Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1074: How to Read (and Understand) the Book of Revelation: Dr. Michael J. Gorman

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

Dr. Gorman has held the Raymond E. Brown Chair in Biblical Studies and Theology since 2012. He has taught at St. Mary’s since 1991, first in St. Mary’s Ecumenical Institute and then, beginning in 1993, in both the Ecumenical Institute and the Seminary (School of Theology). He's a New Testament scholar who specializes in the theology and spirituality of the apostle Paul, the Gospel of John, the book of Revelation, and the theological and missional interpretation of Scripture. He is the author of nearly twenty books and numerous articles, including the one we discuss in this podcast (one of my favorites on Revelation): Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation. 

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. So my guest today is Dr. Michael J. Gorman. And this is one of those times when I kind of, I don't know, I'm a little bit of a fanboy here. I've been reading the works of Michael Gorman for over 15 years. I mean, he's a very well-known established scholar in the field of New Testament and biblical studies. He is the Raymond E. Brown Chair in Biblical Studies and Theology, a position he's held since 2012 at St. Mary's Seminary and University. He has an MDiv and PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. He's the author of many, many books, including the one we talk about in this podcast, which is called Reading Revelation Responsibly, Uncivil Worship

and Witness Following the Lamb into the New creation, which is kind of a standard work on the book of Revelation. And that's what we talk about on this podcast. I'm so excited for this conversation. He's awesome. This dude is just so legit. He's a great scholar. He's a super humble man of God. And I'm excited for you to get to know the one and only Dr. Michael J. Gorman. Is it Mike or Michael or Dr. Gorman? What do you prefer? I didn't ask you off line. Mike is great, Preston. Okay. Okay. Mike. Yeah. And you're, I mean, you're obviously a very, very accomplished scholar, but you're also a churchman, a lay level servant of the church. I mean, I know you go to travel the world and teach theology in so many different contexts.

And you're a layman in the UMC. Is that right? That's right. Yeah. Lay person in the United Methodist Church, or as I like to call it these days, just change two letters, the Untied Methodist Church. What does that mean? Well, there's so many divisions going on right now within the Methodist Church, you know, over sexuality issues and so forth. So we're untied from one another. We're untied from our roots. We're just untied. But anyhow, yeah, I mean, I have always been deeply rooted in the church.

Within three days, Sunday, I will have helped my wife with children's church. I did then lead an adult Sunday school on the Apostles' Creed. And then yesterday, I'm a member of our worship team. And then yesterday, I'm a member of our worship team. So in the space of 28 hours or so, those were the things I did Sunday to Monday. I'll preach once next week, next week, next month, and in June. So yeah, I try to be a scholar for the church. I feel like I've got a decent number of Methodists, both free and united, that listen to the podcast. Because that's not my background at all. I think sometimes people are shocked. It's

like, hey, you have some Methodist lists. I'm like, I think I've got quite a decent percentage, actually. So they'll be excited that I'm having a fellow Methodist on to talk. I've had others, Craig Keener, and I saw a lot of Asbury people. I've had others, Craig Keener, and I saw a lot of Asbury people. Okay, so your book, okay, I have it right here in front of me, Reading Revelation Responsibly. And I love the subtitle, it's awesome. Uncivil Worship and Witness, Following the Lamb into the New Creation. It is one of, if not my favorite book on the book of Revelation, partly because I think you interpret the book in ways that I find the most exegetically compelling. But you also, the book, I love how you set up, you do a great job on just how to read Revelation.

Then you walk through the book, structure the book. We talk about themes, but my favorite thing, and this is what I really want you to highlight, is just how the book of Revelation is so profoundly political and contributes to a Christian, what scholars would call a political theology. So that's where I would love for you to kind of show how Revelation does it. But let's just start, let's start from the beginning. How do we approach the book of Revelation for people that maybe have assumptions about what Revelation is about? Maybe they're scared of reading the beginning. How do we approach the book of Revelation for people that maybe have assumptions about what Revelation is about? Maybe they're scared of reading the books. They're like, oh, it's all this time stuff that I don't know how to deal with.

So, yeah. Well, I think most people go to one extreme or another. They're either so scared of it that they avoid it completely or they're so wrapped up in it and in a particular interpretation of it that they just get myopic and focus on that. And I was one of the ones who was afraid of it before I think engaged it in a new and more compelling way. So I think it's really important to keep context in mind when you're reading any biblical book, but especially the book of Revelation. What kind of literature is this? What would it have said to people in the first century? Not to exclude what it might say for us, and that's very important, but to start with the historical context, if you will, and the social context, the political context.

What kind of literature is this? And I think most people today would say it's kind of like a hybrid dog. It's a hybrid. It calls itself an apocalypse. It calls itself, the first word of the book is apocalypse. So it sort of calls itself an apocalypse. It calls itself several times a prophecy. way it's bookended, the beginning and the end, it's in the form of a letter. And then there are messages. I don't think we should call them letters, but there's very letter-like messages in chapters two and three. Those are the parts that everybody runs to. Oh, we can interpret these, we can apply these. It's the rest of the book that people have trouble with. So if you read it, it's that kind of hybrid document. It's first of all an apocalypse. It's like other apocalyptic literature of the first century and the environs on either side of the first century. And it's a word of prophecy, that is to say, it's like Isaiah or Amos or whatever, speaking words of judgment and salvation, of challenge and hope. And it's a letter written to specific people that needs to be taken in their

specific context, plural, seven churches, certainly representing, I think, the whole church of that time period, and perhaps, in a sense, church of all time. One of my favorite comparisons of the book of Revelation to get us out of the very so-called literal, and I'll come back to that in a second. I don't think most people who call themselves literalists read Revelation very literally. But anyhow, a couple of people have suggested, and I agree with this, that it's like reading a series of political cartoons. Like you would see, especially back in the day when people read newspapers more, you

know, on the last page of the front section of the paper, there'd be these great political cartoons. When I was first teaching basic exegesis skills to people, the first thing I would have them do is to do an exegesis of a political cartoon. It was very enlightening, very fun but you know a political cartoon republicans are elephants and democrats are donkeys and and it's exaggerated people's body features are exaggerated and this is what we see in revelation everything is symbolic cartoonish not in a funny sense but in a very profound very profound way so i think if we read it it as an apocalypse, as a prophecy in the biblical sense, not just a prediction, and as a letter to real churches and real people, we'll be at least starting out on the right foot. Okay. I don't love all the date and authorship and stuff. Some

people love to write whole books on that. But I think it may be good to just maybe give a couple minutes on that. So the author identifies himself as John. Most lay people assume that's the Apostle John who wrote the book of John and possibly the three letters. Most scholars do not hold that view. Yes, it's a John. It's a different John. So number one, do you have a strong opinion on authorship?

Does it matter? And number two, when do you put the date of Revelation? Most people, again, put it kind of late, like in the 90s AD, but some people put it back in Nero's day because there's some clear Nero allusions in the book. But yeah, love your thoughts on that. Well, I mean, I think I would go along without making a big deal out of it. I'd go along with the consensus, if you will, on probably not the Apostle John, and probably at the end of the century in the reign of Domitian. It looks like Domitian's being portrayed as a revival of Nero, in my opinion. So that's, I think, part of the

reason you have the neurotic implications here and there. And with respect to John, I think, part of the reason you have the neurotic implications here and there. And with respect to John, I mean, as you know, if you read the book of Revelations, Greek, and you read the Gospel of John, which is Greek, you think these are very, very different writers. With some overlap in theology, there's no doubt about that. Something as simple as Lamb of God imagery, I think, used differently, but nonetheless there. Lamb of God imagery, I think used differently, but nonetheless there. So I would go for 90-something, somebody well-known in and around Ephesus, but probably not the Apostle John. Now, if you go to Ephesus today, any tour guide will tell you without even flinching, this is the burial site, this is the tomb of John the Apostle, who was the beloved disciple who wrote the Gospel of John,

the three epistles of John and the book of Revelation. Yeah. Tour guides can be pretty confident on some archaeological stuff. That's how they make the big bucks. For me personally, I don't think the authorship matters a whole lot.

I don't know why that would matter. Unless we're, well, I guess it would allow, if it was the Apostle John, we can do a lot more parallel work. Maybe that would be a payoff. But at the end of the day, I think we can understand Revelation perfectly fine without the author. The date, I think, matters a little bit more as we're trying to – especially when we get to like Revelation 12, 13, 17, 18, some of these more real aggressive political critiques. I think it can be helpful to unpack some of these more real real aggressive political critiques i think it can be helpful

to unpack some of the background but um yeah okay that let's let's just assume that kind of well there's certainly i mean there's certainly enough uh evil associated with both nero and domitian and lots of other other emperors that if you want to pinpoint one of them as or that what they represent as a beast i don't think too many people are going to argue with you. At least the latter part of Nero's reign and most of Domitian's reign. Okay. Yeah. Before we get into, I really do want to love to have you unpack some of the real strong political themes, but just reading apocalyptic literature in general, you kind of hinted at, you know, probably shouldn't be taken very literal. If

you're looking at a political cartoon, you don't feel like the Trump and Biden, you know, the big heads or whatever, and some of the stuff they're saying, everything's kind of exaggerated. So what are some evidences that we shouldn't be reading, we should be reading the book of Revelation more symbolically, for lack of better terms? Can you give us just some quick examples that are kind of like indisputable? Yeah, I mean, one of the best places is to look at Revelation chapter 17, where it's one of the few places, or for that matter, at the end of chapter 12. There are a couple of places where the book actually says, this is that, or this is this, you know, the seven hills or the seven mountains are the seven kings and so forth. I mean,

so the book of Revelation occasionally shows its hand. When it shows its hand, it shows that what it's talking about is very symbolic and can therefore be extrapolated to say, okay, if that is symbolic, then we should probably assume that other things are symbolic. And when I said a few minutes ago that people who claim to read these chapters literally actually don't, if you go back and read, say, Tim LaHaye's work, and it's changed, it has progressed over the years. He doesn't say the same thing today that he said in some other other times but if you read that that kind of interpretation for instance um he will say occasionally well the locusts are not helicopters and that's exactly what many people want to interpret especially going back to a late, late planet Earth and Hal Lindsey,

associating the helicopters with 20th century then, now 21st century, flying machines. Well, even a Tim LaHaye says in one of his more recent books, these are not helicopters. These are symbols of something. So when Tim LaHaye starts saying something symbolic about the book of Revelation, I think people should pay attention. Okay. Okay. So, um, when people think Revelation, they think, oh, it's all end times. It's all future stuff. You know, in scholarship, people are tend, tend to see a lot more first century stuff going on with, with implications for all kind of future empires or whatever. Can you, yeah, how much of the book should we read as simply talking about the future, if at all? That's a good question.

I think that the book should be understood as a document that would have been aimed at and would have been understood by the first century churches as relevant for them then. There's always a future dimension to prophecy. There's always a future dimension to apocalyptic. But as many people have said about prophecy, it is a word on target. It's a word from God through the prophet for the people in their time period. So even when there's prediction, biblical prophecy really is about the moment, because we want to see how the moment impacts the future and how the future impacts the moment. But the moment is really what's being addressed. So I would say that in one sense, the book of Revelation is entirely about the first century,

but it's also about the fact that there has to be a future, there will be, excuse me, there will be, and there has to be a future judgment of quote unquote Babylon. Right. And that judgment is not happening necessarily right now, but because it's going to happen in the future, it has an impact on how we live in the moment vis-a-vis Babylon. We don't get in bed with Babylon, to use that kind of imagery, for instance, precisely because Babylon is going to face its end and is going to face divine judgment, and we don't want to be part of that judgment. And sometimes the judgment—I'm just thinking about Revelation 17 and 18, Revelation 18 in particular, and 19, where it's not, in some future time, Babylon will fall.

It's Babylon is fallen, right? It's almost the judgment is, the future judgment is so secure that it's spoken of in the present tense. Is that an accurate way of saying that? Yeah, yeah. We see that sometimes in the Old Testament prophets as well, where things are so, some scholars have said in language use even, things sometimes are so definite that you can use a past tense as if it's already happened or a present tense as if it's already happened. Fallen is Babylon. Fallen, fallen is Babylon. So the word of judgment is so secure, as you said, so strong, so certain, that we can voice it in the present tense. So we've used the phrase Babylon a few times, John uses it several times. Who is Babylon in the book of Revelation? Who is Babylon? Yeah. It's such a pervasive theme, you know.

It's not the United Nations or the Vatican. Let's say what it's not to begin with. But I think that's important to say, because in the in the last 200 years of interpretation in England, in the United States, and therefore because of American and British influence, missionary influence around most of the world, that's often been the kind of protestant interpretation it's rome so so babylon was known to be rome first peter uses babylon language other um second uh first century uh and then the environs jewish documents use babylon to refer to rome so if you think of it as a future prediction well what's in rome the vatican the head of the catholic church the Pope. So you get that kind of connection often made. I think that's really unfortunate and very dangerous. But Babylon, I would say in summary misuse of power that is in Rome through the empire, embodied, if you will, in the emperor and in all those who support the emperor. it is also Babylon is that which resembles what Rome was doing. Any kind of hyper-powerful, I would say, idolatrous entity that calls people to ultimate allegiance to it and uses violence and other forms of evil to get and keep its power, I think then you have Babylon. And that's why it makes this book so

timeless and so relevant throughout the centuries. I love, so Richard Bauckham has a famous quote, and I have it, I'm not, just wanna make sure I'm not, people don't think I'm doing this from memory. I have notes in front of me. He says, any society whom Babylon's cap fits must wear it. Any society which absolutizes its own economic prosperity at the expense of others comes under Babylon's condemnation. So I think that very much. Yeah. And actually, I mean, I've got several quotes from, I mean, both, I mean, you, Cynthia Long Westfall, Bauckham a few different times and other scholars.

All kind of what you're saying is not, it's very common for people to say, obviously the first readers would have said, obviously we're talking about the Roman Empire here, but it's described in such a way that can't apply to other Rome-like, empire-like regimes. Let me just get the elephant out of the room. Would the United States of America be a kind of Babylon? Is Babylon or is not Babylon? I'm sure you get this question a lot. As we're looking at all the politics in Revelation, should we have an eye on the United States? Yeah.

So let me answer that, but let me backtrack for a moment first, because your readers or your viewers and hearers might be interested in Scott McKnight's new book on the book of Revelation, which is called Revelation for the Rest of Us. I think the subtitle, I don't have it in front of me, but the subtitle is something like Discipleship for, find the subtitle, Preston. Yeah, I'll keep talking. So anyhow, in that book, he lists, I think, seven appropriately characteristics of Babylon. They're very similar to the ones that I list in my own book. What is it that makes Babylon Babylon? It's the mistreatment of people. It's the economic disparity that it creates and the economic oppression that it creates. It's the empire

goals of harnessing the goods and the people that actually belong to other lands or other people. So all these kinds of things where political, religious, and economic power come together, there I think you do have a kind of Babylon. Did you find Scott? Yes, yes. It's a prophetic call to follow Jesus as a dissident disciple. I love that phrase, dissident disciple. In fact, there was another good book written several years ago on that title.

Yeah. So Scott and I are friends and we've been in communication about the book of Revelation for years, and I'm very happy he wrote his book. It's sort of honestly, it's kind of an updated version of my own book in terms of its approach and so forth. And he would he would be, I think, the first to say, yeah, there's some truth in that. But the thing that I think distinguishes my take on Revelation, even from Scott's, is, and this will help, I think, answer the question about the United States. Yes, the United States is the, you know, as people say today, the sole superpower. It's hard to compare it even to a China or a Russia. But even if you want to put

those three in, they all have, in different ways ways imperial ambitions and empire-like realities to them. That's sometimes hard for Americans to grasp because we're not China or we're not Russia. That's true. But what a lot of Americans don't realize, for instance, is that we have, we Americans have military bases in over 100 countries around the world. That says something about how the United States understands 100 countries around the world. That says something about how the United States understands its role in the world and its place in the world. But the take that I

have in my book, and this I think is very important, I think that the problem with Rome that a lot of people don't see that I emphasize is the merger of religious power and secular power. So you have those in chapter 13, you have those two beasts that are part of the unholy trinity that Satan identified as such in chapter 12. The Satan identified as such in Chapter 12, and then the beast from the sea and the beast from the land, first beast probably being the emperor or the empire, and the second beast being probably the propagandists, the religious priests and promoters of the empire and the emperor so i i refer to that in the title subtitle of my book and in the book civil religion the marriage the kind of uh making the secular into something sacred and i think that that gets at the root of the american experience in a very dangerous way because in the first century it was rome and its religion and rome and its political entity power so forth but it was Rome and its religion and Rome and its political entity, power, so forth. But it was unchristian. It was a secular, if you will, or a pagan or polytheistic way of doing civil religion. But now, in our day and for a long time, and in other countries as well,

but especially in the United States, we have this merger of a kind of very Christianity light with a very deep military, political, economic power that they reinforce each other in somewhat dangerous ways. And it doesn't always mean it's the government per se, but people who put Jesus and the cross and Christian faith together with some form of American exceptionalism, or even of anti-American violence, like we saw on January 6th. I mean, some people would say that's very pro-American, but it's also anti-American. Kind of an ironic twist there. Depends on what news outlet you're in. Exactly. crosses or images of crosses, that merger of American and Christian symbolism in a violent context makes the book of Revelation, to my mind, even more relevant today than when I wrote the book 12, 14 years ago. I'm hearing you. So, I'm always trying to, because I refer to being in

exile in Babylon to our experience as Christians in America, and I'm constantly trying to, because I refer to being in exile in Babylon to our experience as Christians in America. And I'm constantly trying to answer some of the pushbacks. And there are several. And I want to be clear. Right now, and I've talked to Warren Carter about this. He's done a lot of work in a similar area. I don't want to call, I think America, you know, I asked Warren, is America an empire like Rome? Is it kind of like Rome? Not at all like Rome? And he says, he kind of said, I would say it's

kind of like, you don't want to map one just perfectly on the other. But the very nature in which Revelation presents this concept of Babylon is elastic by design so that you don't have to be exactly like Rome to have imperial characteristics that do make you out to be a Babylon. And so here's where I'm going with my question here is one of the pushbacks I often get is, well, yeah, but Rome, okay, they merge politics and religion, but it was pagan. It was forcing Christians to commit literal idolatry where America, if anything, is the opposite. It has more of a Christian kind of influence on the government. And they say that positively. And I kind of

step back and say, I think that that's almost worse because now you're dragging the church, which is intrinsically anti-imperial or at least non-imperial, not at times anti-imperial and marrying it with the power of the empire. And you think this, this new empire, America is good. It's for the good of the world and all this stuff. And then, I don't know, we get so far down these kinds of different roads that we're doing. We need to back way up and look at some foundational stuff before we even get there. But all that to say, the so-called Christianizing of the American empire-like

mission or goal or just characteristics, it seems like the book of Revelation would be even more horrified at that. Yeah, for sure. Because what we get in chapter 13 is, as Eugene Peterson says in his wonderful little commentary on the book of Revelation, Reverse Thunder, you have basically militarism and propaganda working together. Yes. And the propaganda is religious in overtone. So, well, in substance, I guess. So when you Christianize that, now you have political and economic and military power being held up by and supported by and promoted by the Christian faith. And this really gets back to what I think is the central claim of the book of Revelation, which is that the power of God is displayed not in imperial power,

but in lamb power. The crucified lamb who was presented in chapter five as worthy of worship and whose life and especially death and resurrection are the key to divine power. That's such a profound challenge to any political system, but particularly one that's hyper-powerful. I want to read those two verses because I think you and others say these are kind of like the interpretive key to the whole book, or at least it's really fundamental to the shape of the whole book. So Revelation 5, verse 4, John says, I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. And then one of the elders said to me, don't weep. See, it's an important word, look, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has triumphed or conquered, nika'o. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.

Then John says, then I saw a lamb. And I'm kind of throwing you a softball here that the kind of hearing and seeing, then I saw the lamb, didn't see a lion, I saw a lamb looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. Can you unpack what's going on here theologically, this lion-lamb kind of relationship here, in what is indisputably one of, if not the central theological pieces in the book. But it's interesting that some, I've heard some so-called worship songs, contemporary Christian music, which want to present these as two images of Jesus, and we, in a sense, implying theologically we need to hold on to both. We've got the slaughtered lamb, but he's coming back as the forceful lion. No, that's the whole point of this image is that when we look for the Lion of Judah, that is for the Jewish Messiah, the figure that we see, and as we're expecting, is in fact the lamb who was slaughtered and is now standing, the resurrected, crucified Jesus. And it's not two different

images. It's one image. This is the Messiah that we have received. This is the Messiah that we worship, the slaughtered lamb, not some, you know, powerful king who kicked out the Romans or tried to destroy the Romans or whatever. But what's also important about that image is then what are the discipleship consequences? What are the ethical consequences of that? If this is, in fact, the central image of the book of Revelation, Baucom points out, for instance, that the Lamb appears 28 times referencing Jesus in the book of Revelation, seven times four, it's hard not to conclude that seven for wholeness and four for universality. I think that that's not accidental. Bachem makes that point himself, something like that. This is the central image of the book of

Revelation. And so if that's the case, what does it mean to imbibe and to live according to this lamb power as opposed to Babylonian power? So ultimately, there's two very different ideologies and theologies being presented in this book. And Christians need to choose between them and not try to merge them. I think it was Bacchus. A lot of people say this now, but I think Bacchus might be the source where in Revelation, we see this juxtaposition of hearing and seeing. And he'll hear something, but then when he sees, he'll see a different image. But like you said, these are not two different, like two sides of the coin. It's the second, it's what he sees is interpreting what he's hearing so that – well, here's a quote from Bacham on this passage. Yeah.

By juxtaposing the two contrasting images, John has forged a new symbol of conquest by sacrificial death. Exactly. but he has done so by sacrifice for the benefit of people from all nations. So that the lamb power, namely sacrifice, nonviolence, death, is the power by which he conquers the beast and is the lion. It's not like, yeah, he's also a lion over here and uses Rome-like power. And then over here, he also uses lamb-like power. No, lamb-like power is the lion-like power that conquers the world. Is that accurate? Yeah, I think that's exactly accurate. And so when you get to chapter 19, when Jesus comes and we see blood, is it the blood of taking the life of others, or is it his own blood? And the

theme, I think, runs through the book is that when we have references to the blood of the lamb, The theme, I think, runs through the book is that when we have references to the blood of the lamb, blood associated with the lamb, it's his blood. And so that's why it says the discipleship implications are if you are conquered, you go off. You know, your role is to bear witness in the spirit of the lamb. The language I like to use with my students is we're called to be faithful witnesses to the faithful witness. And if Jesus is the ultimate faithful witness, and that's how he's identified in the book of Revelation, what does it mean to be faithful to him? part to embody this lamb-like power, this refusal to engage in violence and this refusal to do anything that violates the life teachings and spirit of Jesus. And I would say this is throughout the New Testament. When we go to Paul, for instance, I think, you know, both of us have a lot of interest in the Apostle Paul. I think Paul and John are pretty close here. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 that Christ crucified is

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I want to kind of maybe tease out kind of what kind of broader implications for political theology we can get from the book. And In particular, I think one of the most maybe startling and unbelieved claims in Revelation that's so at home in first century Jewish and Christian thought, and yet so contrary to how many modern Christians think, is that the dragon is empowering the beast. This comes from Revelation 13.4. People worship the dragon, which is clearly Satan, because he had given authority over the beast, which is clearly in the first century mindset some kind of reference to the Roman Empire. Again, some people may try to break it down more specifically.

It's the militaristic rule. It's a political rule. It's literal Rome in Italy. It's whatever. It's some reference to the empire trying to rule the world. And they worship the beast and ask, who is like the beast? Who could wage war against it? They're enamored with the militarism, the military power that Rome can demonstrate. So this idea that Rome as an empire, as Babylon is empowered by the dragon, can we imply theologically that other Babylon-like, empire-like governments are empowered by Satan on some level? Well, it's interesting. I think the answer is yes, the short answer, but we have to be very careful here. I don't think it's right to attribute satanic or demonic power to everything a government does. That can get pretty dangerous, and I'll come back to that in a second. But for instance, if we go, the easy example of this is what do we want to say about Hitler's regime?

I mean, that's evil to the core. more than simply every, you know, most of the German people getting on board in some kind of sociological peer pressure reality. There's something more demonic about that spirit, about that reality that unfolded. And I think that when an empire is that evil, an empire is that evil. The biblical way of saying and describing that is to say it is satanic, it is demonic. There's something about this that is so fundamentally anti-God and anti-human that there's no other way to explain it. On the other hand, I would say that places that are empire-like but not in the extreme of, say, Nazi Germany, then we could say that there are aspects of that government's activity that wouldn't be wrong to attribute to a power greater than the actual civil authority. than the actual civil authority. So, for instance, I'll be, you know, probably get some people who say, I can't agree with you about this, but you remember how horribly children were separated and treated at the border a few years ago, not just under the Trump administration, but apparently also even under the Obama administration,

to separate children and to treat them almost like animals, to cage them. There's something profoundly evil about that. What would convince people that that is an appropriate way to treat human beings? And the answer to that may be it's not simply human inventiveness or human ingenuity or even human necessity. What else are we going to do? There's something profoundly evil about that. And I think different Christians are going to identify different things as profoundly evil. And this is why we need each other to talk through some of these things. Some people would say, you know, for instance, a government approval to do X is demonic. And

someone would say just the opposite, the government approval. It's the Supreme Court rules for abortion restrictions. That's demonic. If Supreme Court rules against abortion restrictions, that's demonic. If Supreme Court rules against abortion restrictions, that's demonic. So that's why I said we have to be careful about what we ascribe to satanic activity or to demonic activity. But I don't think we're off the mark, at least to raise those kinds of questions. I guess, yeah, no, that's super helpful. And I'm glad you kind of touched on it. I don't want to fall back into kind of the demonic influence being all of a sudden partisan again. You know, we so easily fall back into that because I don't think that would, I think that would kind of go against. And you don't have partisan stuff in Rome necessarily like you do in America.

I don't want to map one on the other. But, you know, you have people that were for empires and for a republic and you had internal disputes or whatever. And the New Testament seems to be profoundly disinterested in better forms of Babylon versus worse forms of Babylon. There's just kind of Babylon. And yeah, I guess Hitler is an easy example, but even you look at Roman empire and you could easily see how people would get swept up in the propaganda. You know, the Pax Romana, they established peace. They built these roads. They kept thieves at bay.

Even Christians can say, look, they outlawed adultery. I mean, I don't know enough about the Roman court system or whatever. But like you can, if you believe even half of the propaganda that came out from Rome, you could be like, hey, but okay. We have a lot of power and everything, but we exercise it for good. Yeah. There's that famous quote from a, who's the second century, uh, Rome makes a desert with a sword and calls it peace or something. Right. And I just wonder if there, if there are, and look, I'm Mike, I'm, I'm really, I don't want to push. I don't want to map the Roman Empire onto America too cleanly, naively. Okay? So I'm not – I don't really want to – I don't want to push for that.

I want to be exegetically responsible. So I'm not going to – but I just – I do see – again, I think empire-like, Babylon-like, Rome-like, there's overlap. There's differences here because people always point out, well, we're a democracy. Like we're not run by dictators or whatever. I'm like, yeah, again, that would be one difference, you know. There's probably a lot of differences. There are differences. To go back to the point I made earlier, whether we call it civil religion or, you know, Christian

nationalism or religious nationalism. This is, to me, almost beyond some of the militaristic or economic or other political aspects of the American empire, small e in scare quotes or whatever. This fusion of and therefore the sacralization, the making sacred of not only secular things, but sometimes very dangerous activities and things, to give them that kind of religious zeal and support and even propaganda in the name of Jesus, in the name of Christianity. That is so common in this country. And as you may remember in the book, I go through three or four pages just listing the forms of civil religion that people just take for granted. Everything from pledging allegiance with God's name in it, to prayers in time of war for success in battle, to religious language used to justify one political thing or another. Christian or theistic, Christian light, I used the language earlier, Christian light,

theology and language into the political realm is not a good thing. It's a dangerous thing, because now we're beginning to sort of put God's stamp of approval on whatever particular action, policy, or general reality that we are looking at. And that's very dangerous. Well, and again, it's easy to pick out kind of the clear evils, you know, or like, you know, Republicans might say like, well, Obama, you know, had all these drone strikes killing children in the Middle East. I'm like, 100%, that was horrible.

And the other side of the aisle is going to have its own list of horrible things. Or even like, you look at some of America's, and I'm not an expert in this, so I don't want to get beyond my skis, but dabbled enough to know, man, we've done some really shady stuff in Latin America, especially. Oh my gosh. Installing tyrants because they were pro-America and for profound economic advantage for america at the expense of crippling the economy of some of these countries and stuff and again fact check everything people are like no that's not okay just there's enough that even if half of the stuff i read is true it's like that feels very babylon like you know like advancing your own economic interests

serving your own wealth, funneling stuff. And this is so almost written right out of Revelation 18. It's like when I read Revelation 18, I'm like, I think there's a lot of similarities here. Not with everything America does, maybe not with most of it, but there's some overlap here, you know? Yeah, I agree 100%. I think the problem is for many Americans, there's a default assumption that something you hinted at earlier, there's a default assumption that A, we're a Christian country. B, we do things for the good of the world, spreading democracy, spreading freedom. It's very hard, very hard for Americans, including many and I'd say most American Christians, to think that it's okay to be critical of your own country because that's unpatriotic, as if patriotism were some defining Christian value. in value and rather than saying our ultimate allegiance and our primary focus cannot be any nation state or any political entity. And we've got to always have a kind of critical eye toward politics.

I remember as a freshman in college, I didn't know anything about politics. I took an international relations course. First day of the semester, I learned something that i'll never forget never knew never forget now international relations course first lecture international relations is all about national self-interest period and as i thought as a christian and the professor happened to be a christian as a christian i thought wow that's not very Christian, is it? It's so blatantly not Christian, but it's like most Christians would hear that like, well, yeah, of course. Exactly.

But at the very heart of the Christian faith is an act of non-self-interest called the self-giving incarnation and death of Jesus, right? faith and the basics of politics that you have got to at least say, we need to be watchful and careful and even critical. How do you respond to, because I get this a lot, that when people hear me talk about, and I, you know, just trying to be really precise with my wording, you know, just trying to like, and I want to come back to Romans 13, admit to every governing authority, 1 Peter 2, because that's a, that's a, I believe that, I believe seeking to go to the city and all this stuff. And, and yet that still has to come from a posture of suspicion, even protest. Like our submission is because God is ultimately in charge because we belong to a different kingdom because weakness and sacrifice is divine power that these are the motivations for submission. It's not

because we think the state is so great. At the end of the day, it's still demonically empowered. I mean, in the first century, that's the framework. In my attempt to try to distance a Christian identity from the state, people say, well, no, Christians need to be engaged in society and fight unjust laws and spread a Christian influence in all spheres of life, including the political life. How do you respond to that? Well, I think there's truth in that. What I often say is the further up the ladder you go, the more dangerous politics becomes. So, for instance, trying to be a Christian presence in a local city council versus the state government versus national government, where now the stakes are much higher. CIA activity in South America or other kinds of activity that simply by being in that government

role you are participating in. And we could nuance that in terms of various understandings of moral responsibility. But anyhow, we don't have time to do that. But my point is, even if we read Romans 13, 1 to 7, you know, it's funny how people call it Romans 13. It's really just the first half of Romans 13. Second half says a lot about love. And the context of Romans 13, 1 to 7 is all of chapters 12 and 13. 12 and 13. And the first part of chapter 12, very well-known verses for many people, is, I beseech you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice and wholly acceptable to God, which is your reasonable or logical or rational

service. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what is the good and perfect will of God, etc. So the fundamental posture of the Christian community is one of non-conformity. Martin Luther King said we're called to be transformed non-conformists. Love that image in one of his sermons in the Strength to Love book. So anyhow, my point is, if we are called to be nonconformist, and that's the fundamental starting point of chapters 12 and 13, there's no way on God's earth that chapter 13, one to seven can simply mean blind obedience to the state, absolute allegiance to anything it does. It implies, in fact, that there will be times when we can't support government activity. It reinforces the claim of acts.

We must be obedient to God rather than other humans, et cetera. The posture that we are citizens of a different kingdom has to affect the way we do politics, the way we're involved in the political sphere, the way we live our common life has to be as a distinct body and not simply buying into the culture. That's good. And correct me if I'm wrong, I mean, submission, which is clear in scripture, Titus, was it 3, 1, I think even uses the term obey there, 1 Peter 2, Romans 13, even having some exile stuff in the Old Testament. But submission and allegiance are two very, very different concepts. Sure. John Howard Yoder used to say, yes, we submit and we pay the consequences when necessary.

Yes. So to submit is very different from obey. And it's very interesting that in Romans 13, the word obey does not appear. And I was, I was remarking to my students yesterday, the study Bible, many of them were using, had edited in the little caption, obedience to authority. I said, well, that's very interesting since the word obedience is not there. It is in Titus 3, I think. Well, I'm reading out of the CSB. Remind them to submit to rulers and authorities to obey, to be ready for every good work. But yeah, all the other passages say submit. But I'm not too concerned about submission and obedience as much as allegiance.

Because you can even obey the governing authorities, which is a kind of submission. But allegiance, I think, is too. I mean, this is why, I mean, I know I might lose some listeners right now, but just more of a personal thing, I guess. I mean, it's rooted in scripture, but like, I don't pledge the allegiance because, but I submit to my government authorities. I try to be a really good citizen. I pay my taxes. I give honor where honor is due, but allegiance is just way too religious of a concept. And I just can't call it my conscience or whatever. I just, I don't, I can't imagine John, the author of Revelation saying, make sure you give allegiance to the beast. Okay.

Make sure you pledge your allegiance. Now, if they ask you to do something sinful, don't do it. But your allegiance is still to the beast. I just sound, that just feels like I don't see that implied anywhere in the shape of Revelation. Yeah. I haven't pledged allegiance since I was probably junior in high school or something like that. Yeah, I completely agree with that. I think people are sometimes afraid to think through that. Stephen Fowle, the author of a book called Idolatry, raises that question in the book. Stephen Fowle is a great New Testament scholar here in Baltimore.

And Steve teaches at a mostly undergraduate institution. And when he raises this question in class, it's like he's got three heads. Students say, how in the world could it he wants to just to think about the possibility is it possible that pledging allegiance could be an act of idolatry i i understand the the reaction of students to that but i think it's something we should take very seriously and think about how um and of course you've got religious language in the pledge of allegiance and that's it's not specifically Christian, simply theistic. But that's, that goes back to my earlier point.

When you start bringing religious language into political, now you've really upped the ante significantly. You know, it's funny. I mean, it's not funny. It's actually sad. But I get most nervous when I don't pledge the allegiance when I'm in Christian environments or when I know Christians are around me. I've been in an environment where I'll hear them and they'll notice somebody not pledging and they'll start saying, look at that person. Can you believe they're not?

And I'm like sitting over here like, oh, if they look at me, I mean, and I'm not a scared kind of person. Like I'm like, you know, I'm a pacifist. What am I going to do? Fine, beat me up, get arrested. I can't think of any experiences in a Christian setting where that's happened except at a Lutheran high school graduation of my nephew some years ago. And then at a church we attended for a while many years ago first sunday we were there was july fourth weekend yeah that was part of the worship service and when yeah but i think um for me the the interesting challenge we we don't stand for the national anthem at baseball games. That's also a weird experience.

People look at you, what's your problem? You know, how un-American are you? And to me, to me, that's too much like hymning or singing a praise to the nation state. And I just won't do it. So, I mean, true confession. Sometimes I just get up and use the restroom before the first pitch, just avoid the national anthem and avoid having to, to be looked at, you know? So I, I, so that's kind of convicting. Cause I, I, I stand, I usually put my hands behind my back and I don't, I don't do anything. I don't, I don't sing it. I don't whatever, or even the pledge of allegiance, I'll stand and I'll put'll put my arms behind my back and I don't put my hand over my heart because I feel like that's symbolically what that symbol means is the kind of allegiance. I was like, I can't go there. And a family of Jehovah's Witnesses, and a couple of them were in my class. And they did just that during the Pledge of Allegiance.

They stood politely, didn't put their hand over their heart, didn't speak. And at the time, I thought, oh, how unsomething that is. But I did respect the fact that they stood. I never understood until I was older why they were doing what they did. Yeah, that's interesting. So going back to the critique of Christians, if you push this vision too hard, you're going to cause Christians to not care about justice around them. That'd be the number one critique I get is like, well, you're a privileged middle-class person. It's easy for you to not care about all the injustices around you. I'm like, well, hold on.

I didn't say I didn't care about injustice. I think what if we embodied the way of the Lamb as the church in addressing the injustices and not think that working through Babylonian channels are the best way to do it. But even that, like, what about the civil rights movement? I'm like, I think that's a great example of addressing injustice, even that are wrapped up in the Babylonian systems, because a couple of things, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. Number one, they did, at least MLK's heart behind it was, we're going to use Christian means to address unchristian things. We're going to be nonviolent.

We'll go to prison when we're arrested. We'll submit to the government. It was very much a Romans 13, Revelation 13 balance in how they went about it. And as far as I know, it was explicitly not partisan. They didn't think that, oh, we're going to work through this side of Babylon because they're the good side and this side's the bad side. It was like, we're going to do this as a protest movement

against Babylon, but we're going to still kind of be distant from the ways of Babylon and how we go about this. And that might be an overly glamorized understanding, but I think that was at least MLK's heart behind it. Is that legitimate? I think that's exactly right. Of course, not everybody agreed with MLK. And there were people who wanted to act violently and so forth. But if you read,

for instance, his beautiful letter from a Birmingham jail, which viewers and listeners haven't ever read that, it's online. You can find a beautiful piece of work about the christian um character of of his witness and then you also you know toward the end um he he protested the vietnam war and people said stay in your lane you know don't don't don't get out of of um your focus on civil rights you'll lose your audience and And his response was, I see these as two sides of the same issue. You know, this is about the, the way that secular power is being used to harm other people. And, and, and I'm going to protest that because it's, it's of a piece. It's a seamless garment, if you will, um, for me. So, yeah, that's good. Well, Mike, I've taken you

an hour. I just noticed the time. I feel like it's been good. Well, Mike, I've taken you an hour. I just noticed the time. I feel like it's been like 15 minutes, but this is so, yeah, this is so good. Thank you so much for making time for this. And thank you so much for your ongoing work. I hope you keep writing a book a year, really, in my wishes.

I know that's probably not realistic. Well, thanks, Preston. And same to you. Blessings on all of your fruitful ministries. It's great to catch up with you and to be with your friends. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.