Trumpism's most telling and defining instances – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but possibly its most revealing – came earlier this autumn. Over the span of a few weeks, the American president commenced revealing all observers his designs for an ornate dance hall two times larger of the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to erect it.
He has committed acts ten thousand times worse – the present calculation of fatalities resulting from his reductions to USAID is 600,000 and growing, and this week a study projected his petroleum strategies would cause deaths an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have risked – genuinely, no other president would have contemplated – independently wrecking major areas of the presidential residence to construct a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of numerous the nation's most affluent, the majority of whom have business with the government.
We went from 'the humble will receive the planet' toward 'the meek shall die from cholera'
As bewildering as it is to watch the president try to upend the established notion regarding democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there is one large group among Americans who wouldn't consider it totally unfamiliar. This includes individuals like us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were educated within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have witnessed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we learned about into the complete reverse of our understanding of him. Essentially, they transformed an image of compassion into an icon of hostility who endorses specifically the brutality that he criticized in biblical teachings; this transformation occurred more gradually, across decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disturbing in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.
A Damaging Christianity Takes Hold
So let me first describe the Savior that I grew up with, as conceptually Christ is the focus of Christian religion, and since the rapidly expanding group within America might have little sense about him since they are skeptics or agnostics or nones. I raise no objection with these different approaches, nor with different religions; yet I maintain that contain precious wisdom of substantial value in the Christian story.
It is emphatically not the narrative of an authoritative monarch arising; instead, a baby is born to displaced parents in a garage, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to evade secret police. The baby grows up in simple surroundings, an employed craftsman; his message focuses on affection for others, particularly for the impoverished – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, shown by providing food and protecting. Christ's response to violence is to present the additional cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a way to instruct the assailant; his crime policy is that if a person pilfers your coat you must offer the person your additional clothing too.
The apparent and clear truth that Christ in biblical accounts requests a kind of profound affection focused on the needy is what has always made the Christian faith rather a provocative belief system: appealing to the populace, but owing to its intrinsic extremism needing to be controlled. During the 1950s it was controlled by dilution – Protestantism was so widespread that it basically sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Best Within Us
Therefore I have felt encouraged to see the persistent defiance regarding Trump develop during the previous year. It has served as great solace to participate in developing the campaign that has protested openly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated electorate to participate in significant amounts in interim political contests. We must have to continue it, and with identical determination, with American flags at every demonstration and calls to the finest aspects of American history.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the foreigner? Did you receive him and welcome him or refuse?
The nation is most protected, in other words, by reference to the highest about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is optimally secured by reference to elements that cause it to be special and magnificent, specifically the model of Christ. In neither case does it mean pretending the worst about the nation and Christian faith did not happen; it means both modesty and belief, a mixture that committed American Christians ought to accept.
