The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and characteristic moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most dangerous, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of several weeks, the American president started showing the public his designs for an ornate dance hall two times larger of the White House and then commenced solo dismantling the eastern section to erect it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of deaths resulting from his reductions to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and increasing, and recently an analysis predicted his petroleum strategies would kill an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have risked – really, no other president would have contemplated – solo demolishing large sections of the White House to build a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the enthusiastic participation of some of the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom have business with the government.
We went from 'the gentle will obtain the planet' into 'the humble will perish of cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the leader try to upend the established notion about democracy and replace it with its polar opposite, there remains a substantial portion within America who should not find it entirely new. That is those of us – in older age cohorts almost a majority – who were educated as conventional Protestant believers.
We have watched over the years as politically conservative religious groups turned the Jesus we were raised with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they transformed an image of compassion into an icon of hostility who endorses specifically the brutality that he condemned in the Gospel; this has happened at a slower pace, through multiple decades as opposed to months, but it is nonetheless disturbing through similar means, a bewildering emotional blow for numerous individuals.
A Harmful Christianity Establishes Itself
Therefore allow me to outline the Jesus from my childhood, because theoretically Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and given that the rapidly expanding group of Americans might have little sense of him since they are atheists or doubters or nones. I raise no objection with these different approaches, nor with different religions; yet I maintain that contain precious wisdom of substantial value in biblical accounts.
It is unquestionably definitely not the account of a mighty king emerging; instead, a baby is born to displaced parents in a garage, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to avoid covert authorities. The baby grows up in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his teaching focuses on affection for others, especially for the poor – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and protecting. Christ's response to aggression is to turn the opposite cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a means to instruct the aggressor; his method regarding offenses states that when someone steals your outer garment you ought to provide the person your additional clothing as well.
The obvious and direct truth that Christ in biblical accounts advocates for a kind of radical love focused on the impoverished has consistently rendered Christianity somewhat of a scandalous religion: attractive to the populace, but owing to its natural unconventionality requiring to be restrained. During the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – Protestant Christianity was so prevalent that it basically sanctified existing conditions.
A Conflict for the Best of Us
So I have been encouraged to see the persistent defiance against Trump develop during the previous year. It has been great solace to participate in developing the campaign that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired citizens to participate in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We will need to persist with it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and calls to the highest qualities in US history.
We're going to be asked ... regarding how you welcomed the immigrant? Did you receive him and welcome him or reject?
America is best defended, to put it differently, through connection to the finest about American history, similar to Christianity is optimally secured by relationship to what makes it distinctive and wonderful, specifically the model of Jesus. In all circumstances does it suggest acting as if the most negative regarding America and religious tradition did not happen; it signifies both humility and conviction, a combination that genuine American Christians ought to accept.
