Discipleship

The Assault on Baptism's Politically Transcendent Citizenship
 By Bill Wylie-Kellermann
Originally published in The Witness magazine, March 2002
Friday, March 1, 2002
 


In the apostolic community, thus, baptism signified the new citizenship in Christ that supercedes the old citizenship under Caesar. With that context, baptism, nowadays no less than in the biblical era, not only solemnizes characteristic tensions between the church and a regime but reaches beyond that to confess and uphold the sovereignty of the Word of God now militant in history over against the pretensions of any regime. (William Stringfellow, A Keeper of the Word, p.159)

If Christians have been spared the savagery of beasts or if the more notorious vulgarities of emperor worship have been abated, other forms of persecution have succeeded and the hostility of demonic principalities and powers toward the church has not diminished. By the 20th century, the enmity of the power of death toward the church had come to be enacted in the grandiose idolatry of the destiny of British colonial imperialism, or in the brutal devastation of the church following upon the Soviet revolution, or in the ruthless Nazi usurpation of the church in the name of "Germanizing" or "purifying" Christianity so as to have this accomplice in the pursuit and in the incineration of the Jews. Meanwhile, in America ... civil religion, which has assorted versions, ...imputes a unique moral status to the nation, a divine endorsement for America, which, in its most radical composition, disappropriates the vocation of church as holy nation. (William Stringfellow, Conscience and Obedience, p. 103)

In the present crisis, I confess (perhaps with other Witness readers) to yearning for the oracular voice of theologian William Stringfellow. Given, among other things, the heavy current atmospherics of patriotism, we do well at the very least to listen to his words once again. To breathe his apocalyptic wisdom.

Stringfellow reminds us that there is categorically no such thing as a Christian nation. The reason is simple. With biblical Israel, the church shares the vocation to be itself the holy nation. One way the gospels reflect this is in the language of the "kingdom" movement. But even the word for "church" (ekklesia) is cunningly lifted from the political lexicon of the Greek city-state, where it signified "the assembly of the free citizens of the polis" (a bold enough counter-claim for a crew that included women, slaves and those otherwise conspicuously denied the freedoms of citizenship).

Patriotism is employed as a silencing mechanism against political critique and opposition. It may either dull or passionately stifle conscience. At a time of broken-hearted need, it purports to offer citizens solace, meaning, belonging, identity and justification.
Baptism is the emblem of that new superceding citizenship. It mitigates, obviates, and qualifies any other allegiance or political enthusiasm. As such, it signifies the freedom to speak boldly and publicly, regardless of consequences. As such, it authorizes the exercise, not only of ministry, but of conscience. It testifies to justification, not by works or ideology or manifest destiny or righteous cause, but by faith alone. As the sacrament of new humanity, it transfigures and renews a person's relationship to all humankind, indeed to all of creation -- a relationship unencumbered (or at least unconstrained) by the divisions of nationalism. Or for that matter any other "ism." As the witness of resurrection, it signals freedom from bondage to the power of death. (Which is to say, as baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ, it articulates the freedom to die -- indeed of already having died.) It constitutes a remarkable and politically transcendent citizenship.

In many respects, the current atmosphere is heavy with its opposite. The pledge of American allegiance is held to be primary and definitive (even for multilateral partners). Patriotism is employed as a silencing mechanism against political critique and opposition. It may either dull or passionately stifle conscience. At a time of broken-hearted need, it purports to offer citizens solace, meaning, belonging, identity and justification. It sanctions military violence and state terror in the guise of a justified and blessed nation, in the very name of the "good" incarnate vs. "evil." It clarifies a person's relationship to the rest of humanity and creation specifically on the basis of nationalism (layered with other isms). It articulates the freedom to kill.

This is not to suggest there is no place for the love of this country, nor especially care for its constitution (also under attack in the present crisis). Flags, particularly early on, in Freedom Struggle marches testified to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s capacity to mobilize (and finally represent) the best of the American tradition on behalf of justice. The dream over against the nightmare.

But it does draw the lines of priority for Christians. A space of freedom is opened and marked out. The idolatrous association of the current patriotic rage with the incumbent regime and its policies (oddly so aligned with the interests of global capital) may be recognized as a frontal assault, a disappropriation of the baptismal vocation.

Or so, at least, I imagine Stringfellow might say.


The Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellermann is program director for the Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education (SCUPE) in Chicago, Ill. He is also on the steering committee of Word and World: A People's School. Bill lives in Detroit, Mich., and may be reached by email at bill@scupe.com.