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THE EMPIRE OF THE EMPTY SHRINE:
AMERICAN IMPERIALISM AND THE CHURCH
William T. Cavanaugh*
We have been through this before. The first commandment prohibiting other
gods is not a hypothetical prohibition, but is set against the backdrop of the flight
from the Egyptian empire and its other gods, including the Pharaoh. Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego no doubt illustrated the first commandment for Daniel
in their refusal to worship the idols that the conquering Babylonians had erected.
The first commandment resonated with the early Christians, who found them-
selves unable to serve the Roman Imperial gods who demanded their worship.
However, the American empire, if it is an empire, is quite different from previous
empires, for it explicitly sets up no other gods to worship, but offers, as Michael
Novak says, an empty shrine. The intention of the founding fathers was to cor-
rect the mistakes of the past by establishing no religion. Each individual is to be
free to choose to worship one god, many, or none at all. According to Novak, the
shrine has been swept clean in democratic capitalism not out of indifference to
transcendence, but out of reverence for it, and out of respect for the diversity of
human consciences, perceptions, and intentions. Transcendence is preserved by
the freedom of each individual to pursue the ends of his or her choice.
1
What I want to explore in this essay is how the kind of emptiness or openness
that lies at the heart of liberal capitalism has an unfortunate tendency to lend
itself to the kind of constant expansion characteristic of empire. I want to argue
also that this emptiness and openness has a way of creating new forms of idolatry.
Despite the rhetoric of the empty shrine, in other words, the shrine in practice is
not empty, but is filled with other gods.
I do not wish to argue that empire is a necessary consequence of liberalism (lib-
eralism here understood as the political and economic philosophy and practice
based on the priority of personal freedom, not liberalism as opposed to conser-
vatism). There may be, as Jeffrey Stout argues, another more pragmatic strand
of liberal democracy.
2
I have a great deal of sympathy with Stouts attempt to
champion grassroots democratic virtues. In the age of a global and endless war on
terror, however, modest pragmatism is simply not the dominant strand of liberal-
* William T. Cavanaugh is Associate Professor of Theology at University of St. Thomas, 2115
Summit Avenue, Saint Paul, Minn. 55105.
1. Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), 54-5.
2. Jeffrey Stout, Democracy & Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
SUMMER 2006
VOLUME 2
NUMBER 2
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ism that we are dealing with, at least at the level of the nation-state. In the United
States, liberalism has been wed with perfect consistency with corporate and state
imperialism, and it is this strand that we need to examine.
I will begin by giving an analysis of what the American empire actually entails.
Then I will lay out a theological critique of empire, and put forward a vision of
how Christians should think about their primary political allegiance.
I. The Reluctant Empire
In order for the United States to have an empire, it is crucial that it constantly
deny that it has one. The very goal of the liberal democratic republic is to allow
everyone to pursue his or her way of life, not to impose one way of life on oth-
ers. One of the central organizing myths under which we live, therefore, is that
American dominance on the world stage is not something America pursued,
but was an obligation that arose because of the need to defend others. Andrew
Bacevich calls this the myth of the reluctant superpower. Historian Ernest May
has written, Some nations achieve greatness; the United States had greatness
thrust upon it.
3
It was only to defeat totalitarianisms, first fascism and then
communism, that the United States was built into a military superpower. After
World War II, all we wanted to do was to come home. But the containment of
communism forced us to take a more active role on the world stage. Since the fall
of communism, terrorism has forced the U.S. to act to rid the world of evil as
President Bush said on September 14, 2001. Bushs response to the 9/11 attacks
was typical of the master myth of the reluctant superpower. This nation is peace-
ful, but fierce when stirred to anger. The conflict was begun on the timing and
terms of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour, of our choosing.
4
In other
words, we were just sitting here minding our own business when. . . .
This is Americans preferred way of telling the story. Politicians, historians, the
media, and the person in the street know this version of the twentieth century
by heart. Telling the story this way does two somewhat contradictory things for
us. First, it preserves our sense of virtue. The inherent modesty of our liberal
political system is not belied but preserved in our supposed reluctance to use our
awesome power. Second, the story keeps us from reexamining the status of the
United States as world superpower. We did not choose it. It just happened, like an
act of God. There must, therefore, be a strong element of providence in Americas
8
3. Ernest May, as quoted in Andrew J. Bacevich, American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of
U.S. Diplomacy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 7.
4. George W. Bush, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September
2002, preamble to section III. The quotation is taken from Bushs speech at the National Cathedral
on September 14, 2001.
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preeminent position in the world at this juncture of history. And one must never
second-guess providence. On the one hand, then, the story of the reluctant super-
power preserves our sense of modesty. On the other hand, it elevates Americas
superpower status to a part in Gods design for history. Ironically, then, our mod-
esty and reluctance proves our God-given superiority.
The main problem with the reluctant superpower myth is that it is historically
false. As Bacevichs book American Empire documents, it is extremely misleading
to contend that the United States has only taken its place on the world stage as a
response to external events, notably the rise of communism and fascism. In fact,
the United States has been on a clear expansionist course at least since the nine-
teenth century. As Teddy Roosevelt said in 1899, Of course, our whole national
history has been one of expansion.
5
Especially since the end of the nineteenth
century, the United States has pressed, by military and other means, to create a
favorable world climate for American economic growth. American cold war strategy
was never driven solely by the need to contain communism, but was also driven by
the imperative to open world markets to American commerce. Under recent presi-
dentsespecially Clintonthe U.S. mantra has been the pursuit of openness,
that is, the lack of barriers to the free movement of money, people, and ideas across
borders of all kinds. This policy is nothing new. As banker Charles A. Conant put
it in 1898, What matters is that the United States shall assert their right to free
markets in all the old countries which are being opened to the surplus resources of
the capitalistic countries and thereby given the benefits of modern civilization.
6
In this quotation, we can see the intermingling of the two major justifications
for the policy of openness. The first is economic. As the United States became
industrialized in the nineteenth century, the sheer volume of goods produced far
outstripped the capacity of the domestic market to absorb them. The opening of
foreign markets, by military force if necessary, became essential for the export of
our surplus. Today, the logic is somewhat reversed. American superpower status
supports an import economy, where our domestic comfort is maintained by import-
ing (largely on credit) far more than we exportfor example, oil from the Middle
East and cheap domestic goods from China. Nevertheless, the underlying eco-
nomic justification for worldwide American hegemony is the same: openness and
free markets across the globe are thought sure to bring economic prosperity to the
whole world, and especially to the country with the greatest strategic access, that
is, the United States. Thomas Friedman, one of the most prominent advocates for
globalization makes the connection between openness and force explicit:
For globalization to work, America cannot be afraid to act like the
almighty superpower that it is. The hidden hand of the market will
5. Theodore Roosevelt, as quoted in Bacevich, American Empire, 7.
6. Charles A. Conant, as quoted in Bacevich, American Empire, 55.
EMPIRE OF THE EMPTY SHRINE
- Cavanaugh
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never work without a hidden fist. McDonalds cannot flourish without
McDonnell-Douglas, the designer of the F-15, and the hidden fist that
keeps the world safe for Silicon Valleys technology is called the United
States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
7
But the ever-greater openness of globalization is said not only to have economic
benefits but social and political dividends as well. Here is the second major jus-
tification for American expansion, the benefits of modern civilization of which
Conant spoke. Precisely because of the openness of Americas political system
the fact that the shrine is empty and each person is free to fill it with whatever he
or she wantsAmerica has discovered the secret of freedom and happiness for
everyone. America is, as Colin Powell has said, the first universal nation, offer-
ing to others a model of what is possible. In this regard the United States was
called upon to be a place where people of every background and distinction can
live in . . . the kind of peace and harmony that God meant for all His children.
8

George W. Bush has used even more explicitly messianic language: The ideal of
America is the hope of all mankind. That hope still lights the way. And the light
shines in the darkness. And the darkness will not overcome it.
9
Because Americas
values are universal, they are able to be spread throughout the entire globe, and
indeed, we have an obligation to do so. Thus, the call from Powell-aide and State
Department official Richard Haass for Americans to re-conceive their global role
from one of a traditional nation-state to an imperial power.
10
This would, how-
ever, be an informal empire organized around American values, which would
reduce the need to resort to American might.
Let me point to two ironies in this coincidence of economic and idealistic ratio-
nales. First, universalism feeds a virulent particularism, which is flag-waving
American nationalism. Precisely because we are the most universal, we stand apart
from the crowd. Because we understand history, we are the exception to history,
the Chosen Nation. Patriotic fervor not only justifies American adventures abroad
but also helps unite a class-divided country at home. In a liberal capitalist nation-
state where there is no agreement on the ends of human life, the nation-state itself
becomes the one agreed upon end. American patriotism helps us ignore the fact
that the economic class with the most to lose from globalizationthe working class,
through the loss of jobs to cheaper labor overseasis the class doing the actual kill-
ing and dying. Patriotism unites us by getting us to ignore class divisions.
7. Thomas L. Friedman, From supercharged financial markets to Osama bin Laden, the emerging
global order demands an enforcer. Thats Americas new burden, New York Times Magazine, (March
28, 1999), 96.
8. Colin Powell, as quoted in Bacevich, American Empire, 219.
9. George W. Bush, as quoted in Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans
are Seduced by War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 12.
10. Richard Haass, as quoted in Bacevich, American Empire, 219.
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The second, related, irony is that American empire oscillates between idealism
and selfishness. Not only is American self-interest equated with what is good for
the world. We expect empire to entail no sacrifice on our part and no limits to our
consumptive way of life. When Jimmy Carter called on Americans to respond to
the energy crisis with more modest expectations and sacrifice, he was trounced by
the more optimistic Ronald Reagan, who promised limitless abundance without
sacrifice, through military means. Both the idealism and the selfishness can be
derived from openness, the idea of limitless freedom for all.
What is important to notice at this point is that imperialism is not accidental to
U.S. history, but is perfectly consistent with the very foundations of the American
project: free market capitalism and liberal democracy.
First, capitalism is about growth and expansion; it is always searching for new
markets. Second, the openness of liberalism helps fuel American exceptionalism
and nationalism: because we are free to disagree about the ends of life, the only
thing uniting us is this freedom to disagree. America itself is the only thing we
can all agree is worth dying for. It is the fulfillment of Voltaires dictum: I may
not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Ideally, however, the death is someone elses, not my own. We are good at killing,
not so good at martyrdom. In General George S. Pattons famous dictum, No
bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other
poor dumb bastard die for his country. Finally, liberalism has a strong missionary
streak. Since it seeks to impose no particular religion or God or tradition or way
of life, it is universally applicable to all peoples around the world. And, given its
claims to have solved the problems of historythe conflicts that result from dif-
ferent peoples particularistic claimsthere is a powerful missionary impulse in
liberalism, an impulse to spread its blessings across the globe.
With the fall of communism, this missionary impulse has gotten more strident,
for now it seems that history has rendered its definitive verdict in favor of liberal
capitalism. As both Bill Clinton and Condoleezza Rice have declared, liberal capi-
talism has been revealed in the collapse of communism to be on the right side
of history. History therefore imposes certain obligations upon us. As Madeleine
Albright remarked we have our duty to be authors of history
11
; we have an obliga-
tion, in other words, to make sure that the right side of history comes out on top
through the spread of openness through globalization.
One might think that, with the vanquishing of communism, the long promised
peace of openness would have arrived. Now, however, we are being told that
openness makes the world more dangerous. As Bill Clinton said, The very open-
ness of our borders and technology also makes us vulnerable in new ways.
12
The
EMPIRE OF THE EMPTY SHRINE
- Cavanaugh
11. Madeleine Albright, as quoted in Bacevich, American Empire, 32-4.
12. William Clinton, as quoted in Bacevich, American Empire, 118.
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enemy has not disappeared, but has fragmented into decentralized networks of
resistance that can cross borders more easily than our Cold War enemies could.
In the age of globalization, the concept of national defense has been dropped
in favor of national security, such that virtually any problem around the
worldtrade issues, oil supply, terrorism, drug cartels, human rights violations,
and so oncan become a threat to the national security of the U.S. At the precise
moment when peace was to have arrived through the triumph of openness over
communism, we are now being told that openness itself has heightened the threat
to peace from those who continue to resist joining the right side of history.
13
Do U.S. elites then draw the obvious conclusion that the strategy of openness is
itself a threat to peace, and seek to curb the aggressive promotion of openness
around the world? Of course not. Peace, we are told, is just around the corner,
as long as we continue to promote ever-greater openness. And the only way to do
so, in an era in which our enemies are so decentralized, is to pursue ever-greater
expansion of military power, what the Pentagons Joint Vision 2010 calls Full
Spectrum Dominance. By some reckonings, U.S. military spending exceeds the
military spending of all other nations combined. By fully exploiting surveillance
and weapons technologies, the Pentagon believes we should be able to overcome
any conceivable combination of adversaries, in conventional wars, unconven-
tional wars, and those ambiguous situations residing between peace and war.
According to former Defense Secretary William Cohen, Technology now gives
the United States an opportunity that no other military has ever had: the ability
to see through the fog of war.
14
Omniscience and omnipotence are now within
our grasp. This confidence is expressed in Pentagon codenames Infinite Reach
and Infinite Justice for two recent military operations. As General Tommy
Franks has said, the new technology gives U.S. military commanders the kind of
Olympian perspective that Homer had given his gods.
15
Here we come to the theological heart of the imperial project. Empire is perhaps
best understood as an attempt to see and act as God sees and acts. Empire is
based in a claim of universality, the claim to be able to stand above all the messy
particularities of the worlds peoples and cultures, to see them not as Kurds and
Cajuns and Pashtuns and Galicians and Navajos and Igbos and Scotsmen but
as human beings, all with the same ultimate aspiration. In philosophical terms,
this project has affinities with the Platonic desire to ascend beyond the mortality
and particularities of this world. I will say more about the false theology of this
vision in the next section. But first, I want to review where we have come and
how we got here. We began with the American political systems claim to modesty:
the public shrine has been emptied of any one particular God or creed, so that
12
13. Bacevich, American Empire, 117-22.
14. William Cohen, as quoted in Bacevich, American Empire, 133.
15. Tommy Franks, as quoted in Bacevich, The New American Militarism, 22.
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the government can never claim divine sanction and each person may be free to
worship as she sees fit. We then saw how the very emptiness of the shrine makes
it transferable to any people on earth. America claims to have unlocked the uni-
versal secret to freedom, prosperity, and peace and feels obliged to share it with
the world. But because we pursue a world without borders, potential enemies are
everywhere, and so we fill the shrine again, with a national god who is capable of
seeing all resistance to openness and raining down death upon it.
II. Theological Critique of Empire
I would like now to turn to the Decalogue and see what light the Jewish and
Christian theological tradition can shed on the American empire. There are
certainly many different resources one could use to mount a Christian critique
on empire. I will limit myself to three passages from the Exodus account of the
covenant on Sinai because of the centrality of this account for the formation of
Gods people.
Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly king-
dom and a holy nation. (Exodus 19:5-6)
Here we have a statement of both universalism and particularity. The whole earth
is encompassed in Gods plan of salvation, and yet the covenant is made between
God and a single people. God does not view the people of the world as generically
equivalent, but chooses to save the world through the particular history of one
people, Israel. The particularity of Israel will never be effaced by a generic univer-
salism, precisely because the shrine is never truly empty. The God of Israel, who
is the God of all, is not a generic god, but is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
and Moses.
It is important to note that the language of priesthood and holiness, kingdom and
nationwhich we would divide into religious and political categories, respec-
tivelyare all used for Israel. Israel is not simply a religious body. The Law given
at Sinai is not religious law, but covers every aspect of life, from governance to
birds nests.
There is an influential kind of American exceptionalism that applies the logic of
universal salvation through one particular people to the United States. The U.S. is
the new Israel, the providential fulfillment of a universal act of temporal salvation
through one particular Chosen Nation.
16
The problem with this view is that the
New Testament identifies Israel with the church, not with any race or nation. As
EMPIRE OF THE EMPTY SHRINE
- Cavanaugh
13
16. Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of Americas Millennial Role (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1968).
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Paul makes clear in Romans 9-11, those Gentiles who believe in Christ are grafted
onto Israel. As 1 Peter 2:9 says, echoing Exodus 19:6, it is the church that is a
chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, Gods own people, in order that
you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his
marvelous light. The church is thus universal in that it calls people of all races
and nations, but it is particular in that it calls them into a different sort of disci-
pline that makes them distinct from any worldly political body. Those who stand
in the marvelous light of Christ no longer fit easily into any earthly nation, but
have become citizens of heaven.
The term adopted by the early church for itself has a distinctively political dimension.
The ekklesia was the assembly of all those with citizen rights in a Greek city-state.
The churchs use of the term ekklesia may be rooted in the Deuteronomic phrase
the day of the assembly at Sinai (Deut. 9:10; 10:4; 18:16). In adopting the term
ekklesia, the church was claiming to be more than a gathering of private interests.
The church was not just a part of a whole, one of the intermediate associations of the
Roman Empire, but was itself a whole. The interests of the church were not particu-
lar but catholic; that is, they embraced the fate of the entire world, and there was
no secular sphere independent of the churchs concerns. The church saw itself as
the eschatological fulfillment of Israel, and therefore as the witness and embodiment
of salvation to the world. The church was not exactly a polis, any more than Israel
was exactly a polis, and yet it used the language of kingdom (e.g., Mark 1:15) and
citizenship (Eph. 2:19; Phil. 3:20) to describe membership in it. For this reason,
Christians were viewed with suspicion by the Romans, because their loyalty to Christ
cut against their loyalty to any imperial project. In other words, Christians were not
questionable citizens of the empire simply because the Romans explicitly worshipped
other gods. Christians are questionable citizens of any empire or nation-state, because
their primary political loyalty belongs to the Body of Christ, the church.
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You
shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that
is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water
under the earth. (Exodus 20:2-6)
If it is the case that the empty shrine has been surreptitiously filled by a national
god, then the first commandment against other gods is clearly breached. What
makes the American case so much more difficult than that of the Roman Empire,
however, is that there is no single visible idol, no golden calf, to make the idolatry
obvious. We can of course point to the flag and other national symbols as focal
points of devotion, but officially, the shrine remains empty. Americans pledge
allegiance to a nation under God, not in Gods place. Openness is not a very
good candidate for idolatry, for it offers nothing that can be shaped in the form of
anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the
water under the earth. As Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle suggest, however, it is
the very invisibility and ineffability of the national god that makes it so powerful.
15
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To concede that nationalism is a religion is to expose it to challenge, to
make it just the same as sectarian religion. By explicitly denying that
our national symbols and duties are sacred, we shield them from com-
petition with sectarian symbols. In so doing, we embrace the ancient
command not to speak the sacred, ineffable name of god. The god is
inexpressible, unsayable, unknowable, beyond language. But that god
may not be refused when it calls for sacrifice.
17
The empty shrine becomes the new Holy of Holies, empty after the Babylonian
Exile but still signifying the unapproachable power of God. The myth of the reluc-
tant superpower, however, ensures that the name of the divinity not be spoken.
There is a problem in this critique of American empire, however, for we have said
both that the United States acts as a substitute church and that it acts as a substitute
god. This would not pose a problem for Marvin and Ingle, however, coming as they
do from the perspective of Emile Durkheim. For Durkheims key insight was, that
religion is essentially a social groups worship of itself. Religion, in other words, is
the way that a society represents itself to itself, and thereby maintains its identity
and unity. All religion is civil religion.
18
From the point of view of the Decalogue, a
Christian would say that religion is nothing more than the groups self-worship if the
one true God is not acknowledged. The very way the Decalogue is ordered indicates
that only if God is acknowledged as the source of the community, will the commu-
nity be able to refrain from killing, adultery, stealing, and the rest. The empty shrine,
however, threatens to make a deity not out of God but out of our freedom to worship
God. Our freedom comes to occupy the empty shrine. Worship becomes worship
of our collective self, and civil religion tends to marginalize the worship of the true
God. Our freedom, finally, becomes the one thing we will die and kill for.
You shall not kill. (Exodus 20:13)
Where the godlike pretensions of the Empire come most closely into focus is in the
increasing willingness and capacity to use military force anywhere in the world. As
Marvin and Ingle say, The first principle of every religious system is that only the
deity may kill. The state, which does kill, allows whoever accepts these terms to exist,
to pursue their own beliefs and call themselves what they like in the process.
19
In
other words, a basic principle of American openness is that you may confess on your
lips any god you like, provided you are willing to kill for American freedom.
EMPIRE OF THE EMPTY SHRINE
- Cavanaugh
17. Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation, Journal of the American
Academy of Religion 64, 4 (Winter 1996): 768.
18. Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Joseph Ward Swain (New York:
Free Press, 1963), 139.
19. Carolyn Marvin and David W. Ingle, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the
American Flag (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 10.
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If we look at the commandment against killing, we see how closely linked it is to
the first commandment. Many are puzzled by the seeming contradiction between
You shall not kill and the subsequent details on putting offenders to death in
Exodus and beyond. Some would like to translate the commandment You shall
not murder, but the root verb ratsach is used elsewhere in the Old Testament
(e.g., Deut. 19:1-13; Num. 35) to refer to unintentional killing. The key to the
commandment is in the subject, not the verb. You shall not kill, because I am the
Lord your God. Killing belongs to God, not to us. The fifth commandment, just
like the first, establishes an absolute divide between God and humans. You shall
not kill for the very same reason that you shall not worship other gods: because
there is only one God who is sovereign over life and death. The prohibition against
idols reaffirms the absolute divide between Creator and created. Indeed, the
whole structure of the Decalogue supports paying more attention to the subject
than to the verb. The first table is about the subject of the Law, the Lawgiver. Only
after the first table has established what is due to God does the second table spell
out what humans owe to each other. When we hear the expression shock and
awe we should think not of the Pentagons name for the first phase of the war in
Iraq, but of the Israelites at the foot of Mt. Sinai, trembling at the thunder and
lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the smoking mountain (Ex. 20:18).
The commandment against killing has everything to do with the way that history
is told. If we have replaced God as authors of history, in Madeleine Albrights
phrase, then clearly the commandment against killing no longer applies to us.
We no longer try to discern Gods providential action in history. We, not God, are
in charge of making history come out right. It is now our responsibility to make
sure, by violent means if necessary, that history follow the course that has been
revealed to us as the right one. As scripture scholar Gerhard Lohfink tells it, on
the other hand, Gods very election to work universal salvation through one par-
ticular people, Israel, is based in the absence of coercion.
[H]ow can anyone change the world and society at its roots without tak-
ing away freedom? It can only be that God begins in a small way, at one
single place in the world. There must be a place, visible, tangible, where
the salvation of the world can begin: that is, where the world becomes
what it is supposed to be according to Gods plan. Beginning at that
place, the new thing can spread abroad, but not through persuasion, not
through indoctrination, not through violence. Everyone must have the
opportunity to come and see. All must have the chance to behold and test
this new thing. Then, if they want to, they can allow themselves to be
drawn into the history of salvation that God is creating. . . . What drives
them to the new thing cannot be force, not even moral pressure, but only
the fascination of a world that is changed.
20
20. Gerhard Lohfink, Does God Need the Church?: Toward a Theology of the People of God, trans.
Linda M. Maloney (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1999), 27.
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This peaceful beginning seems contradicted by Gods destruction of the Pharaohs
armies in Exodus, but the point, as Moses says in 14:14 is that The LORD will
fight for you, and you have only to keep still. The idea that it is YHWH who fights
is the same even when the Israelites take part in the actual battle. In the Israelite
victory over the Amalekites in Exodus 17, for example, their victory is not attribut-
ed to the Israelite warriors but to the intervention of God. Israel only prevails when
Moses holds the staff of God aloft; Amalek prevails when the staff is lowered.
Of course, every army believes that its victories are due to divine favor. In the Old
Testament, however, one of the concrete signs of Gods favor is a lack of military
strength and preparation. Indeed, the emphasis is often on the military weakness
of Israel. In 1 Kings 20:27, the Israelites were encamped like two little flocks of
goats, while the Arameans filled the country. Nevertheless, the LORD assured
their victory. In 2 Kings 6 and 7, the huge army of Arameans that had surrounded
the Israelites is put to flight when the LORD makes the Arameans hear the sound
of a large army that did not in fact exist. Conversely, military misfortune is invari-
ably explained by Israelite reliance on weapons and preparation, and its refusal to
rely on the LORD. In 2 Chronicles, for example, Hanani denounces the alliance
of King Asa of Judah with King Ben-hadad of Aram against the Northern Kingdom
for the failure of Judah to depend on Gods providential care.
Because you relied on the king of Aram, and did not rely on the LORD
your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped you. Were not the
Ethiopians and the Libyans a huge army with exceedingly many chariots
and cavalry? Yet because you relied on the LORD, he gave them into
your hand. For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the entire earth,
to strengthen those whose heart is true to him. You have done foolishly
in this; for from now on you will have wars. (2 Chron. 16:7-9)
21
This conviction is found throughout the prophetic literature. Isaiah declares,
Alas for those who go down to Egypt for help and who rely on horses,
who trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because
they are very strong, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or con-
sult the LORD! (Isaiah 31:1)
Even where war is countenanced in the Old Testament, then, putting trust in
weapons and military preparation is condemned as idolatrous. Discerning the
providential movement of God in history is hindered by military preparedness.
Moreover, war is only fought in response to the direct will of Israels God, not to
defend the freedom of the human will.
EMPIRE OF THE EMPTY SHRINE
- Cavanaugh
21. More examples of this type are given in John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids:
Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1972), 78-89.
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In the New Testament, Christians believe, Gods design for history is brought to
fruition in Jesus Christ. Here the idea that humans can enforce the verdicts of his-
tory through force of arms dies on the cross. The Old Testament idea that Israel is
preserved not by military strength and preparedness, but through the miraculous
hand of God, served as a paradigm for the early church of how the Kingdom of
God would be inaugurated not by military means, but solely by the worthiness
of the slaughtered Lamb (Rev. 5:12). Martyrdom becomes the paradigmatic way
of discerning the will of God in history. Those who have eyes to see and ears to
hear discern Gods activity not in military might, but in persecution and weak-
ness. Jesus Christ has absorbed the violence of the world on the cross, and has
not given the violence back. The church imitates Christ by absorbing the violence
of the world, by taking up the cross and following Jesus. This is the message to
the readers of the Gospel of Mark, for example. To paraphrase the message of
the author of Mark to his readers under Neros heel: From the way the empire
persecutes you, it may not look like God has triumphed in Christ. From your point
of view, the Kingdom still looks as small as a mustard seed, but you must know that
you are on the right side of history, and the Kingdom of God will grow, not by taking
up arms, but by taking up the cross of Christ.
If God is in charge of history, then the rise of the United States to worldwide
dominance must have a part to play in Gods providential movement of history.
Determining which part, however, is the nub of the issue. Discerning the right
side of history is not a simple matter of seeing who is winning at any particular
moment in history. If, as Christians believe, Jesus Christ is the key to history,
then history must be read from the point of view of Jesus incarnation, cruci-
fixion, and resurrection. The God who is born in a barn interrupts history, and
inverts it. We read history from the underside. Gods kenosis or self-emptying in
Christ (Phil. 2:7) is the inversion of the Platonic aspiration to escape the par-
ticular. Our God is not a god of empire who ascends to Olympian heights, but
rather is a God who descends, who is incarnated in all the messy particularity
of a poor Jew in first-century Palestine. The Gospel invites us not to conquer
mortality through superior surveillance and force, but to find true life by refus-
ing to fear death, to fall into the ground like a grain of wheat and die, in order
to bear fruit (Jn. 12:24).
III. Conclusion
We are called, then, to reclaim our loyalty to Christ and to see the church as
our primary political community. To say this, however, is not to engage in pride-
ful triumphalism on behalf of the church. Indeed, it is a call for repentance for
the many failures of the church to be what it is in the eyes of God. The idea of
the United States as the new Israel, as the bringer of salvation to the world, is
so plausible to many because the American empire has taken over many of the
functions of the church catholic. In the early church, citizenship was available
through baptism to those excluded from such status in the polis, namely women,
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children, and slaves. Today, the church is racially segregated, while American
liberalism, in theory anyway, is colorblind. The church is divided into national
denominations, while the American empire aspires to worldwide catholicity.
The church has lost much of its missionary zeal, while America seeks to go and
make disciples of all nations (Mt. 28:19). American imperialism reads history as
an unfolding of salvific purpose and liberation, whereas the church has largely
confined salvation to a personal and individual matter. It is not an accident that
so many strategists and apologists of empire are Jews and Christians steeped in
the biblical tradition. They seek to fulfill the universal aspiration to salvation
through America, in part because the church has neglected that work and been
absorbed by the nation.
The church must recover its prophetic voice, but it cannot be merely negative. If
the church is going to call people away from idolatry and remind them of their
primary allegiance to Christ, then it will have to do more than to rail against the
illusions of freedom enforced by coercion. The church will have to tell a more
persuasive story of liberation than that told by the Empire. It will have to tell a
more difficult and complex story of liberation through obedience to Gods will, not
to the human will. It will have to tell a story of the conquest of violence not by
inflicting more violence, but by absorbing it. And it will have to tell this story of
liberation not just in words, but in witness. The boldness of the imperial project
must be met by the boldness of Pentecost. The only way to recover that boldness
is to worship in the Holy Spirit at the shrine that is not empty, but full of the pres-
ence of the one true God, the God of Moses and of Jesus.
22

22. The original form of this paper was the keynote address at the Ekklesia Project annual meeting at
DePaul University, Chicago, June 18, 2005. For more information on the Ekklesia Project, see www.
ekklesiaproject.org.
EMPIRE OF THE EMPTY SHRINE
- Cavanaugh
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RESPONSE TO WILLIAM T. CAVANAUGH
Stephen H. Webb*
I have tremendous respect for the work of Bill Cavanaugh, so it is with some
trepidation that I respond to his essay. He is one of the leading voices in contem-
porary political theology, and for good reason. He edited the important volume,
The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology (2004), and his books, Torture
and Eucharist (1998) and Theopolitical Imagination (2002) have received well-
deserved applause. The title of one of his essays indicates his distinctive approach
to the liturgy: The World in a Wafer: A Geography of the Eucharist as Resistance
to Globalization. For Cavanaugh, eating the bread commits Christians to speak-
ing out, and he has put his pen where his mouth is to great effect.
Cavanaugh is one of the best of the many theologians trained by Stanley Hauerwas
at Duke University. Hauerwas has been known to say that theologians should not
have a political theory, because that only encourages politicians. Theologians
should think about politics from a purely theological standpoint. Nevertheless,
much of what Hauerwas says implies and relies upon various kinds of political
theory. The motto of the evangelical tradition I grew up in was, Where the Bible
speaks, we speak, and where the Bible is silent, we are silent. Hauerwas is treated
like sacred script by some Duke theologians today, but Cavanaugh dares to speak
where Hauerwas remains silent. By theorizing about politics, Cavanaugh can be
thought of as developing Hauerwas work in a post-Hauerwasian manner.
With or without political theory, Hauerwas is a brilliant player of the political
game. His doggedness about the virtues appeals to conservatives, while his pacifism
pleases liberals. He tells people he does not vote, but if he were to run for political
office, his slogan would be, Its the church, stupid! The post-Hauerwasians are
more direct and definite about their politics. If they had a slogan, it would be, as
Cavanaughs essay demonstrates, the more familiar, Its the economy, stupid!
That is why I approach this essay with trepidation. My political and economic
beliefs differ significantly from Cavanaughs. Let me disclose that difference by
commenting on two quotations from Cavanaughs essay. The first: As the United
States became industrialized in the nineteenth century, the sheer volume of goods
produced far outstripped the capacity of the domestic market to absorb them.
Cavanaugh is suggesting that there were systemic imbalances in the supply and
demand of goods in the nineteenth century, a debatable point that would need
more empirical evidence than the existence of trade surpluses. But Cavanaugh
*Stephen H. Webb is Professor of Religion & Philosophy at Wabash College, P.O. Box 352,
Crawfordsville, Ind. 47933.
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is not arguing economics, and so neither should I. Instead, he is telling a moral
story. He is imagining that the poor of the nineteenth century did not have enough
money to buy overpriced consumer goods, and the rich could not buy everything,
as much as they wanted to. So, rather than raise wages at home, capitalists dumped
their surplus products (and invested their extra savings) overseas. What is worse,
the titans of industry used these governments to impose an artificial demand for
their products on unsuspecting consumers in other countries. The upshot is that
the market could not correct the excesses of rapid industrialization.
The problem with this series of claims is not just that they assume a conspiracy
theory of history or that they border on vulgar Marxism. The problem is that they
do not account for the success and strength of the market. Simply put, market
forces have proven to be better at raising wages over the long term than state
ownership. Moreover, would Cavanaugh argue that today we impose our will on
other countries in order to consume their products? A strange Empire that makes
us: we rule the world in order to protect our trade deficits.
The second quotation is: The United States has been on a clear expansionist
course at least since the nineteenth century. Cavanaugh attributes this expan-
sion to our economic greed. His theory of imperialism is drawn directly from J.
A. Hobson and Lenins book, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, with
a dose of Bacevich thrown in. (Bacevich argues that we are a pluralistic and open
society only because that best serves our economic ambition.) Would Cavanaugh
apply Lenins theory of economic imperialism to China, which is the best-known
example today of a country that runs substantial trade surpluses? And what
would he recommend American Christians do about Chinas economic growth?
Regardless of China, the history of the United States falsifies Leninism, because
our overseas imperialism has been motivated more by politics than economics.
England, Germany, and France have been much guiltier of economic imperialism
than we have. We did not regard Hawaii, Cuba, and the Philippines in the same
way that the European powers treated Africa, India, and East Asia.
Latin America is another story, though even there, obvious and shameful economic
exploitation must be put in the context of the United States commitment to anti-
communism. Bacevich argues, and Cavanaugh follows him, that the Cold War was
little more than a rationalization for our drive to expand our markets. Cynicism is
hard to argue against, but then again, cynicism always makes for a poor argument.
For the most powerful expression of the moral underpinnings of the Cold War,
I would recommend Cavanaugh read, instead of Bacevich, Whittaker Chambers
Witness. (I am assuming Cavanaugh has not read Chambers because academics
on the political left have so smeared his reputation that he has been erased from
political history. Chambers was a devout Christian, a courageous man, and one of
the most incisive political minds this country has ever witnessed.)
I could say more, of course, as could Cavanaugh in reply, but why should our
readers be interested in what two theologians have to say about politics anyway?
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Indeed, what is the status of the political and economic analysis that comprises
the first half of Cavanaughs essay? As a conservative Christian in a liberal arts col-
lege, I am used to having my colleagues promulgate the doctrines of the political
left as if they were the gospel, which gives me a lot of practice in distinguishing
the gospel of radical politics from the real thing. So it worries me that Cavanaugh
appears to treat his political views as foundational for his theology.
Cavanaugh will respond that the Gospel is his foundation, but his rhetorical tone,
as well as the structure of his argument, leaves little doubt about the status of his
political and economic claims. All Christians must unite in condemning capital-
ism because, at least in America, it is wed with perfect consistency to imperial-
ism, which is a form of idolatry. To be fair, Cavanaugh qualifies this sweeping
claim. He argues that liberal capitalism is inherently culturally empty, and yet that
very emptiness inevitably, but not necessarily, leads to idolatry. (I am reminded of
Reinhold Niebuhrs argument that sin is an inevitable but not necessary byprod-
uct of human freedom.) Capitalism (and America) is beyond redemption.
In effect, Cavanaugh has raised radical politics to the level of a status confessionis.
The origin of this term is pertinent to this discussion. In the worship wars of the
sixteenth century, some Lutherans were unwilling to compromise with Emperor
Charles V over liturgical practice and church authority. Issues that were ordinar-
ily matters of relative indifference (adiaphora) became, in a situation where some
thought the survival of the church was at stake, deal breakers between Christian
communities that the political powers wanted to reconcile. Lutheran theologians
argued that church ceremonies that might look innocent enough could become
so associated with idolatry that they scandalize the Christian conscience. At that
point, they cannot be tolerated. It seems to me that Cavanaugh has declared
American capitalism to be a status confessionis. Woe unto those, Cavanaugh is
saying, through whom the scandal of capitalism comes.
There is one thing Cavanaugh and I agree about. He is right that capitalism is
taking over the world. We disagree about why that is. Capitalism is the economic
destiny of all nations because it is the most efficient way to create wealth. It
displaces other systems of production due to its sheer dynamism. Combined with
democracy, it can empower people to be more engaged in the world around them.
In America, for example, capitalism and democracy provide the conditions for a
vibrant and flourishing church. Just compare the way Christianity has grown in
America to the way it is dying in Europe.
Cavanaugh does not spell out what the alternative to capitalism is, but the reader
is left to draw the conclusion that only some form of socialism can save America
from its evil ways. This is ironic, because socialism has a much stronger link to
idolatry than capitalism. Socialism is bad theology before it is bad politics and
even worse economics. The dream of a classless society is a secularized eschatol-
ogy that replaces the church with the state. Indeed, much of what Cavanaugh
says about politics would be true if only he were talking about socialism. There
RESPONSE TO WILLIAM T. CAVANAUGH
- Webb
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are socialistic governments in the world that are viciously persecuting innocent
people, including Christians. Those governments, not democracies, are the real
threat to peace, prosperity, freedomand the church. Cavanaugh is silent on
those governments, but that is where I would want to speak out most loudly.
Much of Cavanaughs essay sounds to my ears like a lot of questionable general-
izations bound together by planks pried loose from the platform of the left wing of
the Democratic Party. His opinion of the American people is even lower than his
attitude toward the American government. Cavanaugh suspects that patriotism is
a thin mask for virulent nationalism, while I think it is reasonable to believe that
America, on the whole, has been good for the world. There is a Gnostic vein in
Cavanaughs theology. He thinks Americans are cast under the hypnotic spell of
consumerism, and only the most drastic measures can break the trance. I think
that most Americans have a healthy suspicion of the cultural elite in our country,
and for good reason. In fact, the best evidence for the generosity and compas-
sion of the American people is their tolerance for the current climate of higher
education.
I have developed my own theological interpretation of the United States in
American Providence: A Nation with a Mission (Continuum, 2004), but let me
briefly outline some of our theological differences. We both agree that God does
not view the people of the world as generically equivalent, but chooses to save
the world through the particular history of one people, Israel. We disagree about
whether God is still working through particular people other than Israel today.
We also both agree that the Law given at Sinai is comprehensive and inclusive
(from governance to birds nests), but we disagree about whether the church
should also be construed in national and political terms. Cavanaugh thinks that
the ekklesia is an assembly with its own rules of citizenship, and that this makes
Christian involvement in any empire or nation-state questionable. I find no evi-
dence that the Apostle Paul treated the Roman Empire in this fashion. Indeed,
the Church Fathers tended to take a providential view of Rome, because its laws
and its roads enabled the spread of the faith. Democracy and open markets are,
to a great extent, the Roman roads of today.
Perhaps our theological differences come closest to the surface when Cavanaugh
writes that the interests of the ancient church were so comprehensive that there
was no secular sphere independent of the churchs concerns. He puts the term
secular in quotation marks to draw attention to the fact that he does not believe
in any such thing. I think the newness of the church makes the secular possible
for the first time, while Cavanaugh thinks the church abolishes the secular, and
that is a big difference. Religion before Christianity was not a sphere of cultural
activity set apart from the world. Christianity replaces the biological ties to tribe
and family with the church, and it demands faith in a transcendent God rather
than manipulation of the gods who are but projections of worldly processes.
The Romans hated the Christians not because they represented a rival state
but because they threatened to demystify Roman religious customs. Cavanaugh
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argues that Christians cannot be full citizens of any nation state. On the contrary,
because Christianity has secularized politics, Christians can be full citizens of
nearly any state (the exception being states that enshrine blasphemy or criminal-
ize Christianity).
I do not recognize the America that Cavanaugh describes. I also do not recognize
his picture of God. Killing belongs to God, not to us, he writes. I would think it
is the other way around. We sometimes have to kill to defend the innocent, but
God does not need to kill. Nevertheless, God does work through the clash of the
nations, as is made abundantly clear in the Old Testament. Cavanaugh points to
a number of scriptural texts that, he says, show that God wanted Israel to have a
weak and unprepared military. This strikes me as very questionable biblical exege-
sis. God wanted the Israelites to trust Him, and God sometimes criticized the
Israelites for entering into questionable alliances with neighboring kingdoms, but
God did not ask the Israelites to go into battle unarmed. Even at Jericho, standing
before Joshuas trumpet blowers were well armed men.
None of my remarks should be taken to mean that I think whatever the United
States does in the world is good. Nevertheless, I do think history has a direction
that can be seen in Jesus Christ, and that God uses nation states, not just individ-
uals, to achieve the divine plan. One can believe that the United States is playing
a significant role in that plan today without believing that the United States is the
bringer of salvation to the world. Cavanaugh caricatures the tradition of reading
history providentially that has been so much a part of the American identity.
Cavanaugh ends his essay by admonishing his readers to see the church as our
primary political community. To this I must say yes and no. The church trains
us in the virtues and shapes us in the faith. But the step from faith to politics is
long enough to afford different choices. Unlike Cavanaugh, I think the church
should pressure the political to conform to basic Christian truths, if and when
that is possible. The church should use the political to advance Christian virtues,
if the process of doing so does not damage those virtues. But the church is not a
polis, or a nation, or a state separate from the world. Sixties radicals used to say
that the personal is the political. Now, theological radicals say that the church is a
polis. The political is both too important and not important enough to be assigned
such honor.
RESPONSE TO WILLIAM T. CAVANAUGH
- Webb
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*William T. Cavanaugh is Associate Professor of Theology at University of St. Thomas, 2115 Summit
Avenue, Saint Paul, Minn. 55105.
REPLY TO STEPHEN H. WEBB
William T. Cavanaugh*
Why should our readers be interested in what two theologians have to say about
politics anyway? Good question. The same people who would be turned off by
celebrity politickingTed Nugent vs. Barbra Streisandmight be tempted to dis-
miss the exchange between Stephen Webb and me as two dilettantes overstepping
their competencies. Applying theology to concrete political judgments is a risky
business, but nevertheless urgently needs to be done, and done well. This, I take it,
is part of the mission of a theological journal called Cultural Encounters. Christians
cannot countenance the idea that Christs coming should have no impact on the
real world, the politics and economics of the mundane, as if God became incarnate
in human history only to say, Carry on as usual. Dont mind me.
But, for a Christian, political judgments must always be founded in theological
judgments. Webb accuses me of inverting this order; my theology is subservient
to the dogmatic leftism so fashionable in the academy today. I could just as eas-
ily accuse Webb of forming his theology of providence from the raw material of
Republican speechmaking. I do not think either accusation is helpful. Both Webb
and I believe that our general political judgments are shaped definitively by our
allegiance to Christ. Let us take these claims at face value, and try to provide each
other and our readers a persuasive account of how the Gospel forms our political
and economic judgments.
My overriding concern is to point to a particular danger of idolatry in the thrust
toward American empire. To do so, I must describe the history and nature of the
American empire, and to do this I rely on historical and social scientific analyses.
The reality of American military and economic expansion is a fairly uncontro-
versial fact. This idea is not drawn directly from Hobson and Lenins book,
which I have never read. The quote about American history being expansionist
in its entirety is from Teddy Roosevelt, not some raving Bolshevik. The idea that
American military expansion is inseparable from the extension of open markets is
also not the product of left-wing conspiracy theories. I rely on Andrew Bacevich
to make the case in part because Bacevich is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, a
retired U.S. Army colonel, professor at Boston University and former contribu-
tor to First Things. The moral story I want to tell about American expansion is
not that it is driven by greedy, cigar-chomping industrialists intent on pillage. In
the history of American empire, narrow self-interest has always been mixed with
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altruism, the promise of prosperity and benefit for all. I simply do not think that
that promise has been fulfilled, and I think we should be wary when our claims
of what is good for everyone just happen to coincide with our own self-interest.
Accompanying Americas attempts to shed our blessings on the world has been
violence and an aggrandizement of America that is fundamentally at odds with the
faithful worship of Jesus Christ. To use one of Webbs examples, I am not so will-
ing to dismiss the obvious and shameful economic exploitation of Latin America
as an unfortunate byproduct of a well-intentioned anti-communism. It does not
require cynicism but rather a proper Christian sense of humility to see the U.S.-
supported slaughter of Salvadoran peasants for what it is: the violent defense of
our economic self-interest. Bacevich makes a convincing case for laying to rest
the self-delusional idea that American empire is merely a response to communist
provocation. Our theological task should be to approach our history with humility
and a willingness to repent of our sin.
Trying to resist self-deceptive American narratives does not mean, as Webb says,
that I have a low opinion of Americans or have succumbed to Gnostic elitism. I
have a low opinion of the kind of narratives that are sold to the American people
by the state and its corporate sponsors. Indeed, I find right-wing accusations of
left-wing elitism to be profoundly misguided, if not disingenuous. The idea of Wall
Street, the White House, and the Pentagon as champions of the common folk
would be laughable if it were not so pernicious.
None of this means that I think capitalism (and America) is beyond redemption,
nor that Cavanaugh has declared American capitalism to be a status confessionis.
As I have argued at length elsewhere,
1
there is no point in either arguing for or
against the free market or capitalism as such. The real question is When is a
market free? The mere absence of state interference does not guarantee that an
economic transaction will be free in the full, positive sense of the word, that is,
that it will contribute to the well-being of all the relevant parties. My writings on
the state should make it abundantly clear that I do not think the presence of state
control is any such guarantee either. I do not think that paying Thai women thirty
cents an hour is a free transaction, nor do I not believeand Webb should know
that I dontthat only some form of socialism can save America from its evil
ways, if socialism implies the kind of state control that Webb rightly criticizes. I
think Christians are called to help create cooperative economic spaces in which
truly free exchanges can take place. I do not think that the only alternatives to
Milton Friedman are Joseph Stalin or the left-wing of the Democratic Party.
If the church is given its proper theological weight as the primary community of
Christians, then we are rescued from the illusory choice between the hegemony
1. The Unfreedom of the Free Market in Wealth, Poverty, and Human Destiny, ed. Doug Bandow
and David L. Schindler (Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2003), 103-28.
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of the state or the hegemony of the corporation. Webb and I clearly disagree on
the centrality of the church for the fulfillment of Gods purposes in history. Webbs
contention that God uses nation-states, not just individuals, to achieve the divine
plan passes right over the church. America becomes a kind of meta-church; the
church succumbs to denominationalism, and becomes a mere mediator between
the individual and America. For the New Testament, on the other hand, the
church is the Israel of God (Gal. 6:16), the twelve tribes in the Dispersion
(James 1:1), a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, Gods own people
(1 Pet. 2:9). The church is the fulfillment of Israel, the primary bearer of Gods
plan for history. The actual political and economic and cultural ordering of the
world are not adiaphora to the church.
I can hardly put it better than Pauline scholar N.T. Wright:
Pauls missionary work implies a high and strong ecclesiology in which
the scattered and often muddled cells of women, men, and children
loyal to Jesus as Lord form colonial outposts of the empire that is to
be: subversive little groups when seen from Caesars point of view, but
when seen Jewishly an advance foretaste of the time when the earth
shall be filled with the glory of the God of Abraham and the nations
will join Israel in singing Gods praises (cf. Rom. 15:7-13). From this
point of view, therefore, this counter-empire can never be merely
critical, never merely subversive. It claims to be the reality of which
Caesars empire is the parody; it claims to be modeling the genuine
humanness, not least the justice and peace, and the unity across tradi-
tional racial and cultural barriers, of which Caesars empire boasted.
2

Webb is right to say that God can use Rome or the United States for Gods own
providential purposes. But as the book of Revelation makes plain, Rome is some-
times allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them (Rev. 13:7). It is
the church of the saints and the martyrs that stands in judgment of Rome (Rev.
20:4). The church, in other words, cannot abdicate some fictional secular sphere
to the state, least of all when it comes to the use of violence. The secular is a mod-
ern invention. The medieval church never abandoned judging between just and
unjust wars to some secular sphere outside the church, and neither should we. As
long as our citizenship is in heaven (Phil. 3:20), we cannot be full citizens of any
earthly empire. The church must stand in judgment of any earthly empire, lest the
first commandment be emptied of its effect. I do not think it sufficient, as Webb
says, that the church should pressure the political to conform to basic Christian
truths, if and when that is possible. The church should always and everywhere
allow Christ, his cross and his resurrection, to define what is possible.
2. N.T. Wright, Pauls Gospel and Caesars Empire, in Richard A. Horsley, ed., Paul and Politics:
Ekklesia, Israel, Imperium, Interpretation (Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 2000), 182-3.
REPLY TO STEPHEN H. WEBB
- Cavanaugh
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SUMMER 06 A JOURNAL FOR THE THEOLOGY OF CULTURE
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