Trumpism's most telling and distinctive moments – not its most crucial, nor most harsh, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of multiple weeks, the American president began displaying the public his intentions for an ornate dance hall double the dimensions compared to the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to construct it.
He has committed acts countless times more severe – the current estimate of casualties resulting from his reductions to international aid is 600,000 and rising, and presently research forecast his energy policies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have risked – really, no other president would have contemplated – solo demolishing major areas of the executive mansion to build a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of multiple the richest Americans, nearly all of which conduct transactions with the government.
We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' into 'the meek shall die to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to watch the president try to upend the traditional concept of democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there exists a significant segment among Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. This includes individuals like us – among senior generations a near majority – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed across decades as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we were raised with into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they turned a figure of compassion into a symbol of hostility who endorses exactly the harshness that he condemned in scripture; this transformation occurred more gradually, across decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting via comparable methods, a confusing personal impact for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Establishes Itself
Hence I shall explain the Savior that I grew up with, since in theory Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and given that the fastest-growing cadre among Americans might have little sense about him since they are skeptics or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that there are pearls of significant worth in biblical accounts.
It is emphatically absolutely not the narrative of a powerful ruler emerging; instead, a baby is born to parents without shelter in a storage space, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to evade covert authorities. The baby grows up in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine concerns compassion for others, especially for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but practical compassion, shown by providing food and sheltering. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to turn the additional cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a means to instruct the assailant; his approach to wrongdoing states that when a person pilfers your jacket you should give them your pullover as well.
The evident and direct fact that the Savior in biblical accounts advocates for a kind of extreme compassion concentrated on the needy has perpetually caused Christianity somewhat of a provocative belief system: engaging for the populace, but because of its natural unconventionality demanding to be contained. In the 1950s it was controlled via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so widespread that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Battle for the Highest Within Us
Hence I have become inspired to witness the persistent defiance to Trump emerge over the last twelve months. It has provided substantial consolation to assist in constructing the movement that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and likely has encouraged voters to turn out in significant amounts in interim political contests. We shall require to persist with it, and through comparable resolve, displaying national flags at every demonstration and calls to the finest aspects within national heritage.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the foreigner? Did you welcome them and receive them or not?
America is best defended, in other words, by reference to the best in US heritage, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured by relationship to what makes it distinctive and beautiful, specifically the model of Jesus. In both situations does it suggest feigning the worst of both America and Christianity never occurred; it represents both humility and faith, a blend that genuine national faithful should be comfortable with.
