Reading Revelation Responsibly Quotes

“To pray for the coming of the kingdom, the coming of the Lord, is to commit oneself and one’s community to embody the values and practices of that kingdom-now-in whatever circumstances we find ourselves.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation

“Together they speak of theopolitical megalomania and of any collaboration of political power and religious sanction—civil religion—that falsely claims to represent the true God and God’s will.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“The power of the Lamb in Revelation takes two forms: the power of his death, the symbol of which is the slaughtered lamb, and the power of his spoken word, the symbol of which is the sword of his mouth (1:”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“By juxtaposing the two contrasting images, John has forged a new symbol of conquest by sacrificial death.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“It is the vision of a slaughtered Lamb, not a ferocious Lion. “The shock of this reversal,” writes Richard Hays, “discloses the central mystery of the Apocalypse: God overcomes the world not through a show of force but through the suffering and death of Jesus, ‘the faithful witness [martys]”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“That Revelation 2–3 contains an outline of church history seems rather forced and quite far-fetched. But the idea that these seven churches somehow symbolize the range of possible Christian churches—particularly the range of common dangers the churches face—is much more plausible.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“G. K. Chesterton’s comment is apt: “though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.”1 So also Luther’s: “Some have even brewed it [Revelation] into many stupid things out of their own heads.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“Moreover, Revelation tells us not only who is really sovereign but also what kind of sovereignty the true God exercises, namely what many have called nonviolent and non-coercive “Lamb power”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“In other words, its character as resistance literature is actually secondary to, and derivative of, its more fundamental character as worship literature, as a liturgical text.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“Revelation as prophecy should probably be understood as anti-assimilationist, or anti-accommodationist, literature. It is also in this sense that Revelation is resistance literature—“a thorough-going prophetic critique of the system of Roman power” and “the most powerful piece of political resistance literature from the period of the early Empire.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“Eugene Peterson rightly notes, “The Bible warns against a neurotic interest in the future and escapist fantasy into the future” (Reversed Thunder,”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“Lamb Christology is inseparable from ethics. Paradoxically, the slaughtered Lamb reveals God and also reveals what it means to be faithful to God. It reveals how God saves humanity and how humanity in turn can serve God.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“Human beings, even apparently faithful Christians, too often want an almighty deity who will rule the universe with power, preferably on their terms, and with force when necessary. Such a concept of God and of sovereignty induces its adherents to side with this kind of God in the execution of (allegedly) divine might in the quest for (allegedly) divine justice. Understanding the reality of the Lamb as Lord—and thus of Lamb power—terminates, or should terminate, all such misperceptions of divine power and justice, and of their erroneous human corollaries.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“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 with Christianity lite: religious beliefs, language, and practices that are superficially Christian but infused with national myths and habits. Sadly, most of this civil religion’s practitioners belong to Christian churches, which is precisely why Revelation is addressed to the seven churches (not to Babylon), to all Christians tempted by the civil cult.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation

“According to Revelation, in the church’s worship we should remember and honor the prophets and martyrs, not veterans and fallen warriors; faithful witnesses, not loyal patriots; the One who was slain to secure our true freedom, not the ones who killed and were killed to preserve (so it is claimed) our freedom. That this self-evident truth about worship seems so odd, so radical, simply demonstrates how comfortable the church has become in bed with the beast.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation

“This is the consistent witness of the New Testament: that the exalted Lord remains the crucified Jesus.20 And this one is “the true face of God.”21 When this witness is neglected or forgotten, trouble follows swiftly.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation

“The function of propaganda is to make evil look good, the demonic divine, violence like peacemaking, tyranny and oppression like liberation. It makes blind, unquestioning allegiance appear to be freely chosen, religiously appropriate devotion. The grand lie does not appear to start as deception, but only as rhetorical exaggeration. The exaggeration deepens, lengthens, and broadens in an almost organic act of self-distortion. Eventually the rhetoric becomes a blatant falsehood, but now people have not only come to believe the lie, they also live the lie; over time they have been narrated into it.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“He rightly claims that God’s politics is the antithesis of the normal politics on display in these chapters, where politics is seen to be about the “exercise of power, either through the manipulation of force (militarism) or the manipulation of words (propaganda).”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“Particular messages may be especially appropriate to particular churches in their unique historical situations. A persecuted church might need to hear the message to Smyrna or Philadelphia, while a church that has accommodated to the norms of its host culture, especially to its lust for power and its civil religion, needs to hear the message to Pergamum or Laodicea. In fact, Harry Maier proposes that privileged Christians in the West need to read Revelation “as a Laodicean.”20”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“It is the task of Revelation, in part, to convince its hearers and readers that faithful discipleship has both costs and rewards.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“We read Revelation as words from a prophet-pastor (and ultimately from God), in order to be formed and transformed, not merely informed”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“This is all birthed and nurtured in worship.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“Revelation imaginatively reveals the nature of any and all systems that oppose the ways of God in the world, especially as revealed in Christ the Lamb who was slaughtered. Those systems are not limited to particular future powers but are found in all places and times.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“2. Remember that Revelation was first of all written by a first-century Christian for first-century Christians using first-century literary devices and images.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“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.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“1. Recognize that the central and centering image of Revelation is the Lamb that was slaughtered.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“a good summary of Revelation’s message: uncivil worship and witness: following the Lamb out of fallen Babylon into the new creation.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“Christian resistance to empire and idolatry conforms to the pattern of Jesus Christ and of his apostles, saints, prophets (like John), and martyrs: faithful, true, courageous, just, and nonviolent. It is not passive but active, consisting of the formation of communities and individuals who pledge allegiance to God alone, who live in nonviolent love toward friends and enemies alike, who leave vengeance to God, and who, by God’s Spirit, create mini-cultures of life as alternatives to empire’s culture of death. This is a Lamb-shaped or cross-shaped (cruciform) understanding of discipleship and mission.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“Craig Hill notes that “proponents of the Rapture have mangled the biblical witness almost beyond recognition.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“The fourth approach can be called political, or theopolitical. This approach, for our purposes, does not refer to the political implications of predictive, dispensationalist interpretations but to a basic view of Revelation as a document of comfort and (especially) protest, to borrow words from the title of South African theologian Allan Boesak’s interpretation of Revelation during the apartheid era: Comfort and Protest (1986).”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation