Derek: 00:28

Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. We began our season by talking about the importance of looking at what I deemed the false prophet, religion wielded for power. Since then, I've highlighted a few key ways throughout history in which the False Prophet has reared its ugly head, something that it's had much opportunity to do in the West since the rise of Constantine and Christendom. I understand how focusing on the negative, on the false prophet, could come across as if I think the church should be dismissed, but that's not at all what I'm saying. Mimicry is the highest form of flattery, right?

Derek: 01:07

And the co opting of the good and the powerful is the way evil so often works. The fact that the false prophet has wielded and manipulated religion so frequently doesn't, in my mind, point to religion being evil. Rather, it highlights how wonderful religion can be. Religion is so wonderful and so practical, and so tied to the notions of meaning and belonging that we as humans have that evil, the wolf, seeks to dress up in religion's clothing. I mean, just think about pseudoscience for a moment.

Derek: 01:41

Pseudoscience is ubiquitous, and scientists are constantly combating terrible scientific information. Con artists and charlatans are using science all the time, because it's, in many ways, the religion of our age. Yet, scientists of all people understand that faulty science and misused science don't at all disprove the methodology and findings of true science. Rather, the desire to so strongly co opt science shows that it has much actual power to describe our world and to help us live better lives. So for me, religion is an extremely powerful but an extremely good force.

Derek: 02:21

Yet, it's one which, like science, needs to be parsed out very well. We need great discernment when we come to religion. Now discernment is very challenging though when it comes to religion because in the first place, there are so many groups competing for your allegiance to them, to their denomination, claiming that they have the true orthodoxy. And such notions are really hard to dispel because false prophets are often very devious in their interpretation of the past and in their obscuring of facts. I came across the, this firsthand when I was doing my season on abortion a few years ago.

Derek: 03:01

I'd heard that one of the decisions that the Southern Baptists had made back in the late sixties or early seventies was to uphold the importance of abortion in instances they'd never affirm today. And sure enough, I went to their archives online and I found the proof. But when I went back to the site a year or two later, it was gone. However, because I understood that these types of things happened, I made sure to store the site in the way back machine in the archives, so that you can still get to it. And I think I actually used the archive link in in that season's notes.

Derek: 03:39

I try to do that when I can. There's a source that I'm like, I bet that's gonna get pulled at some point, I try to archive it. So this is the type of thing that false religion does. Rather than dealing with true history, we manufacture the history that we want. Our history is important when commemorated in glorious monuments, but we don't acknowledge the monumental failures.

Derek: 04:04

There can be no such thing as weakness for the false prophet, therefore, there can be no such thing as repentance. Repentance is weakness, and as we saw with our episode on the donation of Constantine, those who seek power need to believe in their heroic origins. They need to be part of a pure, unadulterated line. All this lends itself to religion seeking power, wielding deception, perpetuating oppression, and fracturing into tens of thousands of echo chambers we in Christianity term denominations. There can't be inclusion of others of slightly varying beliefs, there can only be our truth because our truth is God's truth.

Derek: 04:48

Isn't that how the saying goes? I mean, we've said it from the beginning of the season and I'll say it again, where you find polarization, you find propaganda and power grabs, and likely, the false prophet. Now, this doesn't mean that one can't be exclusive in their beliefs. The early church had a rigid expectation for beliefs and actions to be admitted to and to continue in the church. On the other hand, the Romans were very inclusive and that they accepted gods from all over the globe, from the various lands that they conquered.

Derek: 05:24

Yet the Romans showed us that their inclusivity was really pretty exclusive and that they persecuted the Christians for their faith. While the Christians showed that their exclusive faith was really inclusive and that it drove them out to the poor, to the foreigner, to the widow, to the orphan, and to help even the pagans who came down with the plague. So maybe we could look at this with a little bit of an analogy here. Let's think of the Romans as a large group, a very large group, very numerous, who built walls of defense around themselves and anyone who assimilated to them could be in those walls. From those walls, they'd defend their uniformity and they'd go out conquering those who weren't like them in order to bring them inside the walls.

Derek: 06:11

Now early Christianity, on the other hand, it built tighter knit walls of exclusivity. But instead of being walls of defense that from which it went out to conquer and bring people in and kind of become an island unto itself, the walls that it built were in order to create a safe space, more like a hospital or triage. The church in the four walls of the building that the church met in were a place where the doctors or the diagneitas, the souls of the world could meet, recharge, heal, get their medicines, and recuperate. Then from inside these four walls, they would move out into the larger world, not to conquer, but to love and to heal, and to invite anybody back inside those four walls who wanted to heal and who wanted to come willingly. Now I'll let you figure out which one Christendom has been more like, whether it's been more like the Roman one with the walls, big walls for defense that go out and conquer, or the early churches with walls for triage and to go out to invite people in.

Derek: 07:26

It seems like the rest of church history has a particular strand running within it. Will the church conquer and exert power like the Gentiles do, like the Romans did? Or will the church conquer as Jesus conquers? By the testimony of their mouths and the laying down of their lives in self sacrifice as Revelation depicts it. Will the church force society to assimilate by the power of government sword and call that inclusivity because it welcomes all those who comply?

Derek: 08:00

Or will the church be a place of exclusivity out of which those who walk the narrow path of Jesus move into the world in order to love, even the love of enemies. Needless to say, this is a topic filled with thousands of years of history, contentious topics in some very gray areas. You could spend all your time just researching the rise of Constantine, let alone everything else necessary to understand church history. So in this episode, probably more than any of the other episodes, I'm gonna just scratch the surface of where you should begin. But hopefully I'll structure the recommendations in a way that will give you a good overview of the topic from which you can choose where to delve deeper.

Derek: 08:45

I think the best place to start when looking at Christianity and empire would be to go all the way back to Jesus, Figuring out what Jesus said and taught both by looking at what He said and taught, as well as looking at how His early followers understood Him, that's gonna be a great baseline for you to move forward. And to do this, I I would recommend a number of books. First of all, and I will note this right off the bat, The Politics of Jesus was one that that I, that actually started me on on this whole thing. It was very very helpful book to me, but it needs to be noted that the author John Howard Yoder is somebody who was then later, I don't think he was convicted, but like everybody knows, he sexually assaulted people. And so you absolutely have to know that and decide whether or not that is is a work that you're going to use.

Derek: 09:48

So I put it here just because it's it's something that you're gonna hear a lot, it's something that was personally influential for me, and I did not know about his background at the time that I used it, but I think you can get you can get things from other sources as well if that's gonna be a problem for you to to work through and whatnot. Something similar to Yoder's book and actually more digestible and and I think it covers a little bit more ground just in a maybe a little bit more basic way, would be a book called The Upside Down Kingdom. And that was one that I really liked the first time, like it wasn't quite as in your face as The Politics of Jesus and The Implications. There was one chapter on pacifism, and I was like, this guy's a nut, but everything else that he said was really good. So I kinda just dismissed the the chapter on pacifism at the time, but it was it was a really high quality book.

Derek: 10:43

And along with this you could look at the day the revolution began, and that would be a great start for you in terms of kind of taking a look through a a political lens. Back at the beginning with a focus on on Jesus and this idea of kingdom. And then from there, I would recommend two books and I'm actually, this is the day before I interview one of these authors and I have an interview set up with the other one, but both of these books were great. And they are Caesar and the Lamb and the Global Politics of Jesus. Caesar and the lamb is going to be much heavier focus on the early church, and you'll get lots and lots of early church quotes.

Derek: 11:33

Now for me, that was actually early church quotes when I discovered that the early church spoke a lot about pacifism and and other things like money, politics. When I found that out, I was just kind of flabbergasted. I didn't think they they really talked about that kind of stuff. And then when you find out the extent to which they talk about it and the uniformity to which they talk about it, it's just it's it's mind blowing and, you know, to see such a consensus and and with so much content, it's really amazing to read some of the things and Caesar and the Lamb gives you a great selection of quotes that are going to help you get an idea of what politics are, what the kingdom is, and how the early church viewed that. Now maybe you don't give the early church any weight, maybe you think the first three hundred years they were all wrong about Jesus and then they got it right after Constantine, and great, but you need to at least understand what they were saying at this point because you gotta explain that away somehow.

Derek: 12:48

So Caesar and the Lamb, and then, yeah, the Global Politics of Jesus. There are definitely some early church quotes in there, but that book is more of it's kind of a beast in terms of there's just a lot of content there, but it spans everything. I mean, he's got Niebuhr in there, but then he's also got the early church, and he looks at, you know, results of various political ideologies, Christian ideologies. It gets into a lot of different aspects of the kingdom and the way that Christians have tried to do politics through various ages. So it's a really in-depth read.

Derek: 13:32

And then the last one I'd recommend would be Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution. That's gonna be like your deepest dive overall, because it's gonna explore even in more detail than the global politics of Jesus and Caesar and the Lamb, kind of the political ideas throughout church history, but it's gonna be, it's a pretty thick book, but it's very helpful to kind of see how ideas have developed, so it's gonna more follow those ideas through time, and you're gonna get a better understanding of how we got to where we are. And of course, you could also just go listen to my season two seasons ago, whatever number that is, nine, on government and Christian anarchism, and you're gonna find lots and lots of resources there, as well as the episodes, and my very first season on non violence, or on pacifism, which is gonna be useful in this regard as well, and giving you some resources to look at. But after you get a good grasp of what Jesus in the early church taught, it'd be really good to contrast that ethic with the ethic and practice of empire. Now there's really so so much material on empire, especially today.

Derek: 14:58

You can get a lot of like post colonial writings and and things everybody's writing against empire at this point, which is good, but you know, it can also, it can get trendy too. But I I'd recommend checking out Jesus in a World of Colliding Empires. The book does a great job of contrasting Jesus' ethic with the ethic of empire, so it's gonna be a good bridge from like Jesus to empire, like comparing those. And I actually have an interview with the author of that book back in season nine on Christianity and government. For this section I also like Leonard Verdun's Anatomy of a Hybrid, and that's gonna show you how the state and the church create this hideous hybrid beast.

Derek: 15:48

Or you can also see look at his book, Reformers and Their Stepchildren, to see a bit of the darker side of the compromises that the Reformation made with the state. So once you finish with Jesus and Empire, and once you see how the false prophets strain of Christianity divorced Jesus for power, you should look at some of the prophetic voices from history. Some of the the middle church fathers like Chrysostom have shining moments, or even later Christians like Sir Francis have some some pretty shining moments too. But as far as revolutionary books that are a bit more recent, I'd recommend looking at Kierkegaard, specifically his Attack Upon Christendom, and you should also read Tolstoy's What I Believe and Bonhoeffer's Prison Letters. I personally really like Tolstoy.

Derek: 16:38

I liked both of the books that I read from What I Believe and I forget what the other one was, but I just like the way that he wrote. I don't agree with the extent that he takes Christianity. I think he, I don't know if he denies the resurrection, but that's way too far for me, and I think he denied some miracles and stuff, but he just he writes so compellingly and so beautifully, and he gives you a good perspective on some things there. So that should bring us up to modernity, and it's important to understand how the false prophet functions today. And I would recommend, I think these are secular books here, these first two, One Nation Under God by Cruz and The Evangelicals by Fitzgerald.

Derek: 17:29

Both of those are are very very good books and The Evangelicals is more of a, it's a thicker book and you're gonna get a much deeper dive into the history that brings us up to to modern day fundamentalism and evangelicalism. One Nation Under God focuses mostly on like, I think 1920 to maybe 1960 is the focus. But they're both very good at helping, they helped me to understand the formation of my group and why we have some of the major problems that we do. And I think they'll give you great insight. And especially, probably because they're they're not Christians themselves, so they're able to kind of look in from the outside.

Derek: 18:12

But then, that also does lead to, I remember with Fitzgerald, think there were one or two things where I was like, I don't know that that's an accurate depiction. So there are some some downsides to them not being Christians too because I don't I think sometimes there are some assumptions that maybe they don't understand completely. But by and large, I think they're able to be a little bit more objective than Christians are gonna be trying to prop up their own group. You can also take a look at myth of a Christian nation, the immoral majority, Jesus for President, and Democracy Matters. You might especially wanna read Democracy Matters because Cornel West is gonna be running for president next year, and he is the author of Democracy Matters, which was a great book.

Derek: 19:03

And then perhaps if you're gonna finish up with, you know, modernity and how do we apply these things today, you can't go wrong with Stanley Howarwas. You could grab like anything from him, but whatever you think looks applicable. He's got number of books that are just compilations of some of his essays and things that they they kinda piece together to try to make more of a coherent theme. But he's just such a good ethicist and somebody who I think is very aware of reality, yet unwilling to compromise on the reality of the kingdom. He's able to hold both of those things, right?

Derek: 19:44

As you have the false prophet and you know, people like Niebuhr who are willing to sacrifice morality and the vision of the kingdom in order to accomplish what they think is practical good. Somebody like Howarwas is going to say, no, it doesn't work that way. You gotta hold on to ultimate reality which is the kingdom and you live according to that and and let the world play out as it will based on on your decisions for the kingdom. So those are what the the books that I'd recommend to start off with if you're gonna uncover Christendom. You really need a a lot of people probably just wanna go to this post colonial stuff and just uncover empire and and stuff.

Derek: 20:33

And sure, that's that's important. If you can't see it, you need to learn to see that. But beyond seeing the the ugly side, you also need to see the good side, the side of people who are trying to give you a different vision. You need to see, you need to hear the true prophets in order to see why the false prophets are false. So that's why for at least where they speak on certain things, people like Tolstoy and Kierkegaard are great as well as Hauerwas and such.

Derek: 21:04

So hopefully that gives you a good start in uncovering Christendom. That's all for now. So peace, and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it. This podcast is a part of the Kingdom Outpost Network. Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to nonviolence and Kingdom Living.