Trumpism's most illuminating and defining instances – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. During the period of multiple weeks, the US president started showing the public his plans for a lavish reception room twice the size of the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has done things 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of fatalities from his cuts to USAID is 600,000 and increasing, and presently an analysis forecast his fossil fuel policies would kill another 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No other president would have attempted – really, no former commander would have conceived – unilaterally destroying major areas of the White House to build a royal-themed celebration hall, with the direct cooperation of some of the nation's most affluent, almost all of whom conduct transactions with the government.
We went from 'the humble will receive the Earth' toward 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to witness the leader try to upend the old idea of democracy and replace it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion among Americans who wouldn't consider it completely novel. That encompasses people such as ourselves – within elder demographics a near majority – who were educated as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have witnessed over the years while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we learned about into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they turned a figure of affection into a symbol of hate who endorses specifically the brutality that he condemned in the Gospel; this has happened more gradually, through multiple decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Gains Ground
Therefore allow me to outline the Savior from my childhood, since in theory Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and given that the rapidly expanding group within America may possess limited understanding about him as they consider themselves non-believers or agnostics or nones. I raise no objection with these different approaches, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that exist valuable insights of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is decidedly definitely not the story of a powerful ruler appearing; instead, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in a garage, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to evade undercover officers. The child matures in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his teaching is about love for other people, especially for the disadvantaged – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, expressed by feeding and housing. Jesus' answer to aggression is to offer the additional cheek – not as an act of submissive tolerance, but as a way to educate the aggressor; his crime policy is that if an individual takes your coat you ought to provide him your sweater as well.
The obvious and direct truth that the Jesus in biblical accounts advocates for a type of radical love centered on the impoverished has perpetually caused Christianity somewhat of a controversial faith: engaging for the masses, but because of its inherent radicalness demanding to be controlled. During the 1950s it was controlled by dilution – The Protestant faith was so prevalent that it basically baptized the status quo.
A Struggle for the Highest of Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to witness the steadfast resistance to Trump develop in this past year. It has been great solace to help build the movement that has demonstrated publicly via continuous gatherings, and appears to have motivated voters to show up in numbers in the off-year elections. We will need to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, displaying national flags at every demonstration and requests to the highest qualities in US history.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you welcome them and receive them or reject?
America is best defended, essentially, by relationship to the highest in US heritage, similar to Christianity is optimally secured through connection to elements that cause it to be special and beautiful, particularly the pattern of the Savior. In neither case does it mean pretending the most damaging about the nation and Christianity did not happen; it signifies both modesty and belief, a mixture that genuine American Christians ought to accept.
