Several people have asked what I mean by ‘counterpolitical activism.’ ‘Activism’ is probably the easiest to grasp. By it I mean a compelling motivation to do whatever the Holy Spirit indicates Jesus would do to achieve a particular manifestation of the loving fulness of kenarchy in a specific political situation. Using the poor as an example, this means actions, strategies and projects to empower the multitude of the poor in body or spirit to discover, develop and release their gifts and abilities to each other and the rest of humankind in and through the whole of creation. By ‘counterpolitical’ I indicate those kinds of actions that run counter to the typical operation of the domination system of sovereignty whether in its past or present macro forms such as the totalitarian state or its transformations in current so-called democratic nation states and global institutions of power, or its micro expressions in church, education the health service, judiciary, family and so on.

So to continue with our example of what I have termed the third priority of kenarchy, namely the poor in body or spirit, this will particularly involve the ecclesia in counterpolitical activism for the redistribution of wealth. As I have articulated in previous posts, Luke’s narrative of John the Baptist’s introduction to the kenarchy of Jesus states this clearly, and Jesus’ life and teaching represents its fulness. As the gospel testimony puts it, “The man who has two tunics is to share with him who has none; and he who has food is to do likewise” (Luke 3:11). Jesus expands this to its fulness in relation to the hungry crowds when he says to his disciples “You give them something to eat” (Mtt 14:16). While it is common practice to qualify Jesus’ advice to the rich young ruler as only applicable to his specific situation, and I agree that Jesus does not advocate radical poverty for his disciples, I can’t hear the testimony of Jesus as anything less than a readiness for disciples of Jesus to release surplus resources to be sold and given to the poor (Mk 10:21). I simply cannot find a trace of private property in the scriptures in the absolute sense that is so basic to the empire system. Possessions of all kinds are an entrustment to be stewarded for the good of the creation and the community of humanity within it and not the right of the owners to maintain for the exclusive use of themselves, their family, tribe or people group.

Nowhere is this more pertinent than in relation to land. The return of the stewards to their original portion in terms of the Jubilee principle in ancient Israel as outlined in Leviticus 25 underlines this. The amassing of personal wealth in terms of land is prevented precisely because the equitable distribution of wealth is so fundamental to human life and well-being. It is extraordinary to me that it is not self-apparent from this that it can also be applied to the whole land of Canaan that Israel was given to steward. Seen in the light of Jesus’ teaching and applied today it should be obvious that it is to be shared with the stranger and fatherless and itself stewarded by its contemporary inhabitants, both Jew and Palestinian, for the benefit of the poor. This crucial matter of the redistribution of land is such an important part of the ecclesia’s function that I will continue to explore it in the next post.

Big thanks to those who have made such thought provoking comments on the last post on the ecclesia as counterpolitical activism on behalf of the creation. I have made some further important points there which I hope will carry the discussion forward into practical action, and that further discussion will continue there to that end. But I also want to press on with the ecclesia’s responsibility towards children and this post moves onto that.

All gospel activism is birthed in hope because everything about the ecclesia starts with resurrection. Transcendence has embraced the immanence of childhood, become that most vulnerable of life forms, a human embryo, then a helpless baby, and as if that wasn’t enough, a homeless infant in peril for his life, driven from his homeland by a merciless puppet ruler of a dominating empire. Divinity in all its fullness growing up through childhood and youth to reveal a character of unqualified love and freely donated forgiveness in the face of unrestrained hate, ignorance and rejection by the powers who ultimately pursued him to death. But a death that could not hold him. He rose from the dead an indestructible new creation, and gave the gift of his Holy Spirit to all humanity as the first fruits of this. As Paul so clearly saw, this is basic to being the people of God and the good news stands or falls on it. “If Christ is not raised … we are of all men most miserable” (1Co 15:17-19).

The ecclesia consists of those who believe this testimony to be true. So it follows, as I see it, that there is hope for every child on the planet, both the born and the embryonic. I take it to be the task of the renewed ecclesia to act out of this kind of love towards children at every level, from the micro to the macro. In other words, the following three corollaries apply:
i) On a personal level; to respond to every child we are connected with from this same transcendent resource by making the same kind of identification and commitment.
ii) Where we have responsibilities on the wider level to use our influence to place and keep practical love for children and young people at the heart of policy and strategy.
iii) To mobilise together with all those currently working to expose and overcome childhood injustice, abuse, and poverty of body or spirit, wherever it takes us and whatever opposition we face in so doing.

From the point of view of rhetoric, many Christians might well seem to assent to all this. But for the repositioned ecclesia this is not a matter of rhetoric or mere assent. Thank God there already are less, and will be even fewer, opportunities for empty well-meaning rhetoric in the increasing decomposition of the western world. So I am not producing on-line rhetoric here but underlining these priorities as the defining character of the ecclesia from now on. It is this agenda that is to shape our identity and qualify our reputation and character. As Malachi puts it, this is how people will know us. “So you will again distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him” (Mal 3:18).

In the last post I took note of six areas of engagement in relation to our understanding of the ecclesia as counterpolitical activism. The first of these relates to the creation. I suggested that there are two ways in which we need to get to grips with this, one practical and the other theological. The first is the responsibility of the ecclesia to initiate and support action to stop the exploitation of the earth’s resources, and the second is the question of how the kenotic love between God and humankind relates to the rest of creation. I think there is a significant nettle to grasp here, which I expect to result in a few stinging responses!

In his comment on the post before last, Chris Bourne makes an interesting link to Richard Bauckham, who develops a hermeneutic of the relation between humans and the creation from the creation story. While I like the way it earths the human race in the creation, I have problems with this kind of exegesis because of the way that it is arrived at via human rationality rather than coming first through the incarnation. I’m always uneasy about aspects of empire coming in through that door! From my perspective, as surfers of this blog are getting used to of course, we need to centre our hermeneutic on Jesus, which rather than make things monotheistic and theo-centric places the love relationship between God and the human race together at the heart of things.

Until we separate our understanding of the divine from domination, which arguing from Jesus to God enables us to do, even the gospel testimony of Jesus regarding the creation can seem very human centred and abusive of the creation. Something which leads John Caputo in his book “The Weakness of God” to refer to actions such as stilling storms, feeding crowds, healing the sick, and raising the dead as “rouged” spectacular presence and “profane magic.” But once we see God as fully kenotic we discover the fourfold relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and humanity at the heart of creation. Or to put it another way, the love relationship of God and the human race sits in the midst of the creation, which is forever its home. So the remedy for the perversion of God’s love for humankind into a domination system which has raped and abused the creation, is not to place humanity and creation on the same horizontal level but to recognise the creation as the priceless gift of home to be reclaimed and renewed. As I see it, the ecclesia is supposed to be serving at the forefront of this work of restoration that is the task of the human race in preparation for an ultimate transfiguration into a new heaven and a new earth.

While there is no doubt in my mind that we need to work urgently both to correct our abusive relationship with the creation and to seek its restoration, it is hard to believe on current evidence that this alone will be enough to save it, as Cheryl’s comments have often reminded us. But if I am right theologically that the creation exists as the context for the kenotic love of God and humankind, then we can also derive great hope from the expectation that actively pursuing kenarchy will bring a renewed grace into the creation as a true “benevolent hand.” This is in stark contrast to Adam Smith’s destructive so-called “benevolent hand of the market” or Darwin’s survival of the fittest. So from this standpoint when Jesus tells his disciples to seek first the kingdom of God and their essential needs will be met, it was this restored relationship with the creation as the home of the trinity and humanity that he was talking about. This makes sense of Paul’s statement “For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God” (Rom 8:19).

I think Chris Bourne is onto something in his comment on Bauckham when he senses that “the doxology of creation just feels like a key to understanding somehow.” If I’m getting this right, the inclusion of humankind in with God makes the love relationship of the trinity and humanity the centre of creational doxology. However there is a heartbreaking poignancy in this thought because instead of reciprocating and fulfilling the outpouring of praise we have rejected and violated it beyond description, and made it look as if God were the cause of all the exploitation and destruction. The great challenge is to return to the glorious calling to be the active stewards and protectors of the priceless living home that God has given us.

In the last post I asked “what kind of mutual fellowship between God and each other is necessary to our operation as counterpolitical ecclesia?” As I then put it, it’s going to be that which encourages us in mutual participation in the Spirit of God who’s incarnated in Jesus, and our collaboration with him in outworking his desire for the multitude and the creation. I promised that the purpose of the next few posts would be to reveal more of this co-operative behaviour which is the consummatory and inclusive genus of being that Paul calls new creation. I then suggested that with the collaboration and comments of you the readers, we would be able to explore the ecclesia’s proper function and contemplate those relational connections that will facilitate and enhance its kenarchic role as gift to the rest of humanity.

This is something I’ve been reaching for through this blog for the last two years. So you will realise how excited I’ve been to stand back and watch the interaction that followed. The fact that I have been busy with relating to what I see to be significant existing expressions of the body of Christ during the ensuing two weeks while the political system has continued to shake around us, has made the interactive conversation on the blog especially poignant yet hopeful for me, as I observe the shifts taking place at both the political and ecclesial level. As a result I am more excited than ever at the prospect of pressing forward in our understanding of the ecclesia as counterpolitical activism.

As I see it from the discussion over the past two weeks on the last two posts below, there are some half a dozen crucial areas of engagement that I will aim to dig into over Christmas and the new year:

1) Unpacking kenarchy as it relates to Creation: in practical terms the responsibility of the ecclesia to initiate and support action to stop commercial exploitation of the earth’s resources, and in theological terms how the kenotic love between God and humankind relates to the rest of creation.

2) Exploring the key issue of the ontology of both human and divine nature. Or to put it another way, what’s the difference between the two? The previous point on the relationship of God and humans to creation will already begin to open this up.

3) How inclusive is the ecclesia? Can we distinguish between consciously new creatures and those Jesus called children of peace or peacemakers? And how do we see those who consciously or unconsciously identify themselves with the radical Jesus such as Noam Chomsky, Achyut Sharma, Mehdi Hasan and Terry Eagleton to name just a few!

4) What is the purpose of eschatology and how does it inform what the future looks like, for example in such matters as rural versus urban, and in the biblical contrast of the two cities? And what is the connection between eschatology as counterpolitical vision and the ecclesia as counterpolitical activism?

5) What are the vital components of the shared life of kenarchic people? What in practical terms does it mean to be submergent rather than emergent and how does what Paul calls apostolic and prophetic foundations apply to the ecclesia as kenotic community for the world instead of an alternative construct?

6) How do we create new space for the real presence of Jesus to be substantiated among the daily lives of the contemporary multitude?

The plan is to put together posts on each of these in the coming weeks, allowing for diversions into subjects provoked by contemporary events of course! In the meantime, please continue the conversations sparked by the comments on the preceding posts and/or begin to provide your own perspectives on the six topics I’ve listed and we can begin the dialogue even before I get properly started! That will make the process even more collaborative.

Over the last two years since I began this blog, I have made it increasingly clear that I believe the church as we have known it, and much of the theology developed by it, has been invaded by the powers of empire, and the testimony of Jesus damaged and displaced as a result. It is this standpoint that my research has explored over these last six years, and which the book Church, Gospel, & Empire, advertised on the first page of this blog, is all about. A number of crucial issues related to the future of the church follow from all this, which are the subject of initial exploration in Part III of my book, and which a variety of books, pamphlets, presentations, and practical materials including podcasts and this blog will continue to explore. It is my hope that just as my own perspective has been the result of the impact of previous work of both friends and strangers, more research and practical application by many will follow on.

But to begin with, it seems to me, one of the most pressing needs is to reconfigure and experience the ecclesia as what I am calling counterpolitical activism along the following lines:

1) the very etymology of the word ‘church’ in depicting a building for the enactment of public worship, carries the baggage of the 4th century conjunction of church and empire, and although it will no doubt endure in general usage, as it does so it will need qualifying frequently if we are going to continue to use it to refer to the kenarchic people of God;

2) the incarnation, that is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, was about the katargēsis (ultimate completion by abolition, emptying-out) of Law, Monarchy and Temple, despite the way that the Christendom style church has reinvigorated them and built the West on them;

3) it follows that the contemporary ecclesia must again be about the katargēsis of Law, Monarchy (or Republic) and Temple and the political organisation and operations of war and money that undergird them;

4) it further follows therefore that the ecclesia cannot be at all about any legal, hierarchical, spiritual authority mediating between a sovereign God and a subservient people;

5) that the promulgation of liturgies, prayers, forms of worship and spiritual exercises in a way that frames such relationships constitutes abusive and ungodly spiritual activity.

So rather than all this essentially imperial expression of religion we need to recover the ecclesia as a radical, counterpolitical kenarchic people. This being the case, the big question is, what kind of mutual fellowship between God and each other is necessary to the ongoing operation of the ecclesia?

It’s surely going to be only that which encourages us in mutual participation in the Spirit of God who’s incarnated in Jesus and our collaboration with him in outworking his desire for the multitude and the creation. The purpose of the next few posts will be to reveal more of this co-operative behaviour which is the consummatory and inclusive genus of being that Paul calls new creation. Together with the collaboration and comments of you the readers, I am looking forward to exploring its proper function and contemplating those relational connections that will facilitate and enhance its kenarchic role as gift to the rest of humanity.

Last weekend I led a workshop at the Leeds Summat where I gave I brief overview of my thesis that the contemporary economic crisis is the culmination of the Western church’s partnership with empire. The purpose was to show why the church is both responsible for and marginalised by the contemporary situation, and then to explain why contemporary Marxists and Muslims have a better understanding of the testimony of Jesus than the church does. The Powerpoint presentation that I prepared for this workshop is entitled “in place of sovereignty” and you can view it by clicking on the title and then selecting ‘slideshow’ and ‘view show’ here:
In place of sovereignty

The presentation refers to an article by Mehdi Hasan, the senior political editor of the New Statesman, a Muslim, entitled “What Would Jesus Do?” from last December’s New Statesman, and an article by Terry Eagleton, a Marxist, from the Guardian of Thursday 3rd November 2011. For links to these see Mike Winter’s comment below.

Martin Scott helpfully suggests that the point I am making about Jesus drawing all things to himself on the cross would be strengthened if in my exegesis of John 12:32
I put less stress on the word all or ‘pas’, and more on the word draw or drag, ‘helko.’ Martin points out that the word is in the masculine accusative tense ‘pantas’ in the Greek and therefore does imply all men, although this would not exclude all the accompanying human things, but that the strength of the preceding word ‘draw,’ or ‘helkusso’ in the Greek, extends the sense of bringing everything with it.

In any case the understanding of the atonement that I am giving here is not of course only dependent on this verse. My reason for interpreting John in this way is even more strongly presented in the following chapter, John 13, where the kenotic interpretation of the cross is clearly prefigured when Jesus strips himself down to personally clean up the dirt of the human race. Within the context of the narrative this whole action is central to Jesus’ movement from God to God and expresses the downward action of reaching to the cosmic depths and encompassing Satanic and human dirt. The consequence is that the depths to which Jesus emptied himself become the measure of the glory of God. The depths become the heights.

As is clear from the previous few blogs on the abominable poppy, and from the central thesis of my new book, I regard the appeasement approach to the cross as secular, pagan, and part of the deep structure of empire that the salvation story is intent on undoing. From my reading of the Jesus story, the cross, and the incarnation that it consummates, is the opposite of the politics of empire and appeasement that lies behind Western history and the contemporary nation state. Rather, the cross is the embodiment of a divine transcendence that pours out in a fulness of power that is the reversion of hierarchical sovereignty and its destructive effects. It follows that the atonement it secures is a dynamic reconnection of God and humanity, transcendence and immanence, in an outpouring of love into the whole creation. Seen in this light it is the revelation of kenotic power that that some of us have developed the word ‘kenarchy’ to describe (from the Greek ‘keno’ ‘to empty’ from Paul’s famous hymn in Philippians 2:7).

I still remember the first time I heard Roger Forster preach on the cross and describe it as the location and point in time when God reached into the detritus of human history with a cosmic dishcloth and mopped all the mess into himself. It is not too difficult a move from that to the image of the lavatory or sewer where God flushes into himself all the injustice and sin of the human race with its toxic effects. This is informed by a particular reading of Jesus’ statement in John’s gospel “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all to Myself” (Jn 12:32 MKJV). Most translators include the word ‘people’ or ‘men’ to qualify ‘all’, but the word in the Greek is ‘pas’ which according to Strong includes “all the forms of declension; apparently a primary word; all, any, every, the whole” and that Abbot Smith defines as “all, every, of every kind.”

So the cross draws everything into a transhistorical moment in time where it is evaluated and aligned, both evil and good, in terms of kenarchic love. That which is unloving is sucked into the heart of God, like a cosmic virus vault or hell, (for where else can hell possibly be?) and that which is truly loving is raised into eternal life, a new creation, an “incorruptible seed,” with which it is possible for anyone who so desires to be inseminated. As Paul puts it “it is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body” (1 Cor 15:42), and as Peter has it “for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God” (1Pe 1:23).

I was baptised 49 years ago today. I was fourteen years old. I still remember it clearly, and right back then I was aware of the sense of confrontation, alternative and an opposite spirit to the jingoism of remembrance Sunday. Baptism as described in the gospel narratives embodied a radical break with the state powers of the day. Later developments which gave rise to what I call the fall of the church, transformed baptism, particularly of infants, into a ratification of the church-state partnership. The confessional ‘second’ or anabaptism of adults initially broke with this but soon became subsumed and institutionalised as the hierarchical ecclesiastical shape of reform movements identified with and legitimated the transformed political expressions of church and empire and the new nation states that ensued. Today baptism rarely carries more than the shadow and memory of this.

In my baptism within the Christian Brethren movement with its peculiar sense of alienation from the status quo, the radical sense remained, but only in a reduced sense of matters of personal morality, not in the consummate political fullness of the kingdom of God. We need to rediscover baptism as death to the imperial order in its contemporary Western form, with its subsequent repositioning of Jesus’ apprentices as gifts to the world not the raw material of its economic, military and legal biopolitics. As John the Baptist put it in answer to the crowds who questioned what this looked like in his day “The man who has two tunics is to share with him who has none; and he who has food is to do likewise.” Those responsible for handling the money necessary to the economy of the system he charged not to take excessive profits and the soldiers he charged to use no violence against anyone (Luke 3: 10-14).

Jesus of course took this behavioural advice to its fulness when he made the hungry crowds the responsibility of his disciples, told the rich young ruler to give his wealth to the poor and made the literal fulfilment of the law loving our enemies and turning the other cheek. This is the Way that baptised disciples of Jesus are resurrected into!

Among the most difficult of the Old Testament narratives from the perspective of mercy and justice, are the accounts of the destruction of the Canaanite peoples, that it is hard to describe as anything less than legitimated genocide. The accounts in Leviticus 18 and Deuteronomy 18 which seemingly justify this in terms of extremes of sexual immorality and occultism which would otherwise pollute the earth and its peoples, consist of lists of activities that culminate in a single common factor, the blood sacrifice of children, as in “You shall not give any of your offspring to offer them to Molech” (Lev 18:21) or “There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire” (Deut 18:10; see also 2 Kings 23:10, Jer 32:35).

My considered exegetical practice, which regular visitors to this blog will by now be familiar with, leads me to bring these narratives, like the rest of the Old Testament, to the testimony of Jesus, difficult as they are, and to look for their fulfilment in him. From this perspective, the mercy and justice of Jesus’ kenotic life is discovered to present the only antidote for an approach to governance that requires the sacrifice of ones children to placate the deity or deities whose benevolence is deemed necessary for the endurance and prosperity of a particular people group. The stories indicate that such practices and the nations who promulgate them are so destructive to themselves and the rest of humanity that they would need removing if there was not an alternative way to counter and overwhelm their disastrous lifestyle. The application of the Jesus hermeneutic suggests that the kenotic love exemplified in Jesus and his cross fully accomplishes this, and that the consumption of violence in himself is the eternal choice of the divine nature.

This makes, in my view, the genocide of people groups who depend on and promulgate the sacrifice of children, as depicted by the Old Testament narratives, clearly sub-Christian. This raises some very important issues for ongoing dialogue in future blog posts and comments. But whatever we may conclude from these, what is clear for the purposes of this post is that the current Western practice of passing our children through the fire of war to defend and uphold the West identifies ancient Canaanite society and contemporary Western nation states as of the same sociopolitical order. To summarise, the Western nation states, including the modern state of Israel, and the Canaanite nations apparently destroyed by Old Testament Israel, appear to be undergirded by the same sacrificial practice. It follows that apart from God’s merciful, kenarchic rule, manifest in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, they do not deserve to exist.

This gift of mercy clearly needs understanding and applying again to our contemporary Western nation states. But to suggest that the sacrifice of our sons and daughters to defend and replicate these societies is worthy of commemoration, or somehow intrinsically Christian, is morally repugnant. To go further and attempt to claim the moral high ground over other societies in the Middle east, Africa or elsewhere in the world is utterly hypocritical. It completely misrepresents God and the gospel.