Crazy Dreams of Christian Empire

Convalescing after a major operation one wishes for some clarifying craziness, and it came today (March 8,2022) in a RNS article. https://religionnews.com/2022/03/07/vigano-vatican-critics-blames-deep-state-for-ukraine-war-citing-covid-19-measures/

The key takeaway from the article is this quote, “The United States of America and the European States must not marginalize Russia but build an alliance with it, not only to restart trade for the prosperity of all, but in lieu of the reconstruction of a Christian Civilization, which will be the only one able to save the world from the transhuman and medical-technical globalist monster,”

Wow! Reconstruction of a Christian Civilization. The old empire revived. Pope and Patriarch shaking hands. Forgetting of course that most Christians live in the Global South.

Which is where, over in Protestantville, begins the other dream of Christian empire. 

It would be fair to say that in Christian evangelical circles, and in the UMC much more widely, the decline of the Christian West has been taken for granted. And given the Protestant critique of the old Catholic culture there was little to mourn. The US and Europe are already regarded as a mission field looking for new life, not reconstruction. And where will the mission come from? What is the dream, the particularly Anglo-American dream, of a Christian future? 

The answer is to be found in the new, supposedly booming centers of Christian growth in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Free from the shackles of modernist culture a new Empire of the Spirit is arising . Millions are converted, stadiums are filled with the faithful, miracles happen hourly. Backed by pious dictators and wealthy oligarchs supernatural religion, the religion of Jesus and his apostles, is back and soon the whole earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. Those of us lucky enough to live long enough will see the staid, lifeless Christianity of the West swept up in this new Pentecost. 

Dreams do die hard, especially in the old imperial centers. 

Christianity, in whatever form, isn’t the destiny of humankind. Jesus didn’t die to save us from a “transhuman and medical-technical globalist monster.” Sin and Death have, and will, take many forms over the course of humanity’s lifetime.  Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, Authoritarianism, Fascism, Maoism, Islamism, Nationalism; pick your ideology and they all come out a mixture of human hubris, insight, and folly: tools for the Evil One but hardly manifestations of cosmic malevolence. They are, in Paul’s terms, mere flesh and blood. There is a time before they were and a time when they will no longer be. Just like us. 

Saved by Christ, it is laughable that we enable and empower them by hopeless dreams of Empire and our fear and loathing of the Kingdoms of this world. Jesus had so little time and regard for Caesar it is shocking that we make so much.  “My kingdom is not of this world.” Pilate was a bump in the road of Christ’s mission, his political concerns a laughable sideshow. 

The battle Jesus fought on the Cross was far deeper than these surface currents of human civilizations. The only stage big enough for that drama is the human heart. When Christians forget the human heart, and battle over mere civilizations, they have forgotten their mission.