They're Doing to America What They Did to Christianity

The Trump phenomenon's most telling and distinctive moments – not its most significant, nor most brutal, nor most threatening, nor stupidest, but potentially its most enlightening – emerged earlier this harvest season. Over the span of a few weeks, the nation's leader began displaying all observers his designs for a gilded ballroom two times larger than the White House and then began independently demolishing the eastern section to build it.

He has done things 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of fatalities resulting from his reductions to foreign assistance stands at 600,000 and increasing, and this week an analysis projected his fossil fuel policies would result in fatalities an additional 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have dared – really, no former commander would have imagined – independently wrecking large sections of the White House to build a palace-inspired entertainment space, with the active collaboration of some of America's wealthiest, the majority of whom have business with federal agencies.

We moved from 'the meek shall inherit the Earth' toward 'the humble will perish of cholera'

As bewildering as it is to witness the president attempt to overturn the traditional concept of democracy and substitute it with its complete opposite, there is one large group within America who should not find it entirely new. That encompasses people such as ourselves – within elder demographics close to half – who were brought up as conventional Protestant believers.

We have witnessed throughout the years while conservative evangelical congregations transformed the Christ we learned about into the complete reverse of who we understood him to be. At its most basic, they converted a persona of love into an icon of animosity who endorses precisely the cruelties that he denounced in biblical teachings; this has happened more slowly, across decades as opposed to months, yet it remains disconcerting in the same ways, a bewildering emotional blow for countless people.

A Damaging Christianity Gains Ground

So let me first describe the Christ that I grew up with, since in theory Christ is the focus of Christian religion, and since the rapidly expanding group among Americans may possess limited understanding about him because they identify as atheists or uncertain individuals or religiously unaffiliated. I raise no objection with these various perspectives, nor with alternative spiritual paths; yet I maintain that there are pearls of substantial value within Christian narrative.

It is emphatically absolutely not the narrative of a mighty king arising; rather, a baby is born to displaced parents in a garage, who must quickly flee to a different country to escape undercover officers. The child matures in modest conditions, a working carpenter; his doctrine concerns compassion for other people, particularly for the impoverished – not simply tender feelings, but practical compassion, expressed by feeding and protecting. Christ's response to violence is to present the additional cheek – not as a demonstration of submissive tolerance, but as a method to educate the assailant; his method regarding offenses states that when a person pilfers your jacket you should give the person your additional clothing too.

The apparent and straightforward reality that the Savior in biblical accounts advocates for a kind of radical love concentrated on the poor has consistently rendered Christian religion somewhat of a scandalous religion: appealing to the masses, but because of its natural unconventionality demanding to be controlled. In the fifties it was restrained through watering down – Protestant Christianity was so prevalent that it practically blessed current circumstances.

A Struggle for the Finest Among Us

So I have been inspired to see the determined opposition against Trump arise over the last twelve months. It has been great solace to help build the campaign that has demonstrated publicly through repeated demonstrations, and appears to have motivated voters to show up in large quantities during minor elections. We shall require to maintain it, and with identical determination, with American flags during all protests and requests to the finest aspects of American history.

We will be questioned ... how did you receive the immigrant? Did you accept these individuals and embrace them or refuse?

The nation is most protected, in other words, through connection to the finest in US heritage, just as Christianity is optimally secured by relationship to that which renders it unique and beautiful, which is the example of Christ. In all circumstances does it imply acting as if the most damaging of both America and Christian faith was nonexistent; it means both humility and faith, a combination that genuine national faithful ought to accept.