They're Repeating across America What They Did with Christianity

Trumpism's most telling and defining moments – not its most crucial, nor most harsh, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. Over the span of a few weeks, the American president began displaying all observers his plans for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions compared to the White House and then began independently demolishing the East Wing to build it.

He has performed deeds countless times more severe – the current estimate of casualties resulting from his reductions to foreign assistance is 600,000 and growing, and this week research forecast his petroleum strategies would kill an additional 1.3 million. Yet nothing as characteristic. No former leader would have risked – really, no former commander would have conceived – unilaterally destroying large sections of the presidential residence to construct a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of numerous America's wealthiest, almost all of whom conduct transactions with public institutions.

We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the world' toward 'the gentle will succumb of cholera'

As confusing as it is to witness the chief executive attempt to overturn the established notion of democracy and exchange it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion among Americans who might not perceive it completely novel. That encompasses people such as ourselves – within elder demographics a near majority – who were brought up as mainline Protestant Christians.

We have observed over the years as politically conservative religious groups transformed the Christ we were raised with into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. At its most basic, they transformed an image of compassion into an icon of hostility who approves exactly the harshness that he denounced in scripture; this transformation occurred more slowly, over decades instead of months, yet it remains disturbing in the same ways, a confusing personal impact for countless people.

A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground

So let me first describe the Christ from my upbringing, as conceptually Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and since the fastest-growing cadre within America might have little sense regarding him because they identify as atheists or uncertain individuals or spiritual independents. I have no problem with these different approaches, nor with different religions; but I do think that exist valuable insights of significant worth in biblical accounts.

It is unquestionably absolutely not the account of a powerful ruler arising; conversely, a child comes into the world to displaced parents in an automotive shelter, who are forced to hastily depart to a different country to evade undercover officers. The child matures in humble circumstances, a working carpenter; his message focuses on affection for fellow humans, specifically for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and protecting. Jesus' answer to hostility is to offer the opposite cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a method to educate the aggressor; his crime policy is that if someone steals your jacket you must offer him your sweater too.

The apparent and direct reality that the Jesus in biblical accounts calls for a form of extreme compassion focused on the needy has consistently rendered Christianity rather a controversial faith: engaging for the general public, but owing to its natural unconventionality requiring to be restrained. In the 1950s it was contained via weakening – Protestantism was so prevalent that it essentially blessed current circumstances.

A Struggle for the Best Within Us

Hence I have become inspired to observe the steadfast resistance regarding Trump emerge during the previous year. It has been substantial consolation to help build the campaign that has protested openly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated electorate to participate in numbers in interim political contests. We will need to maintain it, and in the same spirit, with American flags throughout each rally and calls to the best parts in US history.

We shall be interrogated ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you accept these individuals and embrace them or refuse?

America is best defended, to put it differently, by reference to the finest within national tradition, similar to Christianity is best defended by relationship to elements that cause it to be unique and beautiful, which is the example of Jesus. In neither case does it mean acting as if the worst about the nation and religious tradition did not happen; it represents both humility and belief, a blend that committed American Christians should be comfortable with.