They're Doing across America What They Did with Christianity

Trumpism's most illuminating and characteristic occasions – not its most important, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – occurred earlier this fall. In the course of a few weeks, the nation's leader commenced revealing all observers his plans for a lavish reception room twice the size of the White House and then commenced solo dismantling the eastern section to build it.

He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of casualties resulting from his reductions to foreign assistance amounts to 600,000 and growing, and recently research projected his energy policies would result in fatalities 1.3 million more. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have dared – really, no former commander would have imagined – solo demolishing significant portions of the White House in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of some of the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom maintain dealings with the government.

We moved from 'the humble will receive the planet' into 'the meek shall die from cholera'

As disorienting as it is to observe the president try to upend the old idea about democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there remains a substantial portion among Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That encompasses people such as ourselves – within elder demographics almost a majority – who were educated as mainline Protestant Christians.

We have witnessed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations converted the Savior we grew up with into the complete reverse of our perception of his character. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of compassion into a figure of hostility who endorses specifically the brutality that he criticized in biblical teachings; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, across decades as opposed to months, however it is still disconcerting through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.

A Harmful Christianity Gains Ground

So let me first describe the Jesus from my childhood, because theoretically the Savior is the core of Christian religion, and since the rapidly expanding group among Americans might have little sense about him because they identify as skeptics or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; yet I maintain that there are pearls of significant worth in biblical accounts.

It is decidedly definitely not the account of a mighty king emerging; conversely, a child comes into the world to homeless parents in an automotive shelter, who are forced to hastily depart to a different country to avoid undercover officers. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine focuses on affection for others, particularly for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Christ's response to hostility is to offer the additional cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a means to educate the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing is that if someone steals your coat you should give him your sweater also.

The apparent and direct reality that Christ in biblical accounts advocates for a type of radical love centered on the poor is what has always made Christian religion rather a scandalous religion: attractive to the masses, but because of its natural unconventionality requiring to be restrained. In the fifties it was contained via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it basically blessed current circumstances.

A Struggle for the Highest of Us

Therefore I have felt heartened to observe the persistent defiance against Trump emerge in this past year. It has been significant comfort to help build the initiative that has protested openly via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired electorate to show up in large quantities during minor elections. We will need to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags during all protests and calls to the highest qualities of American history.

We will be questioned ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you receive him and receive them or reject?

The country is optimally secured, in other words, by relationship to the best about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is most protected by relationship to that which renders it distinctive and beautiful, specifically the model of Christ. In all circumstances does it imply feigning the worst regarding America and Christian faith never occurred; it means both modesty and belief, a combination that serious American Christians should embrace.