They're Repeating to America What They Did with Christianity

The Trump phenomenon's most telling and distinctive moments – not its most important, nor most harsh, nor most threatening, nor most foolish, but possibly its most revealing – occurred earlier this fall. In the course of a few weeks, the US president commenced revealing all observers his intentions for a lavish reception room twice the size compared to the White House and then commenced solo dismantling the eastern section to erect it.

He has performed deeds ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of casualties from his cuts to foreign assistance is 600,000 and growing, and this week an analysis forecast his fossil fuel policies would cause deaths an additional 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No previous president would have attempted – really, no former commander would have conceived – unilaterally destroying major areas of the executive mansion in order to erect a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of multiple the richest Americans, nearly all of which maintain dealings with federal agencies.

We moved from 'the humble will receive the Earth' into 'the humble will perish of cholera'

As confusing as it is to observe the leader attempt to overturn the established notion regarding democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there is one large group among Americans who wouldn't consider it entirely new. This includes individuals like us – within elder demographics close to half – who were raised as conventional Protestant believers.

We have observed throughout the years while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we were raised with into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. Fundamentally, they turned a figure of compassion into an icon of hate who blesses exactly the harshness that he denounced in biblical teachings; this transformation occurred more gradually, across decades as opposed to months, yet it remains disconcerting in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for numerous individuals.

A Damaging Christianity Establishes Itself

So let me first describe the Christ from my childhood, because theoretically the Savior is the core of any Christian faith, and because the fastest-growing cadre of Americans might have little sense about him as they consider themselves atheists or agnostics or nones. I raise no objection with these different approaches, nor with any other faith; but I do think that contain precious wisdom of significant worth in biblical accounts.

It is unquestionably absolutely not the account of a mighty king emerging; instead, a baby is born to displaced parents in a storage space, who must quickly flee to a different country to avoid secret police. The baby grows up in simple surroundings, an employed craftsman; his message is about love for other people, particularly for the disadvantaged – not merely emotional affection, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and protecting. Christ's response to hostility is to present the other cheek – not as a demonstration of compliant endurance, but as a way to teach the aggressor; his crime policy states that when an individual takes your outer garment you ought to provide him your sweater also.

The evident and straightforward reality that Christ in biblical accounts advocates for a type of radical love centered on the needy has perpetually caused the Christian faith something of a provocative belief system: engaging for the masses, but due to its natural unconventionality needing to be contained. During the 1950s it was contained through watering down – The Protestant faith was so widespread that it practically sanctified existing conditions.

A Struggle for the Best Within Us

Hence I have become encouraged to see the determined opposition to Trump emerge during the previous year. It has served as significant comfort to help build the campaign that has protested openly via continuous gatherings, and seems to have inspired voters to show up in numbers in the off-year elections. We will need to persist with it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners during all protests and appeals to the best parts of American history.

We will be questioned ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you receive him and receive them or refuse?

America is best defended, to put it differently, through connection to the best about American history, similar to Christianity is optimally secured by relationship to elements that cause it to be distinctive and magnificent, which is the example of Christ. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the most damaging of both America and Christian faith never occurred; it represents both modesty and faith, a mixture that serious US believers should embrace.