http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/123103C.shtml
Hijacking "Him'' for Empire
By Ray McGovern
Tuesday 30 December 2003
Put it on your shields or on your Christmas card, as did Vice
President ***** and Lynne Cheney: -- "And if a sparrow cannot fall
to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can
rise without His aid?"
This, of course, is not the first hijacking of "Him" for the
needs of empire. In 312 before the great battle at the Milvian
Bridge at Rome, Hijacker the Great, also known as Constantine, saw
a cross in the sky with the words "In Hoc Signo Vinces" ("In This
Sign You Will Conquer"). Constantine had a cross inscribed on his
soldiers' armor. The new "Christians" won the battle and lost
Jesus' message of nonviolence.
Several centuries later, "Deus Vult" ("God wills it") was the
inscription chosen by St. Peter's successors as they dispatched
crusaders to war in the Holy Land. And "Gott Mit Uns" decorated
Nazi belt buckles.
So "He" was hijacked long ago, with countless imperial and
other brutalities carried out in "His" name.
But wait. Was not "His" message a direct challenge to
empire--in his day the Roman Empire and religious and civil
collaborators in the Roman occupation? Isn't that why the religious
and civil authorities put their heads together and ended up
torturing and executing him?
Had Jesus allowed himself to be co-opted by the empire and its
Quislings, had he chosen to divorce his nonviolent but challenging
vision from the politics of the day, he could have died peacefully
in his bed--as did the leaders of the institutional church in Nazi
Germany.
And we can too. All that is required is a mind-trick to
convince ourselves that Jesus did not really mean to say what he
said, that he did not really mean to do what he did in exposing the
evil of empire. Help is at hand. It is easy to find a pastor
preaching a domesticated Jesus--an ahistorical Jesus far more
interested in ``piety'' than justice. I find myself wondering how
the Cheneys' pastor reacted to their Christmas card.
Often it takes a compassionate but truth-telling outsider to
throw light on our country, its leaders, its policies. Bishop Peter
Storey of South Africa, who walked the walk in his courageous,
outspoken resistance to the apartheid regime, provides this
prophetic word:
"I have often suggested to American Christians that the only
way to understand their mission is to ask what it might have meant
to witness faithfully to Jesus in the heart of the Roman Empire.
Certainly, when I preach in the United States I feel, as I imagine
the Apostle Paul did when he first passed through the gates of
Rome--admiration for its people, awe at its manifest virtues, and
resentment of its careless power."
"America's preachers have a task more difficult, perhaps, than
those faced by us under South Africa's apartheid, or by Christians
under Communism. We had obvious evils to engage; you have to unwrap
your culture from years of red, white, and blue myth. You have to
expose and confront the great disconnect between the kindness,
compassion, and caring of most American people and the ruthless way
American power is experienced, directly and indirectly, by the poor
of the earth. You have to help good people see how they have let
their institutions do their sinning for them."
"This is not easy among people who really believe that their
country does nothing but good. But it is necessary, not only for
their future, but for us all. All around the world there are those
who believe in the basic goodness of the American people, who
agonize with you in your pain, but also long to see your human
goodness translated into a different, more compassionate way of
relating with the rest of this bleeding planet."
Let us begin the New Year with what Scripture calls
"circumcised hearts," before we ask that God bless America.
-------
Ray McGovern is co-director of the Servant Leadership School, an
inner-city outreach ministry inspired by the ecumenical Church of
the Saviour in Washington, DC. His first career of 27 years as a
CIA analyst taught him something of empire.
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