Trumpism's most telling and distinctive instances – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor most senseless, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. In the course of several weeks, the nation's leader started showing all observers his plans for a lavish reception room two times larger compared to the White House and subsequently started solo dismantling the East Wing to construct it.
He has done things countless times more severe – the existing assessment of deaths due to his slashing to USAID amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and recently research predicted his fossil fuel policies would kill an additional 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No other president would have risked – really, no previous leader would have conceived – solo demolishing significant portions of the White House to build a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of multiple America's wealthiest, the majority of whom conduct transactions with federal agencies.
We went from 'the gentle will obtain the planet' to 'the gentle will succumb from cholera'
As confusing as it is to watch the leader try to upend the established notion of democracy and substitute it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment among Americans who should not find it completely novel. This includes individuals like us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.
We have observed over the years while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we learned about into the total contrary of our understanding of him. At its most basic, they converted a persona of affection into a figure of hate who blesses exactly the harshness that he denounced in the Gospel; this has happened more gradually, through multiple decades instead of months, yet it remains disturbing in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Toxic Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Savior from my upbringing, because theoretically Christ is the focus within Christian belief, and given that the fastest-growing cadre within America might have little sense about him because they identify as skeptics or agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. I have no problem with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that there are pearls of substantial value within Christian narrative.
It is emphatically absolutely not the story of a mighty king appearing; rather, a baby is born to parents without shelter in a storage space, who must quickly flee to a different country to evade covert authorities. The child matures in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his teaching concerns compassion for fellow humans, particularly for the disadvantaged – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, demonstrated through nourishing and housing. Christ's response to aggression is to present the additional cheek – not as a demonstration of submissive tolerance, but as a means to teach the assailant; his method regarding offenses is that if an individual takes your coat you should give him your sweater also.
The evident and straightforward fact that Christ of the gospels advocates for a type of extreme compassion centered on the impoverished has perpetually caused the Christian faith something of a controversial faith: appealing to the masses, but because of its intrinsic extremism requiring to be contained. In the 1950s it was restrained by dilution – Protestantism was so prevalent that it essentially blessed current circumstances.
A Struggle for the Highest Among Us
Therefore I have felt heartened to see the persistent defiance to Trump develop during the previous year. It has served as substantial consolation to assist in constructing the movement that has protested openly in rally after rally, and likely has encouraged voters to participate in numbers in the off-year elections. We shall require to persist with it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners throughout each rally and requests to the highest qualities of American history.
We're going to be asked ... regarding how you welcomed the foreigner? Did you accept these individuals and receive them or not?
The nation is most protected, in other words, through connection to the best in US heritage, just as Christianity is most protected by relationship to that which renders it special and magnificent, which is the example of Christ. In both situations does it suggest pretending the worst regarding America and religious tradition was nonexistent; it represents both meekness and conviction, a combination that committed US believers should be comfortable with.
