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

by Michael J. Gorman

secular power—military, political, economic—and a parallel sustained recognition of God and the Lamb as the rightful bearers of sacred claims, the only worthy recipients of divine accolades. It proclaims that there exists a non-civil religion, that there can be a community of “uncivil” people. Thus one of the main purposes of Revelation is to challenge sacralized imperial power—and its seductive allure—with an alternative vision of power that will give believers comfort, assurance, hope, and especially courage to resist in accord with the paradigm of Jesus. This alternative vision of power is the power of the one true God and the slain Lamb, Christ “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth” (1:5). It provides for the church a “set of Christian prophetic counter-images,” a “counter-imperial script.”54 Revelation is therefore a prophetic, pastoral, visionary guide to worshiping and following the Lamb, a template for faithful witness against civil religion and for true worship of the true God. It calls us to unlearn and abandon the false but often seductive gospel of empire and civil religion as it calls us to learn and practice, in worship and witness, the truth of the Lamb’s eternal gospel. This is why a liturgical reading of Revelation leads inevitably to a theopolitical reading. The god(s) we imagine and worship, especially in the public square, may be something other than God. John Calvin famously contended that the human h...