{"id":1050,"date":"2024-08-08T02:52:39","date_gmt":"2024-08-08T02:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/?p=1050"},"modified":"2024-08-08T02:52:39","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T02:52:39","slug":"american-heresy-3-power-over-is-the-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/?p=1050","title":{"rendered":"American Heresy #3: Power Over is THE Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Maybe it\u2019s taken so long for me to get back to this because this particular point is about to be very needed?\u00a0 The last few weeks on the national scene have brought a lot of upheaval and uncertainty. However, the connections between candidates and Project 2025\/Agenda 47<\/a> should not be overlooked. When he last occupied the Oval Office, the current Republican candidate showed very little interest in the actual work of governing. Some former staff from that time are quite willing to help with that, should there be a next time. The Vice-Presidential Candidate for the Republican ticket wrote a forward to a forth-coming book<\/a> by Project 2025\u2019s primary architect and author, Keven Roberts. The aims of \u201cChristian Nationalism,\u201d in all its names and forms, are a capitulation to the very temptation Jesus rejected in the gospel accounts of the Temptation in the Wilderness.\u00a0 Now, let\u2019s see \u2026 where were we?<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This series started with the opening story for the liturgical season of Lent \u2013 the Temptation of Jesus in the Wilderness.\u00a0 The story features three challenges put to Jesus. I\u2019ve addressed two of the three in the previous posts. However, to recap: Instead of taking the word satan<\/em> as a proper name, let\u2019s translate it as we do every other word from the ancient texts, which means accuser<\/em>. Viewed from this angle, the tempter figure is not some imagined Devil with powers (nearly?) equal to \u2013 but exactly opposite \u2013 of God. Instead, the satan<\/em> is an accusing figure putting Jesus to the proof, trying to assess just who this Jesus is \u2026 where his limits are \u2026 what he will and will not do. Having tried a suggestion to use power to satisfy personal needs and then provocation to make some amazing demonstration that proves faith works and God is real, now the testing figure offers a third one: rulership over all the kingdoms of the world in exchange for Jesus\u2019 worship of the accuser.<\/p>\n

Let go of the long-established (but unfortunate!) misunderstanding of a cosmic, spiritually powerful Devil offering Jesus rulership of the world \u2013 as if this world were a devil\u2019s possession to give \u2013 in exchange for Jesus acknowledging the Devil as the \u201ctrue\u201d divine being. This is nonsensical! God, not some evil power (as Greek Gnosticism often posited), created the world; the world and all that is belong to God \u2013 period, full stop. The only divine anything anywhere is God \u2013 period, end of story (as well as its beginning). The word that is generally translated as worship<\/em> means to fall or bow down in reverence as lessers do toward their superiors \u2026 as subjects do toward their rulers \u2026 and worshippers do toward their gods. There is no call for offerings or sacrifices or obedience to commands or anything like that \u2026 just bow down in reverent submission.<\/p>\n

Now with a more appropriate perspective, a more correct understanding of this particular test would be to envision the zealous prosecutor getting right in the face of the defendant and saying, \u201cAdmit it, Jesus: power-over is the only way this world works \u2013 the only way it will ever work. Admit I\u2019m right and reject this power-under path you\u2019re about to walk. Power-over is the only way.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the gospels proceed to illustrate, Jesus rejects this invitation to the way of power-over and continues on the power-under path \u2026 the road to the cross \u2026 to execution by the ruling powers. Jesus allows power-over to do its very worst \u2026 which it does as it always does. Jesus gets crushed by the system.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

This plant was growing in an old lava flow area, a sign of new life from destruction<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

However, Jesus also knows that power-over can only be stopped by upending the whole system. That\u2019s what the resurrection accomplishes \u2013 the overturning of death and the whole power-over system. By the rules under which all the systems we know normally operate in this world, we\u2019d have to say that, in this case, God cheats. Life out of death? Power defeated by going under and rising up? Things are not supposed to work this way in the world as we know it.<\/p>\n

However, those first followers of Jesus, those early Christians attempting to live out the pattern that Jesus established, understood that Jesus was out to upend this power-over system. They knew they were called to do things differently \u2026 counter to \u2026 contrary to the way things were \u201csupposed\u201d to be done \u2026 the way the world was known to work. They accepted the challenge and went about figuring out how to live by and carry forward what Jesus taught \u2026 inviting and encouraging others to join them in demonstrating what life in the Reign and Realm of God could look like. The word we have as martyr<\/em> originally meant witness<\/em>. And the early Christians understood themselves as precisely that: witnesses explaining what they had seen and heard, pointing toward what they recognized. They were willing to bear witness to God\u2019s alternate way of doing things, to the world as God intended it to be, whatever that witnessing might require, whatever form it might take \u2013 including how they lived their lives.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The inscription reads “Alexamenos worships his god”; the figure on the cross represents Jesus<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Mostly, of course, they were ignored. Sometimes they were ridiculed. Early on, the Roman government regarded the Christians as a subset of an increasingly fractious and problematic Jewish population. Emperor Claudius expelled the whole lot, Christians and Jews, from Rome around 49 CE when he was too bothered by all their in-fighting. The earliest official persecution of Christians happened under Emperor Nero, around 64 CE after the infamous fire in Rome. Although the fire was likely inevitable due to overcrowded conditions, there was some speciation Nero had deliberately occasioned it as a part of an urban renewal project \u2026 and to deflect such speculation, Nero foisted the blame on to someone else. He actually tried blaming the Jews first, but the upset populace found that explanation unacceptable. So, then he offered the Christians as the culprits and people were more willing to accept that. Tradition has long maintained that the two major leaders of the early Christian movement, Peter and Paul, were executed under Nero as part of that persecution.<\/p>\n

Time passes \u2026 memories fade … and the persecutions would as well \u2026 only to rise up again when something else happened. Pliny the Younger, in a report on provincial activities to the Emperor Trajan (early 100s CE), described his investigations of Christian practices and concluded: \u201cI discovered nothing more than a perverse and extravagant superstition.\u201d\u00a0 A \u201cperverse superstition\u201d meant a religious practice that was not a religio licta<\/em>, a religion with practices authorized by the Roman government, which exempted practitioners from participation in the official imperial cult. The government was generally wary of unauthorized, voluntary religious groups and suspected such unregulated assemblies of being a threat to the general public order, and hence, the good of the state.<\/p>\n

As Roman religious systems developed under the emperors, practices transitioned from placating the cosmic divine personalities of classic Grecco-Roman myths to a more general recognition of the emperor as the channel or vessel of cosmic divine power. Emperors were often hailed as children of the gods, divine beings in their own right. \"\"<\/a>A typically expected ritual demonstration of allegiance to the imperial cult was to burn incense in homage before an image of the emperor. Christians, Jews, and some others frequently refused to do this \u2026 and on occasion, suffered for their refusals.<\/p>\n

The \u201cConversion of Constantine\u201d in 313 CE did not suddenly make Christianity the official religion of the Empire; Christianity simply became a religio licta<\/em> and the empire-wide persecutions of the prior 50 years stopped. The faith practices of Christians were now acceptable within Roman society. Whether or not Constantine professed himself a Christian is unknowable; however, a number of high-ranking families included Christian members and eventually a significant number of the imperial families identified as Christians.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Perhaps nothing illustrates this transition and growth of official support than the change in images of Saint George, the Great Martyr<\/a>. George is thought to have been born around 280 to pious parents. He entered military service and may have attained the rank of tribune under Emperor Decian. However, when Diocletian followed as emperor, persecutions against Christians began again and Diocletian had George beheaded in 303 under the edicts of persecution. George\u2019s steadfastness in faith is said to have moved Diocletian\u2019s wife, Alexandra, to become a Christian. The earliest frescos and images of George show him opposing Diocletian, sometimes trampling an imperial figure with his horse. But with the embrace of Christianity by the imperial household, the images shifted \u2026 and by the time the official icon was created, George had been connected to a legend involving a maiden of rank and a maiden-eating dragon. Hence, the established images of Saint George show him on horseback, trampling a serpentine dragon rather than the emperor.<\/p>\n

Almost a century after Constantine, when Alaric and the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 CE, there were some Romans who wondered if this event were punishment for abandonment of the old ways and the old gods. There were also a number of Christians who had imagined, following the conversion of the imperial family, that the promised Reign of God on earth had finally begun. Much like the Roman traditionalists, Christians also wondered what to make of the breach of the unbreachable city. In response to both of these perspectives, Augustine of Hippo wrote City of God<\/em><\/a>, which distinguished between lived experience on earth and a larger spiritual reality. Displaying a remarkable ambivalence toward Rome and the empire (given that he was the son of a Roman government official), Augustine concurred that scriptures do reveal that God works through history \u2026 and this history can support contemporary trust that God is acting in events as they unfold. However, exactly what God might be doing or intending in any given event is unknowable at the time \u2013 as is any future meaning or direction. The true City of God, Augustine wrote, is comprised of those who live and serve God and are known only by God.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But the quest of Church leadership for power over the secular state was not abated. Christian leaders continued to press for the trappings of power: impressive buildings, titles, hierarchy, positions of advisors to the government, and direct governing authority. On Christmas Day in 800 CE, Pope Leo crowned Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor \u2013 whether Charles the Great wanted such authorizing or not. However, the intermingling of church authority and civic rulers was then established and the two sources of power continued to struggle for supremacy over the other for centuries, with religion frequently used by civic leaders as a vehicle for extending their power and authority. This is a throughline of history in Europe and other places down through the European settlement on the American continent.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>While it is true that the founders of the current United States government declined to establish an official religion or state church, that really wasn\u2019t because they opposed the very concept. The real problem they encountered was which church to choose. Areas influenced by the Puritan settlements had become Congregationalist \u2026 Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn as a safe haven for Quakers \u2013 and anyone else \u2026 Maryland was predominantly Roman Catholic (due to Catholics fleeing persecution in Protestant Europe) \u2026 the southern colonization had the Anglican Church as a religious background (and having just broken away from England, the Anglican Church was a no-go). Having no way to choose a specific one, the founders chose none of them. But that is not to say they did not see a use of good civic religion in establishing and sustaining social order and norms and set in motion what Justice Sandra Day O\u2019Connor would later term \u201charmless ceremonial deism.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Roman Empire was hardly unique in recognizing the value of good civic religion. As the US Constitution was designed to place the rule of Law above the rule of men \u2013 or any one man, it was helpful to have some indication or assurance of divine favor to give the Law at least equal footing to the \u201cdivine right of kings.\u201d Building a new governing institution from scratch, church rites and ceremonies were a helpful guide in navigating the in-between liminal spaces of transition as officer holders exited and new ones entered, as presidential administration changed, when public celebration or observance was appropriate. \"\"<\/a>Churches made ready centers of community gathering and connection with the western expansion from the original European settlements. The long-standing Protestant emphasis on teaching children to read so they could read the Bible was the basis for the eventual public school system. None of this is bad or even particularly harmful.<\/p>\n

However, in more recent decades, the situation has become problematic. Perhaps it was the aftermath of World War II that tipped the balance toward the problematic aspects of good civic religion. The first move was the invocation of God to protect the United States from the godless communist threat of USSR as it emerged and consolidated power in the aftermath of the last world war and the emerging threat of a nuclear World War III. The phrase In God We Trust<\/em> was adopted as the national motto and added to the currency (so godless communists would not be able to use US money) and the words \u201cunder God\u201d were added the Pledge of Allegiance (so godless communists wouldn\u2019t be able to say it). Church (or synagogue) membership became a mark of good citizenship. (Indeed, Christian denominations developed outreach strategies of going through the neighborhood around the building to recruit any neighbors who weren\u2019t church members to become members of the neighborhood church.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>To be sure, communities of faith (Christian and other faiths) have been instrumental as agents of positive social change. The Civil Rights Movement comes readily to mind. Taking seriously the gospel call to a world in which all are included, no one is left out \u2026 where everyone has what is needed, no one is left poor and hungry \u2026 where the inherent dignity each person is acknowledged and respective, the leaders of the movement articulated the vision of the Reign and Realm of God and brought it about through the power-under means of non-violent resistance to the ways of power-over. The potential for good is clearly present.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

January 6, 2021<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

But good civic religion is rarely centered on a living demonstration of what life in the Reign and Realm of God could look like. Good civic religion centers on maintaining the status quo, upholding the structures of order and power. And when political enemies are branded as enemies of God by the purveyors of good civic religion, the destructive path of power-over becomes the religiously correct choice. We\u2019ve seen this in the last 50 years or so with the rise of the \u201cMoral Majority\u201d (mostly in opposition to the gains of the Civil Rights Movement) \u2026 the \u201creligious right\u201d labeling the \u201csecular left\u201d as demonic and evil \u2026 complementarian theology<\/a> (to gloss over a view of women as less than men in all things) \u2026 Dominionism<\/a> (aka \u201cSeven Mountains<\/a>\u201d) \u2026 and now Project 2025 or Agenda 47 (or whatever the behind the scenes power players want to call their actual agenda should they again have a president in the Oval Office who does not care about actually governing and is quite willing to leave that work to them).<\/p>\n

Jesus rejected the ways of power-over for a power-with and power-under path. But the choices being made by those who loudly and pointedly claim the name \u201cChristian\u201d and purport to be acting in the name of Christ and in the example of Jesus are choosing the power-over path again and again, choosing the very way Jesus refused.<\/p>\n

This heresy may be the most disastrous for all of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe it\u2019s taken so long for me to get back to this because this particular point is about to be very needed?\u00a0 The last few weeks on the national scene have brought a lot of upheaval and uncertainty. However, the connections between candidates and Project 2025\/Agenda 47 should not be …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events-topics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1050"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1071,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions\/1071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}