Trumpism's most revealing and distinctive occasions – not its most crucial, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. During the period of multiple weeks, the American president started showing all observers his designs for a gilded ballroom double the dimensions than the White House and then commenced solo dismantling the East Wing portion to erect it.
He has committed acts 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of deaths resulting from his reductions to international aid amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and this week a study predicted his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No former leader would have attempted – really, no previous leader would have contemplated – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the executive mansion 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 transitioned from 'the gentle will obtain the planet' to 'the humble will perish of cholera'
As disorienting as it is to observe the president attempt to overturn the traditional concept regarding democracy and substitute it with its direct contrary, there remains a substantial portion within America who should not find it totally unfamiliar. That is those of us – in older age cohorts close to half – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have watched over the years while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we learned about into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of compassion into a symbol of hostility who endorses exactly the harshness that he condemned in the Gospel; this has happened more gradually, over decades rather than months, however it is still disconcerting in the same ways, a confusing personal impact for numerous individuals.
A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground
So let me first describe the Jesus from my childhood, as conceptually Jesus is the center within Christian belief, and because the rapidly expanding group within America might have little sense of him as they consider themselves non-believers or doubters or religiously unaffiliated. I take no issue with these different approaches, nor with different religions; but I do think that contain precious wisdom of significant worth in biblical accounts.
It is emphatically not the account of an authoritative monarch emerging; rather, a baby is born to parents without shelter in a garage, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to evade undercover officers. The child matures in humble circumstances, an employed craftsman; his message concerns compassion for other people, especially for the disadvantaged – not merely emotional affection, but tangible care, expressed by feeding and sheltering. The Savior's reaction to violence is to offer the other cheek – not as a demonstration of submissive tolerance, but as a method to instruct the attacker; his method regarding offenses is that if a person pilfers your outer garment you should give the person your additional clothing too.
The evident and straightforward truth that the Jesus of the gospels calls for a kind of extreme compassion centered on the needy is what has always made Christian religion something of a provocative belief system: appealing to the populace, but because of its intrinsic extremism needing to be controlled. During the 1950s it was contained by dilution – The Protestant faith was so prevalent that it essentially baptized the status quo.
A Conflict for the Best Within Us
Therefore I have felt inspired to observe the determined opposition regarding Trump develop in this past year. It has been great solace to participate in developing the initiative that has demonstrated publicly in rally after rally, and appears to have motivated citizens to turn out in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We will need to continue it, and with identical determination, with American flags throughout each rally and calls to the highest qualities of American history.
We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and embrace them or reject?
America is best defended, essentially, by reference to the highest within national tradition, just as Christianity is best defended by relationship to that which renders it special and magnificent, particularly the pattern of Jesus. In both situations does it imply pretending the most damaging about the nation and Christianity was nonexistent; it means both meekness and belief, a mixture that serious national faithful should be comfortable with.
