They're Doing in America What They Did to Christianity

The Trump phenomenon's most illuminating and defining moments – not its most significant, nor cruelest, nor most hazardous, nor most foolish, but potentially its most enlightening – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of several weeks, the nation's leader started showing the public his intentions for a lavish reception room two times larger compared to the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the East Wing portion to construct it.

He has done things countless times more severe – the current estimate of deaths resulting from his reductions to international aid is 600,000 and growing, and recently research projected his energy policies would result in fatalities another 1.3 million. However nothing as distinctive. No other president would have attempted – genuinely, no previous leader would have imagined – independently wrecking major areas of the White House in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the direct cooperation of some of America's wealthiest, nearly all of which maintain dealings with federal agencies.

We transitioned from 'the meek shall inherit the world' to 'the meek shall die to cholera'

As bewildering as it is to observe the president try to upend the traditional concept about democracy and replace it with its complete opposite, there remains a substantial portion among Americans who might not perceive it completely novel. That is those of us – in older age cohorts close to half – who were educated within mainstream Protestant traditions.

We have witnessed across decades as rightwing evangelical churches transformed the Christ we learned about into the total contrary of our understanding of him. Essentially, they turned a figure of affection into a figure of animosity who endorses specifically the brutality that he criticized in scripture; this change developed at a slower pace, over decades rather than months, but it is nonetheless disturbing in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for countless people.

A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold

Hence I shall explain the Savior from my upbringing, because theoretically Christ is the focus of any Christian faith, and since the quickly increasing segment of Americans may possess limited understanding about him since they are skeptics or agnostics or spiritual independents. I raise no objection with these various perspectives, nor with any other faith; yet I maintain that contain precious wisdom of significant worth within Christian narrative.

It is emphatically absolutely not the account of a powerful ruler emerging; instead, a baby is born to parents without shelter in a storage space, who need to rapidly escape to another nation to avoid secret police. The infant develops in simple surroundings, a laboring woodworker; his message focuses on affection for other people, specifically for the poor – not simply tender feelings, but a concrete one, shown by providing food and sheltering. The Savior's reaction to hostility is to present the opposite cheek – not as an act of compliant endurance, but as a method to educate the aggressor; his approach to wrongdoing is that if an individual takes your outer garment you must offer the person your additional clothing as well.

The evident and clear fact that Christ in biblical accounts requests a form of extreme compassion concentrated on the poor has consistently rendered Christian religion something of a provocative belief system: engaging for the general public, but due to its natural unconventionality demanding to be contained. In the fifties it was contained through watering down – The Protestant faith was so prevalent that it basically sanctified existing conditions.

A Conflict for the Highest Within Us

Therefore I have felt inspired to see the determined opposition to Trump develop in this past year. It has provided great solace to help build the initiative that has taken to the streets in rally after rally, and likely has encouraged voters to show up in significant amounts in the off-year elections. We will need to persist with it, and with identical determination, featuring US banners throughout each rally and calls to the best parts in US history.

We will be questioned ... about how you treated the foreigner? Did you welcome them and embrace them or not?

America is best defended, essentially, through connection to the highest within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is most protected through connection to what makes it unique and beautiful, which is the example of the Savior. In neither case does it suggest acting as if the worst regarding America and religious tradition was nonexistent; it means both humility and belief, a mixture that serious American Christians should be comfortable with.