They're Repeating to America What They Did to Christianity

Trumpism's most telling and distinctive moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most threatening, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of a few weeks, the nation's leader began displaying all observers his plans for a gilded ballroom two times larger of the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the East Wing portion to construct it.

He has done things 10,000 times as bad – the present calculation of deaths from his cuts to USAID amounts to 600,000 and increasing, and presently a study predicted his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths 1.3 million more. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have dared – really, no other president would have contemplated – unilaterally destroying major areas of the executive mansion in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the enthusiastic participation of numerous America's wealthiest, nearly all of which maintain dealings with federal agencies.

We moved from 'the humble will receive the Earth' into 'the meek shall die from cholera'

As disorienting as it is to witness the chief executive try to upend the traditional concept regarding democracy and exchange it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment of Americans who wouldn't consider it entirely new. That is those of us – in older age cohorts a near majority – who were educated as conventional Protestant believers.

We have observed across decades while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we were raised with into the total contrary of who we understood him to be. Fundamentally, they converted a persona of love into an icon of hostility who approves precisely the cruelties that he condemned in scripture; this transformation occurred more slowly, over decades instead of months, yet it remains unsettling through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.

A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold

Hence I shall explain the Jesus that I grew up with, since in theory Jesus is the center of Christian religion, and because the quickly increasing segment within America might have little sense regarding him since they are atheists or uncertain individuals or spiritual independents. I have no problem with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; but I do think that there are pearls of great price in the Christian story.

It is emphatically definitely not the narrative of a mighty king appearing; conversely, a child comes into the world to displaced parents in an automotive shelter, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to avoid undercover officers. The infant develops in humble circumstances, a laboring woodworker; his teaching concerns compassion for other people, specifically for the disadvantaged – not merely emotional affection, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and sheltering. Christ's response to aggression is to turn the opposite cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a method to teach the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever a person pilfers your jacket you should give them your pullover as well.

The apparent and straightforward truth that the Jesus of the gospels advocates for a kind of profound affection concentrated on the poor is what has always made Christian religion somewhat of a provocative belief system: engaging for the general public, but because of its intrinsic extremism demanding to be controlled. In the 1950s it was restrained via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so prevalent that it basically baptized the status quo.

A Struggle for the Highest Among Us

So I have been inspired to witness the determined opposition against Trump develop during the previous year. It has provided great solace to help build the initiative that has protested openly via continuous gatherings, and likely has encouraged voters to show up in numbers in the off-year elections. We shall require to maintain it, and through comparable resolve, with American flags throughout each rally and requests to the finest aspects in US history.

We shall be interrogated ... about how you treated the foreigner? Did you welcome them and embrace them or refuse?

America is best defended, to put it differently, by reference to the best about American history, similar to Christianity is best defended through connection to elements that cause it to be unique and beautiful, particularly the pattern of Christ. In neither case does it mean pretending the worst of both America and Christian faith never occurred; it represents both humility and belief, a blend that genuine US believers should embrace.