[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: Empires Prefer a Baby & the Cross to Adult Jesus

Sat Dec 25 23:54:15 PST 2004

Some of you complain that I post too many 
messages. You are not obligated to read them;
the first paragraph gives most of the story and 
whether you read on or delete it is up to you.

That said, IMHO this message is better than most 
and I hope you read all of it.  Pax, Paul Etx

>
>The Guardian
>December 24, 2004
>
>Comment
>
>Empires prefer a baby and the cross to the adult Jesus
>
>>From Constantine to Bush, power has needed to stifle a
>revolutionary message
>
>By Giles Fraser
>
>Guardian Every Sunday in church, Christians recite the
>Nicene Creed. "Who for us and for our salvation came
>down from heaven. And was incarnate of the Holy Ghost
>and of the Virgin Mary and was made man; was crucified
>also for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered and was
>buried; and the third day rose again according to the
>Scriptures." It's the official summary of the Christian
>faith but, astonishingly, it jumps straight from birth
>to death, apparently indifferent to what happened in
>between.
>
>Nicene Christianity is the religion of Christmas and
>Easter, the celebration of a Jesus who is either too
>young or too much in agony to shock us with his
>revolutionary rhetoric. The adult Christ who calls his
>followers to renounce wealth, power and violence is
>passed over in favour of the gurgling baby and the
>screaming victim. As such, Nicene Christianity is
>easily conscripted into a religion of convenience, with
>believers worshipping a gagged and glorified saviour
>who has nothing to say about how we use our money or
>whether or not we go to war.
>
>Christianity became the official religion of the Roman
>empire with the conversion of the emperor Constantine
>in 312, after which the church began to backpedal on
>the more radical demands of the adult Christ. The
>Nicene Creed was composed in 325 under the sponsorship
>of Constantine. It was Constantine who decided that
>December 25 was to be the date on which Christians were
>to celebrate the birth of Christ and it was Constantine
>who ordered the building of the Church of the Nativity
>at Bethlehem. Christmas - a festival completely unknown
>to the early church - was invented by the Roman
>emperor. And from Constantine onwards, the radical
>Christ worshipped by the early church would be pushed
>to the margins of Christian history to be replaced with
>the infinitely more accommodating religion of the baby
>and the cross.
>
>The adult Jesus described his mission as being to
>"preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to
>the captives and to set at liberty those who are
>oppressed". He insisted that the social outcast be
>loved and cared for, and that the rich have less chance
>of getting into heaven than a camel has of getting
>through the eye of a needle. Jesus set out to destroy
>the imprisoning obligations of debt, speaking instead
>of forgiveness and the redistribution of wealth. He was
>accused of blasphemy for attacking the religious
>authorities as self-serving and hypocritical.
>
>In contrast, the Nicene religion of the baby and the
>cross gives us Christianity without the politics. The
>Posh and Becks nativity scene is the perfect tableau
>into which to place this Nicene baby, for like the
>much-lauded celebrity, this Christ is there to be gazed
>upon and adored - but not to be heard or heeded. In a
>similar vein, modern evangelical choruses offer wave
>upon wave of praise to the name of Jesus, but offer
>little political or economic content to trouble his
>adoring fans.
>
>Yet despite the silence of the baby, it should be
>perfectly obvious to anyone who has actually read the
>Christmas stories that the gospel regards the
>incarnation as challenging the existing order. The
>pregnant Mary anticipates Christ's birth with some
>fiery political theology: God "has brought down the
>powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly, he
>has filled the hungry with good things and sent the
>rich away empty", she blazes. Born among farm
>labourers, yet worshipped by kings, Christ announces an
>astonishing reversal of political authority. The local
>imperial stooge, King Herod, is so threatened by
>rumours of his birth that he sends troops to Bethlehem
>to find the child and kill him. Herod recognised that
>to claim Jesus is lord and king is to say that Caesar
>isn't. Christ's birth is not a silent night - it's the
>beginning of a revolution that threatened to undermine
>the whole basis of Roman power.
>
>Little wonder, then, that influential US Christian
>commentator Jim Wallis created a storm earlier in the
>year when he penned an attack upon "Bush's theology of
>empire", helpfully illustrated with a picture of Bush
>made up to look like the emperor Constantine. "Once
>there was Rome, now there is a new Rome," argued
>Wallis.
>
>Constantine was converted to Christianity by a vision
>that came to him on the eve of the battle of Milvian
>Bridge: "He saw with his own eyes, up in the sky and
>resting over the sun, a cross-shaped trophy formed from
>light, and a text attached to it which said, 'By this
>sign, conquer' ". Soon the cross would morph from being
>a hated symbol of Roman brutality into the universally
>recognisable logo of the Holy Roman Empire. Within a
>century, St Augustine would develop the novel idea of
>just war, trimming the church's originally pacifist
>message to the needs of the imperial war machine.
>
>Like Constantine, George Bush has borrowed the language
>of Christianity to sup port and justify his military
>ambition. And just like that of Constantine, the
>Christianity of this new Rome offers another carefully
>edited version of the Bible. Once again, the religion
>that speaks of forgiving enemies and turning the other
>cheek is pressed into military service.
>
>The story of Christmas, properly understood, asserts
>that God is not best imagined as an all-powerful despot
>but as a vulnerable and pathetic child. It's a
>statement about the nature of divine power. But in the
>hands of conservative theologians, the Nicene religion
>of the baby and the cross is a way of distracting
>attention away from the teachings of Christ. It's a
>form of religion that concentrates on things like
>belief in the virgin birth while ignoring the fact that
>the gospels are much more concerned about the treatment
>of the poor and the forgiveness of enemies.
>
>Bush may have claimed that "Jesus Christ changed my
>life", but Jesus doesn't seem to have changed his
>politics. As the carol reminds us: "And man at war with
>man hears not the love song that they bring, O hush the
>noise ye men of strife and hear the angels sing."
>
>
 The Rev Dr Giles Fraser is vicar of Putney and
>lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford
>
>giles.fraser at btinternet.com Guardian Unlimited (c)
>Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
>
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1379412,00.html
>
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand