Triumphalism or the Spirit of Jesus?

Have Jesus’ moral teachings been abandoned?

Can an Empire be democratic and secure?

This book raises compelling issues for America’s Christians.

 

 

"Yours has got to be one of the most thoughtful books
I have read in a long time."

--Carol Bly
Author of Backbone and Letters From the Country

 

TRIUMPHALISM OR THE SPIRIT OF JESUS?

The Mystique of Triumphalism is rising in America to a war fever exceeding anything seen since the Civil War.  Triumphalism is the attitude and belief  that one’s own religion or way of life is superior to all others and will eventually supercede all others, with an  aggressive  crusade to impose those beliefs on the world.  There are both religious and political varieties of triumphalism in our world.  Western monotheistic religions have a history of infection by this kind of belief.  The Christian Crusades against the Muslims in the Holy Land were a case of religious triumphalism, and Hitler’s Nazi regime was a case of political triumphalism. 

Political and religious triumphalism have joined in an attempt to take over the American government, media and churches.  We are only a shade away from the full-blown apocalyptic flames that fundamentalist fanatics want to see as a fulfillment of a bizarre war of good against evil.  The United States is being asked to risk all in an exchange of weapons of mass destruction with consequences that no one can predict.  Who will bear these consequences?  Iraq, Israel and America for sure, and perhaps other by-standers.

 European imperial history has a deep strain of  triumphalism.  From the beginning of the westward movement,  Europeans attacked the New World with “cross and sword,” imposing  a new system of laws which claimed ownership of the land and resources for the conqueror.  Then came the American claim of its  “Manifest Destiny,” the divine ordination for westward expansion devoid of any obligation to respect the inhabitants who wanted to keep their land and way of life. 

HAVE JESUS’ MORAL TEACHINGS BEEN ABANDONED?

This same triumphalist attitude supported the enslavement of millions of Africans and taught them that they were born under a curse of God and slavery was their rightful place in the world.  Even though many highly principled Americans opposed slavery and fought to abolish it, the code of white supremacy survived.  Slavery gave way to Jim Crow; still later, many Christians participated in movements toward social justice for Americans who continued to be  bound in various forms of  racial, gender and economic subjugation.  But today we find a backlash of religious triumphalism  reviving fear and mistrust of all who are disadvantaged. Their coalitions with politicians, media controllers and the military-industrial complex have all but banished the moral teachings of  Jesus from public notice.  They insist on the infallibility of the war stories in the Bible, but refuse the challenge of the wisdom and human understanding in so many of Jesus’ words and deeds.

Mainline American religious institutions and their leaders are yet to break through the din of  triumphalist war rhetoric from the White House and the Pentagon.  The threats of preemptive attacks with incredibly lethal weapons have been met with silence, or worse, quibbles over a “just war” qualification.  The media are saturated with performances of  religious  hucksters which compete with sports and rock concerts for entertainment dollars; this passes for Christian ministry.  The phenomenon of  record-breaking dollars spent on “end of the world” books and movies rivals it’s counterparts in the Harry Potter series and the Star Wars movies.   This exploitation of fear and near-hysteria has sown   the seeds of escapism, dulling  sensitivity to concerns for the environment and the quality of life in a difficult world.  Many earnest but misled religious people are being deflected  from their responsibilities for the realities of  genuine dangers we face.   At the same time, many of the more sophisticated churches offer self-improvement and spirituality as consumer products, along with stress and weight reduction programs. 

Jesus as a moral teacher has been abandoned  by the war priests.  His words that burn through pretense, hypocrisy and false confessions are still with us, whether we hear them or not.  He respected the Samaritan woman taken in adultery, and shamed into silence those who were ready to stone her.  There were no lower-class people in his sight.  He admonished the primacy of reconciliation of human relationships over the offering of  sacrifices in the Temple.    He defied the powers of Rome and of the Temple keepers.  Jesus refused to return evil for evil, hurt for hurt.  He saw wisdom in respecting enemies.  These are the seeds of partnership for mutual good.  He called himself, “son of man”!  Why are the churches not lifting his words above the triumphalist barrage?

CAN AN EMPIRE BE DEMOCRATIC AND SECURE?

We Americans need to see where we are and where we are headed.  At present, we are adrift in a sea of  failed hysteria.  Blind faith by America’s Christians and by Islam’s Muslims has led to the brink of blind destructive passion.  But blind passion fuels only blind power, and blind power is the enemy of all, weak and powerful alike.  Americans speak lightly of a “New American empire,” as though we are the successors of Rome and Britain.  But the world no longer has a place for empires that rule through dividing and conquering the subject peoples.

The world is now one vast no-man’s-land.  Our homes are in the trenches, our enemies are at our backs, however we turn.  There are few if any loyal allies and no safe and tidy coalitions, but only hired guns of convenience.  Did we not learn from the World Trade Center tragedy that there is no place any more to hide, and there is no one, trusted or not, who cannot harm us if they want to badly enough?  In the past, empires could keep their colonial people relatively ignorant and divided, pitting class against class and clan against clan.  Weapons were scarce and destructive skills were primitive.  The local elites could maintain a surrogate rule over unorganized masses.  But now even those masses have  literate and sharply focused agitators to follow.

When the cult of empire prevails, it drives all hope of freedom from a nation.  The extension and defense of the empire rivets the nation into a war machine, consuming all other interests. All citizens must be sorted into classes, elite and masses, who will do their appointed tasks unquestioningly.  They must work, behave and fight, at home and in far away lands as the authorities command.  Subjugation abroad requires subjugation at home.  Normal democratic diversity must give way to the expediencies of “national security.”  Conformity is the necessary condition in a society committed to perpetual war, which all empires endure.  Empires pay a heavy price for the supression of freedom that ruling other people requires.   In every subjugated people, some visionary leaders will arise to  be followed.   It always has been so.  From now on, with global and instant communication, it will be even more so, only not so slow in coming.

Today there are those all over the world who can read, write and follow leaders of their choosing.  Communications are universal and instantaneous in mountains, jungles and deserts.  World trade brings ships into ports with cargoes to deliver, but more and more also with the possibility of weapons as well. Germs, guns and explosives in one form or another are available to make targets of any population and their utilities, food and water.  If we have not yet observed that nothing can stop a highly motivated group of  people who have nothing left to lose, it may be too late for us to learn. 

Churches are not the only American institutions that are in need of a value renewal. Economic, academic and legal communities need to be reoriented away from radical individualism and toward the common good.  But the Churches have a vital resource that the others lack: the historic and pragmatic moral example and words of Jesus, the Jewish prophet of the inclusive view of humanity, all of us, all the time, everywhere.

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