By the Rev. Howard Bess
September 27, 2010
One of the great sins of Christianity over the centuries is that it has sought dominance over believers in other religions as well as non-believers.
Somehow most Christian leaders have decided that their particular brand of religion should be dominant in the world and that the world would attain its greatest ideal if everyone were Christian.
Though there is material in the Bible to support this supremacist view, there is also a great body of Bible literature that looks at life from a very different perspective. According to this alternate point-of-view, the calling of the people of God is to be a servant people.
I have long maintained that the Bible should be read and studied with a recognition that both sides of the arguments are found in the same collection of writings, that the Bible is not monolithic on this and other key questions. The task of the Bible student is to join in the argument and to bring the argument to the most modern of settings.
The dominance side of the argument is rooted in the Bible story of King David, tracing his life from a humble shepherd boy to supposedly the most powerful king in the Near East. According to the story, he claimed power as a bloody, conquering tyrant and established a great capital city in Jerusalem as home to Jehovah God.
This story (which many historians consider largely mythical) has become the model and symbol of all Christian dominionists.
The servant side of the Bible tradition is rooted not in Jerusalem but in Babylon. Four hundred years after the establishment of Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel and its God, Babylonia, a powerful neighbor to the east, conquered the last vestige of the Israelite nation, capturing Jerusalem and leveling the Holy Temple.
Some Israelites were carried off to the City of Babylon to be slave labor for the new dominant nation in the Near East. In that setting, the people of God pondered their role in the world. With dominance no longer a possibility, they concluded that their new calling from God was to serve the world rather than to dominate the world.
Which of these ancient Israelite traditions represents the will of the God that Christians, whose religion derives from a Jewish rabbi, should claim as their own? This is the long-running argument that ferments in the Bible material.
For generations, most Christian churches and individual Christians side-step this argument by focusing instead on individual salvation as their primary concern and on temporal activities in the wider world. Many clergy joined the Chamber of Commerce and abandoned the simple brown robes of community servitude.
Meanwhile, in today’s world of high-tech communications and rapid social changes, the very nature of Christian churches is in flux. Christianity has become a favorite subject of PhD theses, and the study of the present state of Christian churches is a popular subject for pollsters.
Recognizable patterns are presenting themselves. Most churches are still focused on getting people to heaven when they die. However, a sizeable number of Christian dominionists and nationalists have developed. They have stepped into the public square with full force.
Their message is not hidden: Return the nation to Christian roots! Give the Ten Commandments a place of equality with the Constitution! For the faithful, “God Bless America” has become a companion to “The Star Spangled Banner.” The Stars and Stripes and the Christian Flag have become siblings.
However, a new reformation movement, called the emergent church, has arisen to challenge Christian dominionists by following a different path marked by Jesus, the humble rabbi from Nazareth.
While there is a great diversity among these “emergents,” they tend to be very religious and committed to reading and studying the Bible and to celebrating their faith in prayer and song.
Most importantly, however, they have focused their attention on Jesus, who taught that greatness is found in being a servant, rather than on King David, who brutally crushed his enemies. Today, emergents are finding allies across the Christian spectrum.
A backdrop for this internal Christian debate has been 9/11, which has intensified the public discussion of diversity and heightened the awareness that the American population is more diverse than ever before. Immigrants with highly diverse backgrounds keep pounding on the American door.
Are Christians, from a position of righteous superiority, called to convert and dominate the strangers in our midst, or is our call to be a welcoming neighbor who seeks to be a servant of all?
An ancient argument is a lively argument in the 21st century.
The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer, Alaska. His e-mail address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.
The Hunger Site
September 28, 2010 at 8:34 am
The problem is not so much organized religion as fundamentalists of all stripes. Non believers and sane believers should unite to instigate discord amongst the fundamentalists of all faiths so that they fight amongst themselves instead of against us.
-marc
September 27, 2010 at 3:58 pm
No doubt organized Christian religions wield a lot of political, religious, and financial power in this country and around the world. I have a problem with “Christian dominionists and nationalists” stepping “into the public square with full force” using the Bible written more than a thousand years ago. A document packed with errors and inconsistencies. Jesus didn’t write anything down and many of the Biblical writers wrote about events they were not present at or based on oral history.
And what is the Bible anyway? It is my understanding that there are many versions of the Bible depending on the religious traditions of specific denominations. There is the “Old Testament” based on the Jewish Tanakh. Then there are the the twenty-seven books collectively called the New Testament, originally written in Greek. The Catholic Bible includes additional books which the Protestant Bible does not. Some Protestant Bibles have a separate apocrypha. There are also various translations of the Bible in the English language: the Catholic translation; the New American Bible; and Protestant translations of the Christian Bible, like the King James Version, the New Revised Standard Version, and the New American Standard Bible. All this is a recipe for error.
Because whichever version of the Bible you use has errors of historical fact and inconsistencies does not diminish the inspirational, cultural, literary power of the Bible written about a time long past. However, trying to impose on the world a set of moral rules based on an ancient book often inflicts on all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering. That’s why we should vigorously enforce the First Amendment’s separation of church and state and oppose any attempt by any religion, Christian or otherwise, to impose their values on the United States and the world.