Converting our Imagination 6

Yesterday’s post concerned whether or not there are parallels between Rome as empire and the USA as empire. Regardless of your thoughts there, Gorman’s book proposes that the Book of Revelation is a manifesto and a summons to “uncivil” religion.

As we have been saying, Michael Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation discusses this theopolitical reading of Revelation.

So, his point: “Revelation is a manifesto against civil religion and a summons to uncivil worship and witness” (55). I totally agree.

Christmas, my friend, celebrates the birth of the King, and that birth occurred according to Luke 2 in the midst of a Roman Empire — and Jesus was the alternative king with an alternative kingdom. He wielded not Caesar’s weapons but “Lamb power.”

Secular power is not sacred.

Christmas proposes a sacred, non-secular power that is more powerful than the swords of Rome.

Power, sex and money are symptoms of a sacralized political dream that is undercut by Lamb power.

So here’s Gorman’s claim: “The most alluring and dangerous deity in the United States is the omnipresent, syncretistic god of nationalism mixed with Christianity lite” (56).

The plea of this book is for Christians to resist the charms of civil religion. The Church is called to cease from its participation in idolatries and to give itself to the Lamb.

Like Star Wars, it leaves us with an alternative: Beast or Lamb?