Some Trust in Chariots

“Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.”

Psalm 20:7

“Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”

Matthew 22:21

“For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God

to the pulling down of strongholds.”

2 Corinthians 10:4

I offer these three lectionary-style readings from the Psalter, the Gospel, and the Epistles to ground a particular genre of theological claim: if we consider the primary task of theology to be saving or redeeming the empire, I am concerned that we have adopted a different form of Christian nationalism. As the United States approaches its 250th year, I think it is an ideal time for religious and theological scholars to reorient ourselves away from preserving the empire for its own sake and toward cultivating a renewed theological imagination. 

As this project and its other authors attest, there is a collective concern about the intertwined democratic crises in the United States and the lack of substantive reflection from theology and religion. One claim that I, as a theologian, think is important to remember is that God is not American. God’s language is not reducible to English, and theologies about God are not limited to the Western hemisphere. As a guild, when we consider the historical and global realities of the American empire, is this where we want to place our trust? It does not matter that we think using certain weapons for a more “progressive” goal justifies their use; they are still the same weapons. If we justify giving more to Caesar than what Caesar deserves, we are still robbing God and God’s kin(g)dom. Trusting in (“progressive”) horses and chariots rather than cultivating a distanced, if not antagonistic, relationship to the Political begins to substantiate a certain collusion with the State and its aims. 

I do not read these scriptural texts together as an unmitigated theological imperative to abdicate all responsibility for navigating political structures, even if only for harm reduction. But I am curious about how we, theologically and perceptively, discern what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God. How do we discern the ways in which we measure the energy, time, and resources we devote to shoring up power for the empire instead of actively contesting its fundamental logics? By fundamental logics, I mean the ways in which even our “liberal” or “progressive” idolizing of the empire further produces it as sacrosanct, fashions it as an idol image, and functions to form a leftist version of Christian Nationalism—distinct from the brand many love to critique, but still a Christian Nationalism, no less. And the concomitant tools of religion and nationalism often lead to connected ends. 

The fields of religion and theology—particularly when engaged in reflecting on and writing about the political—tend to traffic primarily in the discourse of “hope.” But in what, exactly, is our hope? As Joy James argues, absent concrete material change, religious and community leaders cannot “discipline communities into hope when there are no material conditions to sustain it.” What are the material and social conditions that our more imaginative theologies can envision and construct beyond the spoils of American citizenship? How might we be invited to live into greater solidarity with the Global South and with those across the world who are generational targets of the “land of the free”?

As Calvin Warren reminds us, there seems to be a fundamental rupture between the spiritual and the political. Whereas Warren rejects the political itself as a spiritual practice, he also challenges us to reconsider how “the Political itself is the ‘temple’ of the idolatrous god—the sphere within which it is worshipped and pre-served.” And he argues that if this is so, then how can we translate the “spiritual principle of hope into a political program”? It is our task as religionists and theologians to respond, in thought and deed, to these queries.

If we cling to “hope,” then what is our hope in? A reified version of the empire? A redeemed vision of American exceptionalism in which we are all included in the rotten spoils of conquest? A series of religio-political actions that further prolong the suffering of marginalized peoples? The horses and chariots and other weapons of carnal warfare? 

Or must religion and theology in this era call us toward something else? Where are the new prophets? Where are the prophets who help us remember that the task is not to reform the empire, since a “reformed” empire is still an empire? Where are the prophets who will push us to abandon blind fidelity to a nation-state that has repeatedly proven it has no fidelity to us? Where are the prophets who will speak the unpopular word of condemnation against the nation, in the style of Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., that God actually opposes what we try to theologically sanitize?

And how are we, as religious and theological educators, facilitating the conditions, conversations, and readings in our classrooms in such a way that these prophets might have more space to emerge among us?

Let God arise, and all of God’s enemies be scattered.