Postcards from Babylon: The Church In American Exile

by Brian Zahnd

Christians praying underground in the Catacombs and Christians martyred above ground in the Coliseum have become the two enduring icons of the Christianity that predates Christendom.

Perhaps the best thing I can say about the Jesus Movement is that it took the Sermon on the Mount seriously.

The Jesus of the Gospels is far more suited for an F.B.I. Wanted poster than for being the poster child of American values.

John of Patmos knew that for Christians living in the Roman Empire, faithfulness to Jesus meant they had to be deeply, even dangerously, countercultural. There was simply no way for a first-century Christian to be comfortable with Rome and faithful to Jesus.

The original name for what would eventually become known as Christianity was “the Way.” You won’t find the term “Christianity” in the Bible, but you will find “the Way” seven times in the book of Acts.

If Christianity is not seen as countercultural and even subversive within a military-economic superpower, you can be sure it is a deeply compromised Christianity.

The project of Christendom—trying to “Christianize” the world through complicity with Caesar—has come to an end. Secularism has triumphed over Christendom. This is obvious in Europe and is becoming increasingly apparent in North America.

The failure of Christendom is a blessed failure if it reminds us that we never needed the sword anyway—all we ever needed were the sacraments.

It’s not the task of the church to “Make America Great Again.” The contemporary task of the church is to make Christianity countercultural again.

After all, a crucifix is on one level the graphic portrayal of a man being tortured to death. And yet it’s also the very heart of the good news. This is the mystery of the gospel.

Whatever it means for the world to be saved, God does not do it through the worldly means of power involving politics, weapons, and war, but through the unconventional means of utter powerlessness—through the crucifixion of a Galilean Jew who preached the kingdom of God.

Every crucifix reminds us that our systems of civilization built around an axis of power enforced by violence are not to be trusted. The myths, monuments, anthems, and memorials of every empire are designed to cleverly hide the bodies of the weak who have been trodden down by the mighty in their march to “greatness.” The cross is the unveiling. The cross is the great truth-telling. The cross is the guilty verdict handed down upon empire. The cross is the eternal monument to the Unknown Victim. Yes, the cross is where the world is forgiven, but not before the world is found guilty.

The body of Christ is where sin goes to die. And we who have been baptized, have been baptized into the body of Christ. This is a great mystery, but the baptized now belong to the wound that heals the world.

One of the most vital things an American Christian can do right now is resist the hijacking of Christian faith by American nationalism.

Economic superpowers always need a source of cheap labor to support their affluent lifestyle—whether to bake their bricks or pick their cotton—and they generally prefer to exploit an ethnic minority that can be readily identified as an outcast “other.” Oppressors have an easier time psychologically justifying their cruelty if their victims are a vilified other.

Just as Daniel and his friends living in the Babylonian empire had to be scrupulous about keeping kosher in an effort to maintain their Jewish identity, so Christians living in a modern empire must be scrupulous about what they feed on in an effort to maintain their baptismal identity.

But what does that look like? What does it mean for a Christian to refuse to eat from the kitchen of empire? Well, what’s the empire cooking? Mostly a steady diet of consumerism and militarism.

Christians should know that now abide faith, hope, and love. But if you feed on the empire’s liturgies of economy and security, you will be formed in the opposite of faith, hope, and love—a malformation of the human soul that is perhaps best described as fear.

It’s fascinating to notice that the dreams of the prophets and the nightmares of kings are often one and the same.

Jesus’ invasion by birth into the dark time of tyrant kings gives us a choice: we can trust in the armed brutality of violent power or we can trust in the naked vulnerability of love.

Following the Jesus way of loving enemies and doing good to those who hate us isn’t necessarily safe and it doesn’t mean we won’t ever get hurt, but it does mean the darkness won’t prevail.

For the Christian, martyrdom is always on the table—we signed up for the possibility of martyrdom with our baptism. In fact, in our baptism we have already died with Christ.

Christians must have their ethics informed by Christ, not by the vested interests of tyrant kings.

The prophet Daniel had tried to caution the king as he hovered on the brink of insanity, saying, “King Nebuchadnezzar, please accept my advice. Stop sinning and do what is right. Break from your wicked past and be merciful to the poor.”[10]

When dangerous rivalry first emerged, threatening the relationship between humanity’s first two brothers—the farmer and the herdsman—Cain was warned by God, “Sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”[20]

What we should take away from the use of the word “satan” and “devil” is that accusation, blame, and slander are the essence of the satanic and diabolical.