The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and characteristic moments – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. During the period of several weeks, the nation's leader began displaying the public his intentions for an ornate dance hall double the dimensions than the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to build it.
He has performed deeds 10,000 times as bad – the present calculation of casualties resulting from his reductions to USAID amounts to 600,000 and growing, and this week research projected his petroleum strategies would result in fatalities 1.3 million more. Yet nothing as characteristic. No other president would have dared – really, no former commander would have conceived – unilaterally destroying large sections of the executive mansion to build a royal-themed celebration hall, with the enthusiastic participation of some of America's wealthiest, almost all of whom conduct transactions with public institutions.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the world' toward 'the meek shall die of cholera'
As bewildering as it is to observe the chief executive attempt to overturn the traditional concept of democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there is one large group within America who should not find it entirely new. That is those of us – among senior generations a near majority – who were brought up as conventional Protestant believers.
We have watched across decades as politically conservative religious groups converted the Savior we were raised with into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. At its most basic, they converted a persona of love into an icon of hate who blesses specifically the brutality that he denounced in the Gospel; this change developed more gradually, across decades as opposed to months, yet it remains disturbing in the same ways, a confusing personal impact for numerous individuals.
A Harmful Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Christ from my upbringing, as conceptually the Savior is the core within Christian belief, and because the fastest-growing cadre within America might have little sense of him as they consider themselves skeptics or agnostics or spiritual independents. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that there are pearls of great price within Christian narrative.
It is unquestionably absolutely not the story of a mighty king emerging; conversely, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to a different country to evade undercover officers. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his teaching focuses on affection for others, particularly for the disadvantaged – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and protecting. Jesus' answer to violence is to present the additional cheek – not as a gesture of compliant endurance, but as a means to instruct the attacker; his method regarding offenses states that when a person pilfers your jacket you should give him your sweater as well.
The obvious and straightforward truth that Christ in biblical accounts requests a kind of radical love focused on the poor has consistently rendered the Christian faith somewhat of a provocative belief system: engaging for the masses, but because of its natural unconventionality requiring to be contained. In the 1950s it was contained by dilution – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it practically baptized the status quo.
A Conflict for the Highest Within Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to see the persistent defiance regarding Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has provided substantial consolation to assist in constructing the campaign that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired electorate to participate in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We will need to continue it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and appeals to the best parts in US history.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you receive him and receive them or not?
The country is optimally secured, in other words, by relationship to the best about American history, just as Christianity is best defended by relationship to that which renders it distinctive and beautiful, particularly the pattern of Christ. In neither case does it mean pretending the most negative of both America and Christian faith never occurred; it represents both modesty and belief, a mixture that committed American Christians should be comfortable with.
