Revolution Meets Empire: Colossians Refried

A couple of years ago in response to the U.S./France falling out, French fries were renamed Freedom fries in certain parts down south. At the time I thought the whole thing the epitome of silliness. Over the past week I’ve been reading a couple of quite different authors, which reminded me of the fries kafuffle. For the purposes of this blog-posting lets have a slight change in nomenclature and go with French fries and Empire fries. Under Empire fries let’s put the Scottish historian Niall Ferguson who commutes between Harvard and Stanford when he isn’t in London. In the January issue of Atlantic Monthly Ferguson comments on the growing cleavage between the U.S. and Europe and concludes that the reason for this is not changes in the U.S. but rather deep changes in Europe. This widening of the Atlantic, with the end of the Cold War, is due to the simultaneous secularization of the native European stock while at the same time the increasing upsurge in Islam as the result of immigration. America in contrast is marked by continued and vigorous Christian discourse.

It is in this context that Ferguson has been writing about “Empire.” In Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power Ferguson portrays Britain as the “mid-wife to modernity.” Positive achievements included English forms of land tenure and law, limits on the state, representative assemblies, the idea of liberty, and Protestantism. There were certainly “blemishes” and Ferguson paints them, but whenever there was despotism, liberal movements within Britain spoke out. Slavery was of course at the heart of British despotism. However at the height of the commercial success of slavery, at the time when commercial interests were most predisposed not to abolish slavery, evangelicals at almost the “turn of a light switch”, as Ferguson describes it, succeeded in abolishing it. Indeed, the Royal Navy was used in full to shut down the trade and to carry liberated slaves to the colony of Sierra Leone. Evangelicals could also have a vengeful side and Ferguson portrays it in his description of the popular response to the Indian Mutiny of 1857.

American power today has an uncanny resemblance to the British Empire. However there are key differences that Ferguson spells out in Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire. Unlike the earlier Britain Empire, the U.S. is a net importer of people and capital. America’s budgetary woes are due to domestic spending on entitlement programs such as social security rather than “imperial overreach.” Ferguson has a positive perspective on the U.S. projecting itself into the world to help especially needy areas but questions whether the U.S. will have the self-willed staying power that is required for the long view.

And now, for an entirely different view of Empire! Not long ago a student came to my desk raving about a new book. “This, is the funnest book that I have read in a long time.” Today I asked him exactly why he likes the book. “It was just something different. It imaginatively brings together Paul’s context and ours. This is the kind of stuff that could even get a non-academic interested in this period. Why aren’t there more books like this?”

The book is Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire by the husband and wife team of Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat. After reading the book I agree that it is a good read. It creatively makes use of prose, verse, and extended modern day “targums” that expand the text of Colossians. It held me and motivated me to re-read Colossians a couple of times.

In the subtitle (Subverting the Empire) Walsh and Keesmaat make a direct, no ifs, ands or buts, transference of “Empire” from Rome to the United States. My friend did say that, “They press a point to such an extent that if the early church had done so it would have been squashed.” Certainly, if given the choice between Empire or French fries Walsh and Keesmaat would grab the French fries. While I have difficulty getting my mind around French literary theory, due to my rather thick skull, I get the impression in their cultural analysis that the authors drink deeply of the wine of the French cult of reason. Foucault, Lyotard, and Levinas use this French tradition to critique modernity. I remain unconvinced that one can decouple modernity from postmodernity in the way it is done here.

And each time that the authors use “hegemony,” the ghost of the Italian theorist, Antoine Gramsci, sits quietly in the background sipping cups of espresso. I would maintain that, as with the British Empire, Christians have had a marked impact on the history of the U.S Empire. Gramsci (and I think Brian and Sylvia) would say that American evangelicals are “mere puppets dancing on the string” that is controlled by the “dominant ones.” So, the Christian living in Kansas has been entirely hoodwinked by Empire.

Sam Brownback is from Kansas and he sits in the U.S. Senate at the very heart of the hegemon. He has worked tirelessly to bring an end to sex trafficking and war in Sudan. Not long ago Nicolas Kristoff, normally a critic of all things Christian, wrote a complimentary op ed piece in the NY Times on Brownback. Although Brownback is a card-carrying member of the Religious Right, Kristoff says:

So, all in all, I find Mr. Brownback perhaps the most intriguing man in Washington - so wrong on so much, and yet such a leader on humanitarian issues. He is also working with liberals like Ted Kennedy to press for immigration reform, prison reform, increased funds for AIDS and malaria, construction of an African-American history museum and even an apology to American Indians.

This is the key difference between Roman and American empires. There is mystery and murkiness to it all. No two Christians will agree on just how much change Christianity has brought to any culture. But wouldn’t it be great to have Brian, Sylvia, and Sam sit down and have a conversation? Brian and Sylvia would lecture Sam on Kyoto, globalization, and capital punishment. Sam would hammer back on the priority of dealing with Darfur, human rights, and partial-birth abortion. But….if you can’t wait for this conversation try reading Colossians Remixed along with Freeing God’s Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights by Allen Hertze, who highlights some other unlikely conversation partners who are working as activists in the public arena. Both books will challenge us all to do a little personal remixing, or, as I prefer the pre-modern, try a little personal “refrying.”

Bill Reimer
bookblog@regent-college.edu