And similar to in Jesus’ day, political leaders defend this association whereas spiritual leaders bless it. Because the French author Frédéric Bastiat warned, “When plunder turns into a lifestyle for a bunch of males in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a authorized system that authorizes it and an ethical code that glorifies it.” That was true in first-century Jerusalem. It stays true immediately.
Because the Nineteen Eighties, actions just like the Ethical Majority and the Christian Coalition, and extra lately, the New Apostolic Reformation, haven’t challenged the empire however slightly sought to commandeer it. The Seven Mountain Mandate urges Christians to grab management of key sectors of society, together with authorities, enterprise, schooling and media. This isn’t a motion in search of to interrogate or problem the injustice of empire. Fairly the alternative. It’s an ideology — a starvation for energy and dominion — cloaked in pious language and baptized within the logic of empire. That is Christian nationalism in a nutshell.
Bear in mind, Rome didn’t start as an empire; it started as a republic. However over time, it ceded energy to the few, tolerating cruelty, corruption and the consolidation of management, as long as it got here wrapped within the promise of peace and prosperity. The emperor turned each ruler and redeemer, commemorated not for ethical readability however for the phantasm of restored nationwide greatness.
The false promise supplied to each Romans and the individuals they conquered was that Caesar was divine — a selected one, a lord. At the moment, Donald Trump is commonly solid in eerily comparable phrases by Christian nationalists: not as an ethical chief, however as a determine who will ship prosperity, safety, and cultural dominance, at the very least for a choose few. To defy him, on this worldview, isn’t just to reject a person, however to reject a sort of sacred order. That impulse just isn’t new. It’s as outdated as Pilate’s procession.
However Jesus by no means sought to switch Caesar with a Christian Caesar. He got here to dismantle the very logic of Caesar: the idea that may makes proper, peace comes by means of violence and politics is greatest wielded by means of concern, coercion and management. As a substitute, he inaugurated a counter-kingdom that aspires to loving kindness, radical welcome, mercy and justice — a kingdom the place the susceptible and the poor are lifted up, and the idols of empire are uncovered as frauds.
