They're Repeating across America What They Did with Christianity

The Trump movement's most illuminating and distinctive instances – not its most important, nor most brutal, nor most dangerous, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – came earlier this autumn. During the period of several weeks, the American president commenced revealing all observers his designs for an ornate dance hall double the dimensions than the White House and then commenced unilaterally ripping down the East Wing portion to build it.

He has committed acts countless times more severe – the present calculation of fatalities from his cuts to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and increasing, and presently an analysis projected his energy policies would kill another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No previous president would have dared – truly, no previous leader would have contemplated – unilaterally destroying significant portions of the executive mansion to build a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the direct cooperation of numerous the richest Americans, nearly all of which maintain dealings with federal agencies.

We transitioned from 'the humble will receive the planet' into 'the meek shall die to cholera'

As confusing as it is to watch the president try to upend the old idea regarding democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there remains a substantial portion within America who should not find it completely novel. That encompasses people such as ourselves – in older age cohorts close to half – who were educated as conventional Protestant believers.

We have watched over the years while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we grew up with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be. Essentially, they converted a persona of compassion into an icon of hostility who blesses specifically the brutality that he condemned in biblical teachings; this transformation occurred more gradually, over decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disconcerting in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.

A Harmful Christianity Establishes Itself

Therefore allow me to outline the Christ from my childhood, as conceptually Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and because the fastest-growing cadre within America might have little sense of him because they identify as non-believers or doubters or spiritual independents. I have no problem with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that there are pearls of great price in biblical accounts.

It is decidedly not the account of a mighty king arising; rather, an infant arrives to displaced parents in a storage space, who are forced to hastily depart to another nation to escape secret police. The baby grows up in simple surroundings, a laboring woodworker; his teaching is about love for others, especially for the impoverished – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and housing. Jesus' answer to violence is to offer the other cheek – not as a demonstration of submissive tolerance, but as a method to instruct the aggressor; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever a person pilfers your outer garment you must offer the person your additional clothing also.

The obvious and clear truth that Christ of the gospels advocates for a form of radical love centered on the poor has perpetually caused Christianity rather a scandalous religion: appealing to the populace, but because of its natural unconventionality needing to be controlled. In the 1950s it was contained by dilution – Protestant Christianity was so dominant that it practically baptized the status quo.

A Conflict for the Highest of Us

Therefore I have felt heartened to observe the determined opposition regarding Trump develop in this past year. It has served as great solace to help build the movement that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated voters to show up in significant amounts during minor elections. We shall require to persist with it, and in the same spirit, featuring US banners throughout each rally and requests to the finest aspects in US history.

We will be questioned ... regarding how you welcomed the foreigner? Did you accept these individuals and embrace them or refuse?

The country is optimally secured, in other words, through connection to the best about American history, exactly as the Christian faith is best defended by reference to what makes it distinctive and wonderful, which is the example of the Savior. In all circumstances does it imply acting as if the worst about the nation and Christian faith never occurred; it represents both meekness and faith, a blend that serious national faithful should embrace.