Trumpism's most illuminating and defining occasions – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. During the period of multiple weeks, the American president began displaying all observers his plans for a lavish reception room twice the size than the White House and then commenced independently demolishing the East Wing portion to build it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the existing assessment of deaths resulting from his reductions to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and rising, and this week an analysis predicted his fossil fuel policies would kill 1.3 million more. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have attempted – genuinely, no previous leader would have contemplated – solo demolishing significant portions of the presidential residence in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of multiple America's wealthiest, almost all of whom maintain dealings with public institutions.
We moved from 'the humble will receive the world' to 'the gentle will succumb to cholera'
As bewildering as it is to witness the president attempt to overturn the traditional concept about democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there remains a substantial portion of Americans who should not find it entirely new. That encompasses people such as ourselves – among senior generations a near majority – who were educated within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed over the years while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we learned about into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. Fundamentally, they converted a persona of affection into an icon of animosity who endorses precisely the cruelties that he denounced in the Gospel; this has happened more gradually, across decades instead of months, yet it remains disconcerting through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Toxic Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Jesus that I grew up with, since in theory Christ is the focus of Christian religion, and since the fastest-growing cadre of Americans could have minimal awareness of him because they identify as skeptics or uncertain individuals or nones. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with different religions; but I do think that there are pearls of significant worth in the Christian story.
It is unquestionably not the story of a mighty king appearing; instead, an infant arrives to homeless parents in a garage, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to escape covert authorities. The infant develops in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his teaching concerns compassion for other people, particularly for the poor – and not a sentimental love, but tangible care, demonstrated through nourishing and sheltering. Christ's response to hostility is to turn the other cheek – not as a gesture of submissive tolerance, but as a means to teach the aggressor; his method regarding offenses is that if someone steals your coat you must offer them your pullover also.
The obvious and straightforward truth that Christ from scripture requests a kind of profound affection centered on the impoverished is what has always made Christianity something of a scandalous religion: attractive to the general public, but because of its inherent radicalness demanding to be controlled. During the 1950s it was restrained through watering down – The Protestant faith was so prevalent that it essentially blessed current circumstances.
A Conflict for the Best Among Us
So I have been encouraged to observe the determined opposition to Trump emerge during the previous year. It has been substantial consolation to help build the initiative that has taken to the streets in rally after rally, and seems to have inspired electorate to show up in large quantities during minor elections. We will need to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags at every demonstration and calls to the best parts of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the stranger? Did you welcome them and receive them or reject?
The nation is most protected, in other words, by reference to the best in US heritage, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured by relationship to that which renders it distinctive and wonderful, which is the example of the Savior. In all circumstances does it imply feigning the worst about the nation and religious tradition never occurred; it represents both humility and faith, a blend that committed US believers should be comfortable with.
