‘Palestinian Christians live on the front line of a clash of empires. Portrayed in the West variously as a clash of civilization, or culture, or religion, the ‘Christian’ west is the ‘good guy’ holding the fort against the ‘baddies’, the Islamic Fundamentalist East. It makes a good movie but it’s poor history and even worse Theology.
In reality these empires; there may be more than two; share at least one feature: they are all, to a greater or lesser extent, evil. During much of the latter half of the last century the great fear was of communism and the possibility of nuclear annihilation, with Soviet Russia as the ‘anti-Christ’. Their fear, now largely realised, was of capitalist domination. Today the global fear from the western perspective is of militant Islam, yet the greatest worldwide impact has been from the financial melt-down.
An objective observer, (from Mars?) could conclude that neither system, communism nor capitalism, is fit for purpose. Which begs the question, ‘what purpose?’ This is the point where Christians must part company with advocates of either system. It is not that they have nothing to contribute, there are good and bad aspects of each. But both require a broad (world-wide?) system controlled by an elite on behalf of the subjects – empire.
Christians, however, are not empire people. It is a Kingdom to which we belong, for which we pray, and into which we invite people. It is unique; there are no subjects, only family – and not even cousins or uncles or grandparents. We enter and remain on an equal base, we are all children of the King, and sisters and brothers of Jesus. What can empire offer compared with that?
The children of the King should live in the Kingdom now, here: that is good news. For Palestinians in general and Christians in particular, the bad news is that many Christians in the West find the power and glory of empire so attractive that they have deserted the gospel of love, joy and peace; of self-sacrifice and forgiveness and embraced the language of hate, of fear, and of nationalism. Worse, they are encouraging Christians in the developing world to join them in this idolatry
clash of empire
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