They're Doing in America What They Executed to Christianity

The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and characteristic instances – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but perhaps its most illuminating – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of multiple weeks, the US president started showing the public his plans for a lavish reception room twice the size of the White House and subsequently started independently demolishing the eastern section to construct it.

He has committed acts countless times more severe – the present calculation of fatalities due to his slashing to international aid amounts to 600,000 and rising, and recently an analysis projected his petroleum strategies would kill an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have dared – genuinely, no former commander would have contemplated – unilaterally destroying major areas of the White House in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of multiple America's wealthiest, the majority of whom have business with federal agencies.

We moved from 'the humble will receive the world' to 'the meek shall die from cholera'

As bewildering as it is to observe the president try to upend the old idea regarding democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there remains a substantial portion among Americans who should not find it totally unfamiliar. This includes individuals like us – within elder demographics close to half – who were raised within mainstream Protestant traditions.

We have witnessed across decades as rightwing evangelical churches converted the Savior we learned about into the complete reverse of our perception of his character. Fundamentally, they transformed an image of love into a figure of animosity who blesses specifically the brutality that he criticized in the Gospel; this transformation occurred at a slower pace, across decades as opposed to months, yet it remains disturbing through similar means, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.

A Harmful Christianity Gains Ground

Hence I shall explain the Savior that I grew up with, since in theory Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and given that the rapidly expanding group among Americans might have little sense about him since they are skeptics or doubters or nones. I take no issue with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that there are pearls of significant worth within Christian narrative.

It is unquestionably not the story of a mighty king appearing; instead, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in an automotive shelter, who need to rapidly escape to a foreign land to evade secret police. The baby grows up in modest conditions, a laboring woodworker; his doctrine focuses on affection for fellow humans, especially for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but practical compassion, shown by providing food and sheltering. The Savior's reaction to aggression is to present the other cheek – not as an act of passive acceptance, but as a means to educate the assailant; his approach to wrongdoing indicates that whenever an individual takes your outer garment you ought to provide the person your additional clothing as well.

The evident and direct truth that Christ of the gospels requests a kind of extreme compassion focused on the needy has consistently rendered the Christian faith rather a provocative belief system: attractive to the general public, but due to its inherent radicalness demanding to be contained. During the 1950s it was contained through watering down – The Protestant faith was so prevalent that it practically baptized the status quo.

A Battle for the Best Within Us

Hence I have become encouraged to see the steadfast resistance regarding Trump emerge during the previous year. It has provided substantial consolation to participate in developing the movement that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated voters to participate in large quantities in interim political contests. We shall require to continue it, and in the same spirit, displaying national flags during all protests and appeals to the highest qualities of American history.

We shall be interrogated ... regarding how you welcomed the stranger? Did you receive him and receive them or reject?

America is best defended, essentially, through connection to the finest about American history, similar to Christianity is optimally secured by relationship to that which renders it unique and magnificent, which is the example of Jesus. In both situations does it mean pretending the worst of both America and religious tradition was nonexistent; it represents both modesty and conviction, a combination that committed US believers should be comfortable with.