Postcards from Babylon: The Church In American Exile

by Brian Zahnd

The church in every western power after Constantine has at some point succumbed to the Siren seduction of empire and has conflated Christianity and nationalism into a single syncretic religion. Rome, Byzantium, Russia, Spain, France, England, and Germany have all done it.

When the church lacks the vision and courage to actually be the church, it abandons its high calling of proclaiming the Lordship of Jesus and panders to power, soliciting its services as the high priest of religious patriotism.

When the church colludes with the principalities and powers, it can no longer prophetically challenge them.

done without any apparent sense of contradiction,

To advance the gospel of Jesus and his peaceable kingdom is indeed the mission of the church, but the kingdom of Jesus does not have troops.

The assumption is that there is a seamless fit between the military objectives of the United States and the mission objectives of the church of Jesus Christ, but that is an outlandish assumption and blatantly false!

Instead of hearing Jesus tell Peter to put away his sword, a church with a superstitious reverence for armed combat imagines Jesus leading soldiers into battle—as a thousand Facebook memes attest.

nationalism is a religion with war as its liturgy.

The deep fragmentation from the failed sacrifices of the Vietnam War is still felt today and is what lies behind much of the right-left political divide.

it was during the Vietnam War that the American de facto state church shifted from Mainline Protestantism (which often opposed the war) to conservative Evangelicalism (which unequivocally supported the war).

If the church is to be an ambassador of the good news and an agent of healing in the world, the church is going to have to become serious about being something other than the high priest of religious nationalism. With so many churchgoers entangled in the tentacles of nationalism, it’s time for the church to actually be the church.

the church is going to have to face the fact that it cannot pledge its allegiance to both Caesar and Christ. As Jesus said, “no one can serve two masters.”[7]

When we confuse the nation with the church, it may not do any particular damage to the nation, but it will do irreparable harm to the church.

Despite abundant testimony from church history that ecclesial entanglement in the agenda of empire always leads to a compromised Christian witness, much of the American church is resolute in being tangled up in red, white, and blue. Today religious nationalism (which is disturbingly connected with white nationalism) is on the rise.

act as a prophetic witness against the idolatry of nationalism?

resist the hijacking of Christian faith by American nationalism. We need to make it abundantly clear that “America First” is incompatible with a global church whose mission it is to announce and embody the kingdom of Christ.

the gospel was never bound to the historical fate of any political or social order, but always claimed to enjoy a transcendence of all times and places. ...

I’m a citizen of a superpower. I was born among the conquerors. I live in the empire. But I want to read the Bible and think it’s talking to me. This is a problem.

Imagine a history of colonial America written by Cherokee Indians and African slaves. That would be a different way of telling the story! And that’s what the Bible does. It’s the story of Egypt told by the slaves. The story of Babylon told by the exiles. The story of Rome told by the occupied.

Egyptians, Babylonians, and Romans, but as the Israelites? That’s when you get the bizarre phenomenon of the elite and entitled using the Bible to endorse their dominance as God’s will.

This is colonizers seeing America as their promised land and the native inhabitants as Canaanites to be conquered. This is the whole history of European colonialism. This is Jim Crow. This is the American prosperity gospel. This is the domestication of Scripture. This is making the Bible dance a jig for our own amusement.

In the home of the brave Jefferson turnin’ over in his grave Fools glorifying themselves, trying to manipulate Satan And there’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend I don’t care about economy I don’t care about astronomy But it sure do bother me to see my loved ones turning into puppets There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend[7]

And it sure does bother me to see my loved ones turning into puppets! I see charismatics—people I know well and love—scrounging around in the Old Testament and making preposterous claims about Donald Trump being some kind of modern-day Cyrus.

If you’re looking for God to work his will through a pagan king (who will always coincidently belong to your political party!), I’m thinking you haven’t spent much time seriously reading and digesting the New Testament epistles. God is no longer raising up pagan kings to enact his purposes, God has raised Jesus from the dead, and the fullness of God’s purposes are accomplished through him!

I’m a Christian and ultimately my political theology can be summed up in three words: Jesus is Lord. I’m not reading 2 Chronicles to understand how God’s purposes are accomplished in the world of the 21st century AD—I’m reading Ephesians and Colossians! I’m not looking for a Cyrus—I’m looking for Christ! The

I’m not looking for a New Babylon where some elephant or donkey sits on the throne, I’m looking for the New Jerusalem where the Lamb sits on the throne.

The earth is mine Your thoughts are not my thoughts Your ways are not my ways Your government is not my government Thus saith the Lord Render unto Caesar What? Taxes But not heart and soul and mind and strength

Let Caesar police the streets and fix the pot holes But don’t ask for much more Let Caesar be a custodian of civility Anything more tends to idolatry Render unto God Total allegiance And what’s left for Caesar? Not much And that’s how it should be A denarii for Caesar To fix the pot hole and pay the constable To make life a little more livable But heart and soul Are pledged to Christ and the government of God

Because Caesar is a seasoned politician Who knows how to campaign Which means to promise Which means to lie A chicken in every pot Charity begins at home It’s the economy, stupid Mission accomplished Our rightful place in the world The last best hope of earth Manifest destiny We’re #1! Make America Great Again Just do what we say and nobody gets hurt If only Jesus would campaign like that Take up your cross and follow me Turn the other cheek The way is hard Who’s gonna vote for that?

If American Christians imagine America as a kind of Biblical Israel, we will inevitably make the mistake of thinking that the apparatuses of American government—including the war machine—are commissioned by God for divine purposes. Thus

America is not a kind of Biblical Israel—America is a kind of biblical Babylon. America is the latest in a long line of Babylons.