Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation

by Michael J. Gorman

The attribution of sacred status to secular power (normally the state and/or its head) as the source of divine blessing, requiring devotion and allegiance of heart, mind, and body to the sacred-secular power and its values, all expressed in various narratives, other texts, rituals, and media that reinforce both the secular power’s sacred status and the beneficiaries’ sacred duty of devotion and allegiance, even to the point of death.42 This definition of civil religion implies that it has three major dimensions: Ideology/theology: the sacralization of the state, including: (a) its power, prosperity, and peace; (b) its activities and accomplishments, especially in expansion and war; (c) its guiding myths and values; and (d) its past heroes and current leader(s); Commitment/practices: the corollary demand of solemn devotion and allegiance to the state as a sacred responsibility (including the willingness to kill and/or die for it) to be expressed in public rituals; and Syncretism: the reinterpretation of the culture’s dominant religious tradition(s) to incorporate this sacralization of the state and solemn allegiance to it; the mixing of religious faith and practice with political, nationalistic claims and practices. More broadly, then, Revelation is a critique of civil religion (first of all, but not only, Roman civil religion), that is, the sacralization of secular political, economic, and military power through various mythologies and practices—creeds and liturgies, we mi...