The Empire and the Gospel
I’ve been reading Jesus Manifesto for a little over a year now. I like the emphasis on ministering to the poor and living the gospel of peace and forgiveness. I like the honesty and thoughtfulness of all the writers. I appreciate that fact that the writers’ are willing to expose injustice, their suggestions for peaceful solutions, and their honesty about how difficult it is to live the gospel we preach. I like their well thought out challenges to conventional wisdom.
However, I have yet to read something that commends a governmental institution or large religious establishment. Maybe this is because Jesus Manifesto is trying to move the religious pendulum in the other direction, but I get a little queasy with the idea of painting all government with brushstrokes of violence, greed, and abusive power. I’m uncomfortable with equating my home country, USA, with an Empire that needs to be overthrown through subversive methods. I am very uncomfortable with seeing only the negative aspects of large religious institutions without complimenting the positive. I am willing to admit that my country is not perfect, that large does not necessarily mean better, that there are abuses of power happening, that Jesus’ methods of turning the other cheek and walking the second mile have largely been sidelined for glamour and prosperity messages, but that doesn’t mean that I am ready to ditch the system or set up my own church. The bias of Jesus Manifesto has motivated me to study Church history, to form my own opinions about what the past has to say about the relationship between power, money, and ministry.
Through reading the scriptures, I was already aware of how intertwined religion and power were in the Old Testament. Prophets were instrumental in choosing military saviors and dynasties. Kings appointed priests. Central power, secular or religious, provided a national identity and cohesion. Sometimes the religious and secular overlapped such as in King David and King Hezekiah, other times they were more separate such as Ezra and Nehemiah. Distributed power and religious practice allowed for continuity through turbulent times such as in the time of Judges, or Israel’s apostasy, or even later with Daniel and Ezekiel.
There always seemed to be a certain amount of tension between the various groups. God ordained strong leaders to call his people back to purity; God gave ordinary men a mission to call leaders back to justice. God didn’t seem particular who he used. He called a wealthy man with visions of grandeur to father his people; a stuck up spoiled brat to save an infant nation from starvation; a boy his family forgot about to unite beleaguered and quarrelsome tribes into a country identified with the God of the Universe, a powerful prophet to save a foreign widow, disenfranchised Levites to gather together oral tradition into a written testimony that constitutes large portions of our Bible, groups of poets to encourage a displaced and grieving people, persons who inherited their position of song leader to write psalms.
No matter what political entity was in power, whether heathen or believer, God’s Spirit made use of it. He used godly kings to restore his people to faithfulness. He used godly men and women within heathen governments to testify to his faithfulness and redeem his people.
The pattern I see of God working in the Old Testament is very similar to what I see when I read Church history. God used a pagan Empire’s efficient road system and general peace to spread his good news, He used the effective Roman administration and educational systems to bring order and theological rigor to the new faith. Sometimes, God spread his word through kings such as the conversion of King Olaf of Norway, other times he brought repentance through the poor and enslaved such as St Patrick. Sometimes, it was the religious who broke the power of the secular. Other times, secular power punished immoral religious leadership. Throughout, political power was important for both preserving and promoting religious faith.
When Christian communities lost political power, the Christian faith became extinct in the face of prolonged systematic persecution, similar to the ten lost tribes of Israel. Over the centuries there have been several missionary efforts to China which produced Christian communities: the Nestorian church in the fifth and sixth centuries, the Franciscan efforts during the thirteenth century, and Jesuit followed by protestant efforts beginning in the seventeenth century. The first two attempts became extinct from severe persecution. Only the external political power of Europeans and Americans allowed for the preservation of a Chinese Christian community through several centuries of intermittent persecution. Even then, the Christian community suffered local extinction in some places.
In the sixteenth century, Japan saw a Christian community grow to thirty thousand and then go extinct when political forces turn against it. In the eighth century, Christian communities in the Middle East and North Africa suffered under Islamic expansion, surviving when it was in the economic interest of the Imam to allow a degree of tolerance. Even in modern (or post-modern) times we have witnessed the difficulty of Christianity to survive severe persecution and genocide, such as in former Communist countries and Sudan.
I will admit that ministry doesn’t thrive very well with an excess of money and power; that Christian witness dies when Christians are more focused on attaining either than their Lord or their fellow man. From my brief review of historical evidence it seems as though there is a delicate balance between excess and dearth that allows for the spread of Christianity. In some ways it seems as though the pendulum swing between poverty and wealth drives the ratchet, and keeps the spirit ticking.
Author Bio:: An admirer of Jesus Manifesto, and a daydreamer with more ideas than energy, time, or money to make happen. And who sometimes wishes for the ordinary, like a clean house.
About Mark Van Steenwyk
Mark Van Steenwyk is a member of Missio Dei. He is a speaker, writer, educator, and grassroots organizer. With the support of the Central Plains Mennonite Conference, he travels to radical and intentional communities around the country to help network and offer support.
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