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to see the determined opposition regarding Trump arise during the previous year. It has provided substantial consolation to help build the initiative that has taken to the streets through repeated demonstrations, and likely has encouraged citizens to participate in significant amounts in interim political contests. We will need to continue it, and in the same spirit, with American flags during all protests and requests to the finest aspects of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you receive him and embrace them or refuse?
The nation is most protected, to put it differently, by relationship to the finest within national tradition, similar to Christianity is most protected by relationship to elements that cause it to be distinctive and wonderful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In both situations does it imply pretending the worst regarding America and religious tradition did not happen; it represents both modesty and conviction, a blend that genuine national faithful ought to accept.
