Evangelization in a Culture of Empire

By Joseph Wakelee-Lynch

December, the strangest month of all, usually feels like four weeks of intense conflict: Advent's promises of lambs lying down with wolves and the coming of the Messiah, the Prince of Peace, inevitably are squashed under the force of America's commercial, secular holiday season.

I have long believed that the deepest faith of most Americans, including most of the nation's Christians, is their belief in America itself. One half of our nation's civic gospel is its promise of materialism: economic well-being for both the individual and the nation. The effectiveness of that message is distressing. In December, however, the commercial Good News, flocked and dressed in red and green, is made more omnipresent, and, for those with the eyes to see, more shallow. As a conservative Catholic friend of mine pointed out, it seems that our nation's greatest achievement, from a historical point of view, is to have constructed a relatively successful commercial culture.

International economic dominance may be our day-to-day, or rather our quarter-to-quarter bottom line. But this country, over the last 60 to 80 years, has shown its readiness when necessary to impose through military force political-economic conditions that it deems essential to its well-being.

In recent months, the other half of the American civic gospel has been equally naked: violence, in the form of military power, in the service of American ideals is righteous, or good, violence. International economic dominance may be our day-to-day, or rather our quarter-to-quarter bottom line. But this country, over the last 60 to 80 years, has shown its readiness when necessary to impose through military force political-economic conditions that it deems essential to its well-being. U.S. violence can redeem others, even other nations-that is our belief. That's how empires think and act.

The emperor's perspective has been evident from the beginning of the Bush government's war on Iraq: Saddam Hussein, a thoroughly despotic ruler, was toppled not because he constituted a threat to the United States but because members of the current U.S. administration decided as long ago as 1991 that he was a threat to Israel, to the global energy market, and to international economic stability. In short, he was a threat to international political-economic conditions that are necessary (but perhaps not sufficient) to continued U.S. dominance.

More recently, the U.S. government's use of symbolic political action has been especially intriguing, and effective. The president's Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad is a case in point. His visit to U.S. troops, it is true, helped their morale. But it was a clear example of a conquering leader demonstrating the extent of his victory by appearing very publicly in the former enemy's capital city. Like a victorious Roman general, Bush went there because he could -- on his timetable, according to his political needs -- not because he received an invitation from a fully sovereign head of state who is his peer. That this message was sent by the president on a day celebrated in the United States as a national holiday with religious connotations will likely not be lost on other states in the region and their Muslim populations.

Our forces took particular care to snap many photographs of the captured Saddam in a state of dishevelment. In earlier centuries, the head of the enemy's leader was posted on a spike at the city gate; today, Saddam's broken, bewildered visage is broadcast to the world.

The use of media to communicate military and political domination has been frequent: the unforgettable toppling of the Saddam statue; the corpses of Saddam's sons; even the photographs of U.S. soldiers lounging pool-side at Saddam's residence or playing hockey in the foyer of a presidential palace. "Your former regime is as dust to us; your former houses of power and authority will be our playgrounds, our sheds" -- these are the messages behind those images. Our forces took particular care to snap many photographs of the captured Saddam in a state of dishevelment. In earlier centuries, the head of the enemy's leader was posted on a spike at the city gate; today, Saddam's broken, bewildered visage is broadcast to the world.

Very recently, the president pronounced Saddam worthy of death, which Bush calls "the ultimate justice." The survivors of Hussein's reign of terror can express that hope and be understood. But, a president should say, "His fate will rest in a court of justice"; it's an emperor who proclaims a verdict before trial. And, that this president and former governor of Texas equates death with "ultimate justice," rather than using the more accurate phrase "ultimate penalty," demonstrates that in his mind justice means punishment.

Maintaining economic hegemony, brandishing military and political power, dismissing the objections of lesser powers -- these are the characteristics of empire. This is the most somber of recent Decembers. Was the world so different in the first century?

How, then, do we evangelize in a culture of empire? How, particularly when so many of our fellow church members believe the task unnecessary? Most Americans, most U.S. Christians, and probably most Episcopalians want exactly this kind of government, and they wouldn't call it empire.

I recently heard Bishop Allen Vigneron, the Roman Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Oakland, discuss his idea, drawn from writings of Pope John Paul II, that the church in the West exists within a foreign, mostly non-Christian culture. Regarded as philosophically conservative, Bishop Vigneron probably would not describe the United States as a culture of empire, but his perspective is insightful. For several hundred years, the church's response to the growing power of modernity has been to reproach the culture, urging it to return to Christian ideals. Perhaps a new approach is needed, he suggested.

Reading the birth narrative of Jesus in December 2003 -- amid governmental edicts, military detentions, official investigations, abuse of migrants, the denial of shelter to the poor -- should convince us that our task is much like that of the early followers of the One called Jesus Christ. In a hostile culture, we must learn how to evangelize. We must learn how to offer a gospel of God's infinite capacity to forgive sins, God's boundless love for this fallen world and its fallen people and God's promise of liberation to the poor and salvation to all.

Joseph Wakelee-Lynch is a Witness contributing editor, and his regular online column is The View from Sardis. He lives in Berkeley, California, and may be reached by email at wakeleelynch@earthlink.net