Postcards from Babylon: The Church In American Exile

by Brian Zahnd

The original Jesus movement was not a pietistic religion of private belief about how to go to heaven when you die. The original Jesus movement was a countercultural way of public life. It was the kingdom of Christ, and as such it was a rival to the kingdom of Caesar. This is what made the principalities and powers of Rome so nervous about the Way. Though it’s well known, it still needs to be emphasized that Jesus and his two most important apostles, Peter and Paul, were all executed by the Roman Empire. Why? Not for their religious beliefs about an afterlife, but because the kingdom of heaven they announced and enacted posed a challenge to the dominant myth that Rome had a manifest destiny to rule the nations and a divine right to shape history. Either it was Jesus who was the last best hope of the earth or it was Rome. But it couldn’t be both.