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

“This is the modus operandi of the Lamb: he comes on the white horse of victory bearing his own blood, reminding us that he will defeat the powers of evil as the Lamb, not with a sword in his hand but with a sword in his mouth.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“Revelation knows that true spiritual existence is warfare, but it defines victory in the cosmic battle as faithfulness. Neither the Lamb nor his followers fight in any other way than faithfulness, even to the point of suffering and death.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“The call for repentance in Revelation is addressed to the church as much as the world; five of the seven churches received criticism from Jesus. “There are no grounds for complacency—only watchfulness (3:3) and the constant endeavoring to keep one’s robes clean (22:4).”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“Revelation calls all Christians to refuse participation in acts that express allegiance and devotion to the gods of power and might, whether military, political, social, or economic.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“the “moral strategy of the Apocalypse . . . is to destroy common sense as a guide for life.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“It is one thing, in other words, to live in an empire or superpower, to live in the shadow of the beast, trying to avoid participating in the evils of idolatry while bearing witness to another empire, the kingdom of God, and thereby working for the good of the world as salt and light. It is quite another to unconditionally endorse that empire—or any culture—or to sacralize it. Yet that is what many Christians and churches have done; they have baptized their country and/or culture into the name of the triune god of political, economic, and military power, wrongly thinking that this is the power of God.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“[T]here has hardly been a place where the police and the army have not wantonly murdered our children, piling atrocity upon atrocity for the sake of the preservation of apartheid and white privilege. And as they go from funeral to funeral, burying yet another victim of law and order or yet another killed by government-protected death squads, the cry continues to rise to heaven: “How long, Lord?”36 What”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“Yes, the slaughtered Lamb fights for God and will act on behalf of God to rid the world of evil, but he does so with only his own blood and a sword in his mouth (19:15), not with a sword in his hand to literally shed the blood of his enemies. The integrity and witness of the church depend, in part, on realizing this truth. The war of the Lamb is not what humans have been fighting all these centuries. The”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“[T]his picture of wrath and hell means nothing more or less than the terrible truth that the sufferings of those who persist in rejecting God’s love in Christ are self-imposed and self-perpetuated. The inevitable consequence is that if they eternally persist in such rejection, God will never violate their personality. Whether any soul will in fact eternally resist God, we cannot say.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“The place of worship is protected, but the place of witness is not. The court of the gentiles, where witness takes place, is not measured [protected] . . . . Witness takes place in the face of hostility. . . . The witness may be a hero to Christians, but in the world the witness is solitary, suspect, ignored, and occasionally abused.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“. The message of the book of Revelation concerns . . . God’s judgments not only of persons, but also of nations and, in fact, of all principalities and powers—which is to say, all authorities, corporations, institutions, structures, bureaucracies, and the like.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“The worship of God is the heartbeat of the cosmos, even when we humans on earth do not see it, participate in it, or value it.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

“Babylon makes promises, demands, and claims that are appropriate only for God to make. It sacralizes, even divinizes, its own power, and then it requires absolute allegiance to that power. The progression of this course, as Revelation 18 makes especially clear, is the pursuit of luxury and the neglect of the poor, first by Babylon itself, then by its clients, then by its everyday citizens. One inevitable result is the treatment of certain human beings as goods to be traded (18:13), and the elimination of others for their failure to offer absolute allegiance. Another is violence and war, death and destruction, hunger and famine (ch. 6). The final inevitable result is the destruction of the earth without fear of consequences, temporal or eternal (11:18).”
― Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

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