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

by Michael J. Gorman

it the conviction that both America and Americans should always enjoy and operate from a position of strength and security. Weakness is un-American; Americans want to be number one. For many, these kinds of secular strengths are seen as manifestations of power from God. American civil religion values human liberty and rights as a divine gift and considers it, perhaps on par with strength, as one of the highest national values. The protection and furtherance of freedom is therefore a divine mandate and mission. The operative notion of both political (corporate) and personal (individual) freedom is that of God-given (inalienable) rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, an idea derived both from the Enlightenment and from one of the most important sacred texts of this civil religion, the Declaration of Independence. A corollary myth is a form of secularized Calvinism, the notion that hard work mixed with a degree of generosity toward others will inevitably result in greater and greater freedom and prosperity, often understood as a sign of God’s blessing. (The so-called “prosperity gospel” is an offshoot of this myth.) Yet another key sacred myth in American civil rel...

The “myth of redemptive violence undergirds American popular culture, civil religion, nationalism, and foreign policy,” argues Walter Wink.48 It underwrites the belief that killing and/or dying for the national interest is a sacred duty and even privilege. Service to the nation—especially military service, and particularly dying for one’s country—is the highest form of both civic and religious devotion. After all, the civil-religion argument goes, quoting but misinterpreting Jesus, “greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13; RSV).49 These are some of the basic sacred myths and convictions of American civil religion. This ideology, or theology, has remarkable parallels with the Roman imperial theology discussed above. Some of the Symbols and Practices of American Civil Religion The sacred myths of civil religion are expressed, reinforced, honored, and propagated in sacred symbols, spaces, rituals, and holy-days. These occasions use sacred language, music, texts, and stories. Space does not permit a full discussion, but some of these American symbols and practices—often with close parallels elsewhere—are listed here. Sacred symbol...

Official days of prayer National feasts/holy-days Martin Luther King Day (recognizing a rare prophetic component of American life and civil religion) Presidents Day Memorial Day (arguably, in principle if not practice, the chief feast because of its connections to freedom and sacrifice in sacred violence51) Independence Day/Fourth of July Veterans Day Thanksgiving State funerals Moments of silence Congressional chaplain Prayer at political and civic events Prayer around the flag pole National days of prayer, prayer breakfasts The pledge of allegiance, at school or other civic gatherings, to the flag as icon of a nation “under God” The national anthem at sporting events Swearing on the Bible Chaplains’ prayers before military combat missions Religious rituals made civil Pledge of allegiance in church Recognition of active military or veterans in church at national holidays Prayers for “those serving our country” or “the/our troops” in church52 Sermons and children’s sermons on patriotic themes Use of patriotic music in worship Religious events on national holidays Religious gatherings in times of national crisis Sacred language War as “mission”

“Sacred” duty/honor Divine passive voice: “we are called” (e.g., at a certain moment in history, usually before war) “God bless America”/“God bless our troops” Echoes of/allusions to the Bible in civic and political discourse Attribution of biblical language for God or God’s people to the U.S. (e.g., “the light of the world”; “city on a hill”) Lack of theological specificity (e.g., omission of Jesus’ name from public prayer and Scripture reading) Sacred music/national hymns Patriotic songs of sacred devotion with much (“God Bless America”), some (“America/My Country, ’Tis of Thee”), or even no explicit religious language (the national anthem) Hymns with explicitly nationalistic and militaristic language (e.g., “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Navy Hymn”) Hymns with allegorical militaristic language interpreted literally and nationalistically (e.g., “Onward Christian Soldiers”) Sacred texts The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights Famous speeches by sacred leaders and heroes (e.g., Patrick Henry, Abraham Lincoln, Douglas MacArthur, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King) Biblical texts that seem to underwrite national values such as freedom and redemptive violence Sacred stories of sacred leaders and heroes (“saints”/“martyrs”/“prophets”) Founding Fathers Leaders in crisis (e.g., Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage) Great warriors (e.g., Patton) Veterans in general

These various aspects of American civil religion come to expression in two kinds of venues: the civil and political (speeches, parades, school events, sporting events, military ceremonies, etc.), on the one hand, and the religious (church worship services), on the other. From this listing we can recognize another aspect of the similarity between Roman and contemporary American civil religion. The former involved the politicization (specifically, the imperialization) of the sacred, and the sacralization of the political (specifically, the imperial). This is parallel to what has happened in the U.S.: many civic and political events have a religious dimension, and religious events sometimes take on a civic and political—specifically nationalistic, and even militaristic—dimension. This process continues to this day, despite the formal constraints of law and consequent changes in practice (such as the abolition of school prayer). One major difference, however, is extremely important to recognize: the syncretism of Rome’s civil religion involved the blending of Roman ideology and pagan religiosity, but the syncretism of American civil religion involves the blending of American ideology and Christian, or at least theistic and quasi-Christian, religiosity. The early church had a natural suspicion of Roman civil religion because it was so blatantly pagan and idolatrous—though even it could be appealing. Contemporary Christians can much more easily assume that Christian, or quasi-Ch...

No matter what the churches proclaim, Christianity in the United States seems to have two liturgical seasons, the Holy Season, which runs from Advent to Easter (or perhaps Pentecost), and the Civil Season—Civil Religion time—which runs from Memorial Day to Thanksgiving. Civil religion in the U.S. never goes away, but its major feasts are in that six-month period. God-and-country language and rituals are more prevalent, and syncretism in the churches (“when you see the red in the flag, think of the blood of those who died to make us free, and also think of Jesus’ blood that was shed to make us really free”) runs rampant but is hardly ever questioned. But when we consider carefully the nature and scope of American civil religion, it is difficult to avoid the question, “Is this, too, a form of idolatry, ‘the deification of nationalism.’”53 What makes American civil religion particularly seductive is that it borrows so heavily from Christianity; its reinterpretation of the dominant religious tradition(s) does not produce the syncretism of polytheistic paganism but the syncretism of Christianized Americanism or Americanized Christianism. This form of religiosity is so pervasive that ...

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 w...

inscriptions to represent their deities, we find our idols represented in the media as well: in magazines and books, in our movies and our music, on TV and online. Each and all of these can be inappropriately valued as something to live, die, and kill for. When they are understood as components of the summum bonum, as essential elements of the culture’s highest good, they become part of the noble cause that ultimately justifies killing and dying. “Every version of the kingdom of the world defends itself and advances its cause by rallying the self-interest of its citizens into a collective tribal force that makes each citizen willing to kill and be killed for what it believes to be the good of the society.”55 It has often been said that the most common idols in the West are Power, Sex, and Money; with this I am not in any profound disagreement. However, inasmuch as these idols are connected to a larger vision of life, such as the American dream, or the inalienable rights of free people, they become part of a nation’s civil religion. I would contend, in fact, that the most alluring and dangerous deity in the United States is the omnipresent, syncretistic god of nationalism mixed w...

churches repent? For the churches, one main question emerge...

there is no rapture in the book of Revelation.61 (It is supposedly narrated at 4:1, the introduction to the book’s central vision). When I pointed this out in one of my classes, a student nearly accused me of heresy for denying the second coming of Christ. I said to her, and I repeat now, that the book of Revelation clearly teaches, and calls on its readers to pray for, the return of Christ. It is not the second coming of Christ that is absent from Revelation but the alleged rapture of the Church by Christ in a kind of secret prequel to the real second coming. The former—Christ’s second (and final!) coming—is part of the book of Revelation, the rest of the New Testament, the creeds, and the historic teachings of the Christian faith. The present book affirms that future coming without hesitation.62

hope. Revelation was written to “enable [its hearers] to control their fear, to renew their commitment, and to sustain their

vision.”63

should not be interpreted all, just experienced). Arguments about the meaning

Above all, however, the details of the symbolism should not be handled as if Revelation were a script about the details of the end of history. Rather, the details serve a greater liturgical and theopolitical agenda.

To see at least part of what Revelation has in mind in identifying empire, we may consult chapter 18: an arrogant international economic power with clients around the world, all engaging in the uncontrolled pursuit of luxury, with commerce that even includes trading in human beings. This would seem to be an apt description of numerous political entities, both in the past and in the present.

One might ask whether a secular state, or one in which traditional expressions of religion are banned, can have a civil religion. If we understand religion to be about ultimate reality and value, then the answer is yes. We could therefore define civil religion as “the attribution of ultimate status to secular power,” though usually this includes the borrowing of traditional religious language and symbols. We could call this, ironically, “secular civil religion.”

See Boyd, Myth, 12: “In our minds—as so often in our sanctuaries—the cross and the American flag stand side by side.”

Christian references to “our troops,” in prayer or any other forms of discourse, are theologically inappropriate because “we” (the church, Christians) do not have troops. Such talk confuses our being Christian with being American (or British, or whatever) and manifests a profound forgetfulness about two important aspects of the church stressed in Revelation: its international character as a worldwide assembly of people from every tribe and nation (Revelation 7) and its peaceful, nonviolent character as a community of the Lamb.

included in the developing Christian canon—specifically, what was to become the New Testament—it is clear that certain concerns were operative. The leaders of the early churches wanted to know with certainty that the writings they would consider authoritative for faith and life were ancient, apostolic, acknowledged throughout the Christian churches, and theologically orthodox.

the Montanists derived much of their theology from Revelation (especially 20:1–6, concerning the so-called millennium),

At issue in these debates was not merely the authorship of Revelation but the hermeneutical question: How do we read it? Should the text be taken literally or symbolically, allegorically? (The more things change, the more they stay the same, as the saying goes!)

the visions about specific figures and events, or do they transcend historical references and recur throughout history? Is the millennium literal or symbolic, earthly or heavenly? Is the main subject matter the predictions of judgment or the nature of Christ and the church? And so on.

Judith Kovacs and Christopher Rowland are scholars of the history of Revelation’s interpretation and impact. They suggest that there are two ends of a wide interpretive spectrum for the book of Revelation: the “decoding” pole and the “actualizing” pole. Decoding interpreters focus on details, looking for correlations between the text and specific events and people (later events and people in church history and/or in their own time), while actualizing interpreters seek to “convey the spirit of the text” and to “perform” it in new circumstances. Every

correspondence and a hermeneutic of analogy.

Kovacs and Rowland also suggest something that others have noted as well: interpreters of Revelation tend to focus on the past, the present, or the future in their reading of Revelation. Some, in other words, think that it should be read primarily or exclusively as an ancient document for the ancient church, some see it as a text that speaks above all to us today (that is, to any age, because its message is timeless), and some see it fundamentally as a set of predictions about the future. Few interpreters, however, would rule out the relevance of the time period that is not their own focus; even popular interpreters like Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye see Revelation as a text relevant both to the first century and to our time (indeed for all time), even if it primarily tells us about the future tribulation and associated events. If we put these two simple systems of classifying approaches to Revelation together we can construct a graphic with an x-axis and a y-axis on which we can plot interpreters’ interests between decoding and actualizing strategies and among past, present, and future foci7:

The first approach is the predictive approach, which is the most common approach to Revelation, focusing on the future. This approach is not, however, a recent invention;

Interest in decoding and correlating has been heightened before epochal moments (such as the years 1000 and 2000) and during turbulent political events, whether in the world or in the church. We find this approach in two basic forms. Some interpreters are focused on history, seeing Revelation as a prediction of world or church history (at least Western history), usually culminating in or near the time of the interpreter. This is sometimes called the historicist or church-historical approach. In the Middle Ages, Joachim of Fiore (12th century) and Nicholas of Lyra (14th century) read Revelation as a sequential chart of church history. Their reading strategy influenced many later interpreters. Most recent predictive interpreters are focused on eschatology, seeing Revelation as primarily concerned about the “end times.” Sometimes called the futurist approach, it is obviously what is found in the many popular books, web sites, and other media that view Revelation as an advance DVD or blueprint of the end. The most common form of this approach today is dispensationalism, popularized especially by the Plymouth Brethren teacher J. N. D. Darby (1808–82), then by the Scofield Bible, then by Hal Lindsey (The Late Great Planet Earth), and most recently by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins (the “Left Behind” series). Dispensationalists, as we have noted, divide history into various ages, or dispensations, in the divine story; connect the tribulation of Revelation 6–19 with the 70th week in...

mythical and poetic language to express great truths about God, evil, history, and so on. It is sometimes called the idealist, spiritual, non-historical, timeless, or transtemporal approach. This approach has always been somewhat reactionary as well, responding to perceived interpretive abuses in a predictive approach but also to deficiencies in a purely historical reading. Church fathers such as Origen, the great third-century allegorical interpreter, and, to a lesser extent, Augustine (354–430), building on the work of an interpreter named Tyconius, reacted against futuristic interpretations. More recently, Paul Minear called Revelation an “animated and impassioned dance of ideas,” and J. P. M. Sweet said it was “more like music than rational discourse.”12 Eugene Peterson labels it a “theological poem” that “does not . . . call for decipherment” but “evokes wonder,” and Richard Hays writes of its “theopoetic” language.13 Although these interpreters do not rule out historical study, they reject decoding approaches, whether preterist or futurist, as violations of the genre and language of Revelation. Thus this approach is not merely reactionary; it argues that the importance and truth of Revelation are not limited to its original connection with Rome and the particular historical context in which it was written, or to its alleged correlation with specific future realities. 4. The fourth approach can be called political, or theopolitical. This approach, for our purposes, do...

American activist Daniel Berrigan and South American liberation theologian Pablo Richard, while others have blended more historical approaches with interpretations that focus on justice (Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza) or anti-imperialism (e.g., Wes Howard-Brook and Anthony Gwyther). Martin Luther King Jr. also turned to Revelation in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and in sermons. The theopolitical approach may focus on criticizing injustice, promoting transformation and justice, or both.14 5. The fifth approach can be termed the pastoral-prophetic approach. This approach views Revelation primarily as a document of Christian formation designed to call the church to faithfulness in the face of inevitable conflict with hostile powers. One commentator who combines this approach with careful historical work is Charles Talbert. He writes that Revelation “functions in the interests of spiritual purity, single-minded devotion to God,” or “first-commandment faithfulness.”15 The commentaries of Gerhard Krodel and Robert Wall, among others, have a similar tone. This pastoral-prophetic approach is bound to be closely related to the previous two. If we read Revelation poetically, concluding that Babylon is not merely Rome, as the preterists might, and is definitely not some future reconfiguration of the Roman Empire in modern Europe, as some futurists would say, then its seductive and oppressive power can be felt—and must be both named and resisted—in the political realities of our...

Common Mistakes and Antidotes in the Interpretation of Revelation

Prophetic does not merely mean predictive, and apocalyptic is heavily symbolic.

It imposes a foreign, 19th-century theological, interpretive construct onto the ancient biblical texts: dispensationalism.

The series misunderstands the NT references to the “end times.” For the NT, the “end times” is the period between the first and second coming of Jesus.

It is escapist and therefore has no ongoing ethic of life between the times, between the first and second comings. There is no compulsion to love one’s neighbor, practice deeds of mercy, work for peace and justice, etc. Contrast the hope of imminent return and the ethic in 1 Thessalonians, which actually has an ethic for life in the hope of the second

It fails to see the church as a peaceful alternative to empire

dangerous theology.

Its intention is to give hope to people in trying and/or tempting times so that they will remain faithful to their covenant commitment to God. In other words, the purpose of the book of Revelation is to persuade its hearers and readers, both ancient and contemporary, to remain faithful to God in spite of past, present, or possible future suffering—whatever form that suffering might take, and whatever source it may have—simply for being faithful. In spite of memory, experience, or fear, Revelation tells us, covenant

Revelation, we might say, provides us with a vivid, imaginative, and prophetic call to an “anti-assimilationist” and life-giving Christian witness to, against, and within an immoral and idolatrous imperial culture of death.23

It does so, not only by offering the hope of God’s future salvation, but also by showing us that God is sovereign even now. The combination of that future assurance and the present reality of God’s sovereignty means that life now should and can be lived as a life of worship and faithfulness to God and the Lamb. We may tease out this general overview by suggesting that there are seven theological themes in the book of Revelation that, taken together, constitute its message. I have chosen not to provide specific texts from Revelation at this point, since the visionary character of the book means that a verse here and there seldom captures either the power of the visions or the full significance of their theological claims, much less the effect of their integration into one book.

A Single Message?

According to Udo Schnelle, Revelation “conveys a single idea: it communicates to the threatened earthly community the assurance of heavenly victory.”24

Somewhat similarly, Frances Aran Murphy says that the message of Revelation is “resurrection,” “or resurrection to eternal life,” meaning “the transposition of temporal-created life into eternal-created life.”25 But Murphy rightly adds that the “leitmotif of the Apocalypse is worship combined with judgment,” which focuses on the slaughtered Lamb, whose sacrifice is the judgment of the world and whose disciples bear witness by sharing in

fate.26 Revelation itself seems to give us a synopsis of its own message in several places that contain many of the seven themes noted above: the seven beatitudes scattered throughout the book (see discussion on p. 39); ch. 14, especially vv. 1–13; the text of 21:5–8, which we might call the “seven last words of God”; and the epilogue (22:6–21). I would suggest, therefore, that a slightly expanded version of the subtitle of this book reflects these texts and is a good summary of Revelation’s message: uncivil worship ...

An Alternative, Cruciform Interpretive Strategy After deconstruction there must be reconstruction. We have begun this process with a summary of Revelation’s theology. What follows is an alternative set of principles—a Lamb-centered, cruciform interpretive strategy, or hermeneutic—for reading Revelation. It is an alternative to the popular way of reading Revelation as seen in the “Left Behind” series and in similar approaches. But this interpretation is not idiosyncratic; rather it incorporates and synthesizes some of the major trends in the interpretation of Revelation noted above and required by the previous chapter as well as the preceding theological summary. As noted earlier, we may refer to this approach generally as theopolitical (uncivil), theopoetic (worship), and pastoral-prophetic (witness). Such an interpretive a...

even primarily, as the incarnation and paradigm of faithfulness to God in the ...

Christ is Lord, Christ is victorious, and Christ conquers by cruciform faithful resistance: not by inflicting but by absorbing violence; not by actually killing but by speaking his powerful word.28 Revelation is counter-imperial, challenging Rome’s theology of Victory and Power with wh...

not Babylon, Rome, or analogous imp...

Remember that Revelation was first of all written by a first-century Christian for first-century Christians using first-century literary devices and images. These images reflect certain first-century realities; they do not specifically predict 21st-century realities. However, like other powerful images, ...