Monday, July 9, 2007
Here is a brief addendum to my most recent post. Sometimes it is a challenge to know what to do with New Testament language that seems to challenge an empire that has long since passed into the dust bin of history. Barbara Rossing, a New Testament scholar and the author of The Rapture Exposed spoke at a recent Associated Church Press convention. In her presentation she made the case that the Book of Revelation was intended to show the bankruptcy of the Roman Empire and to encourage an alternative way of life. But how does that speak to us today? Rossing reportedly told the convention that readers need to avoid the temptation to look at the United States as "the empire." "That's way too simplistic. The empire is in all of us." (United Methodist Reporter, July 6, 2007) A good point to ponder.
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I'm not really sure what that means to say that the Empire is in all of us. Obviously, there are differences between the US and the Roman Empire, but I think statements like Rossing's can easily be a way of depoliticizing the import of Jesus's nonviolent resistance to and critique of the power, brutality, and oppression of the dominant Empire of his day. If you start fudging with the idea that this applies to the modern Empire that dominates the world today, then you are just softening and making more palatable the radical message of Jesus's opposition to what Borg refers to as "domination systems". When you start saying things like "The Empire is in all of us", it seems to me that turning this resistance to Empire into a fuzzy sort of metaphorical concept, and thus denying the political importance of how Jesus's Kingdom of God stood in opposition to the bona fide, tangible Empire of his day.
Looking at the US as the Empire is not a "temptation". It is a reality that the people in Iraq have to face every single day.
I am not sure that the connections between the Roman Empire and the actions of the US, China, or any other nation is lost when we look at the Empire in all of us. I think each of us needs to remember how we are a part of the larger Empire and so responsible for what it does. I think that seeing the Empire within us helps personalize the radical message that Jesus had rather than softening it. It calls us to look within ourselves and seek to make a different within our own lives before we simply point to something outside ourselves to blame for the evil in the world. Thanks David for some very insightful thoughts and quotes.
Does the United States behave in many ways like an imperial power? Yes. Is there the possiblity that Rossing's words will completely de-politicize Jesus' message? Yes, though that is not her intention. Her words also help make clear that Jesus' message was one of transformation - both political and personal, something on which Marcus Borg agrees (Borg, Jesus, 226). To see it as either/or is neither helpful nor accurate. We internalize a great deal of an imperial culture - consumerism, the cult of celebrity, politics as horse racing - and we need to deal with these realities along with seeking political transformation.
Okay, I can accept that the Empire is in all of us in the sense that we have internalized the values of the Empire. I guess what concerned me was the idea that she seemed to be suggesting that equating the US with "empire" was a temptation to resist. The US is an Empire, and I felt like it sounded like she was trying to deny this in some way, or to diffuse or deflect criticism of the imperial nature of the United States in its relationship to the world and to us, so that instead we focus on personal transformation to the exclusion of transforming the world. But if I misinterpreted this, then I take back my objection.
I guess I cannot say with certainty what Ms. Rossing's intentions were, but when I cited her work I intended to emphasize the need for both personal and political transformation as a response to what I hear in the message of Jesus. Marcus Borg, in his book, The Heart of Christianity talks about “the two transformations, personal and political, at the center of the Christian vision of life as we see it in the Bible and in Jesus” (146). He goes on to say, “if we emphasize only one, we miss half of the biblical message, half of the gospel.”
I am also concerned with a simple equation of the Roman empire with the United States. While I have serious concerns with current policy and with a number of cultural trends, there is also something in the hope and history of America that can serve as a hopeful and helpful critique of our imperial excesses. Whether or not we will make use of these resources and of the resources of faith remains to be seen.
I really appreciate the thoughtful comments. Thanks for reading.
I posted an entry in my blog on July 4 about the subject of the US and its history as an empire. It is a rather long posting to wade through, but one thing I did was to quote from a New York Times article that pointed out that the founders of the US had always considered Rome to be a model for the new nation, and had always envisioned the US as a new Empire a la Rome.
Sounds interesting. I will have to look that up sometime. As I have thought a bit more about the on-going conversation, especially my last comment about America, I found this in Jacob Needleman's book "The American Soul": "Because America betrays its ideals is no reason to reject the ideals themselves." Needleman has in mind ideals other than empire. From your most recent comment it seems that the founding ideals of America were a mixed bag, imperial and democratic. Like most historical realities, we have this strange mixture of good and evil. Can we make use of our better ideals to challenge the ones that lead to empire? Can people of faith like me contribute something positive to conversation and change? I hope so.
It's hard for me to know what to make of the ostensible ideals on which the country was founded. They talked a lot about human freedom and consent of the governed, but in reality many of them were, of course, slave holders. I think that the founders believed in freedom mostly just for white male slave owners, but phrased their beliefs in more general terms so that later people could say that they were living up to the ideals of the founders when they extended rights to others. And they believed in limited democracy, but feared too much of it, so, for example, there was no direct election of the president by the people (or of Senators originally), and they put all sorts of constitutional roadblocks to slow down popular legislative zeal (two legislatures instead of one, overlapping terms in the Senate, a slow and complicated process of constitutional amendments, etc.)
The New York Times article was interesting because it suggested that the founders didn't feel like they had much of a model to go on. They were creating a Republic, and Rome was a Republic at least for a while, so they saw Rome as some sort of model. But I would ask myself whether the ideals of democracy are ever consistent with the brute realities of Empire.
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