Postcards from Babylon: The Church In American Exile

by Brian Zahnd

Who’s doing this? When properly understood as the complex phenomenon of accusation and empire, the best answer to this dark question is...Satan. Throughout history civilization has been organized around the power to kill—by empires who weaponize the ways and means of death. It’s the legacy bequeathed by Cain, and it seems the human race has been incapable of imagining anything else...until Easter.

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of a gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.[28]

But the only place I’m required to remove my shoes in America is at airport security—in our secular age, security may be the only thing America holds sacred.

Dostoevsky understood that a society so saturated in falseness, no matter how Christian, could not continue to endure.

A society that has long been the heir of Christian legacy can easily forget that it is not by merely knowing the words of Christ, but by actually doing them that a Christian society stands upon a sure foundation.

most people are so sedated with the opiates of consumer culture and consumer religion that they never even suspect it. There are others who sense it but cannot quite name it. It takes a prophet to name it. It takes the courage of a prophet to come right out and call materialism and militarism a lie.

This is Pilate’s truth, Caesar’s truth, Cain’s truth, Satan’s truth—the will to shape the world by violent power. For the “great men of the world,” ultimate truth is the power to kill.

The lie is that to live the abundant life you have to have proximity to power—especially the power to kill. In Babylon this lie is pervasive, persuasive, and seductive...as idolatry always is.

The meaning of life is not about besting your brother, beating your brother, conquering your brother, killing your brother. Life is about caring for your brother. That’s not naiveté, that’s Christianity!

Jesus is not going to be king someday, Jesus is King of Kings right now! Christ was crowned on the cross and God vindicated him as the world’s true king by raising him from the dead. This is what Christians confess, believe, and seek to live. We have no king but Jesus.

When Joshua met the angel of the Lord and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?” the angel replied, “Neither.”[15] It’s a hard lesson to learn, but Joshua learned it—we cannot assume that God is on our side; rather we can only seek to be on God’s side.

The falseness that prevails pretends we can serve the gods of nationalism and the Lord Jesus Christ, but it’s a lie. Joshua’s ancient swan song sermon still challenges us today: Choose this day whom you will serve. The question cannot be truly answered by glibly mouthing, “We will serve the Lord.” In the rising tide of nationalism, the test is how Christians live and what they’re willing to support in the name of nationalism.

If we as Christians divide history into BC and AD, but claim that it’s still the time to kill, hate, and wage war, we’ve made a mockery of our faith! We can’t claim to be Christians while wanting to live in the time before Christ.

safe. Jesus never promised us safety. Jesus promised us abundant life, eternal life, true life—but Jesus never promised us a safe life.

once you’re convinced that God is working through the political machinations of Babylon, and that God is inviolably on the side of your political party...well, you have set yourself up to make enormous compromises.

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 to “Make America Great Again” is imagined to be supported by divine warrant and connected to the salvation of the world. But 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.

A conflation of God and country can bump along benignly enough for a time, but when the country takes a dark turn toward nationalism and nativism, things can get ugly in a hurry. And that’s what has happened.

Jesus doesn’t call his disciples to stand on the sidelines and merely watch what he does with his cross. Jesus calls his disciples to take up their own cross and follow him in faithful imitation. Nothing less is authentic discipleship.

It is Christ who is the eternal Word of the Father, and it is Christ who is risen. So shine on, Bride of Christ—even in Babylon shine on! Amidst the lies and idols of Babylon, let us hold forth the Word of Life as we hold to the mystery of our faith—a faith that always has the power to again and again turn the world upside down.