Trumpism's most illuminating and distinctive occasions – not its most crucial, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor most senseless, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of multiple weeks, the nation's leader started showing the public his intentions for an ornate dance hall two times larger than the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to construct it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the present calculation of fatalities due to his slashing to international aid stands at 600,000 and growing, and this week a study predicted his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No previous president would have risked – truly, no other president would have conceived – solo demolishing major areas of the White House to build a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of multiple America's wealthiest, almost all of whom conduct transactions with public institutions.
We went from 'the meek shall inherit the planet' into 'the humble will perish to cholera'
As disorienting as it is to witness the president attempt to overturn the old idea about democracy and replace it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment within America who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – among senior generations close to half – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed across decades as rightwing evangelical churches transformed the Christ we learned about into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they transformed an image of affection into an icon of animosity who blesses precisely the cruelties that he criticized in scripture; this has happened at a slower pace, through multiple decades instead of months, however it is still disturbing in the same ways, a confusing personal impact for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
Hence I shall explain the Jesus from my childhood, since in theory Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and given that the fastest-growing cadre of Americans could have minimal awareness of him as they consider themselves skeptics or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that exist valuable insights of great price within Christian narrative.
It is decidedly not the story of a mighty king appearing; conversely, a child comes into the world to parents without shelter in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to evade undercover officers. The infant develops in modest conditions, an employed craftsman; his doctrine is about love for others, specifically for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but practical compassion, shown by providing food and sheltering. Jesus' answer to hostility is to offer the additional cheek – not as an act of submissive tolerance, but as a means to instruct the assailant; his crime policy states that when a person pilfers your coat you should give the person your additional clothing as well.
The apparent and direct reality that Christ of the gospels requests a type of extreme compassion centered on the poor is what has always made Christian religion something of a controversial faith: attractive to the populace, but due to its natural unconventionality needing to be contained. In the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it essentially sanctified existing conditions.
A Struggle for the Best of Us
So I have been heartened to observe the persistent defiance against Trump arise over the last twelve months. It has served as substantial consolation to help build the campaign that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated voters to show up in large quantities during minor elections. We must have to continue it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners throughout each rally and requests to the finest aspects of American history.
We're going to be asked ... how did you receive the foreigner? Did you welcome them and embrace them or reject?
The country is optimally secured, to put it differently, by reference to the best about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured by relationship to that which renders it special and beautiful, which is the example of the Savior. In both situations does it mean acting as if the worst of both America and religious tradition never occurred; it signifies both modesty and faith, a blend that genuine national faithful ought to accept.
