Leave Babylon and Come...

WARNING: If you are a blind “patriot,” who believes that America can do no wrong and cannot tolerate an honest critique…if you believe this Country to be the New Jerusalem and City on a Hill…if you are beholden to the idea of American Exceptionalism, this article will offend you. What you are about to read is written for those who want to come out from Babylon and realize that the Christianity which dominates America could never liberate us and show us the way to Beloved Community.

We have long been sold on the myth of America as a Christian Nation…
 
As the acceptable nation…the New Jerusalem…
 
From the beginning of our mythology, the Bible has been interpreted for the convenience of America…misappropriating “political images from the Bible” and applying them to America, “so that America is conceived of as Zion: as the righteous nation, as a people of superior political morality, as a country and society chosen and especially esteemed by God.“
 
But what if William Stringfellow is right…
 
What if Babylon is a more appropriate parable for America?
 
Babylon…??
 
And he cried mightily with a loud voice, saying, “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird!
We don’t speak much of Babylon in our culture…
 
In Rastafari, we are very familiar with Babylon…with the identity of Babylon.
 
It’s a term for aspects of a society seen as degenerate or oppressive, especially the police. Babylon is the historically white-European colonial and imperialist power structure which has oppressed Blacks and other peoples of color.

We should be able to identify Babylon...

It’s the source of our frustration…

It’s the cause of our anger and resentment…

The children being separated from their families at the border…

The children being separated from their families, killed by police…

“The failure of conscience in American society among its reputed leaders, the deep-seated contempt for human life among the managers of society, the moral deprivation of so-called middle Americans resembles…the estate described biblically as ‘hardness of heart.'”

The hardness of heart…the inability for love to reign supreme in America, bears witness to the Babylonian mindset.

And where Babylon is the reality, our only hope is Jerusalem…the City of God.

But where is Jerusalem?

It should be the Church…actually existing as Beloved Community. But, where – in America – do we see the Church existing as Beloved Community and acting as Jerusalem? 

Standing in direct contradiction to Babylon…?

Again, as Stringfellow suggests, the American churches “have been from their origins American cultural productions or Babylonian shrines.”

But it goes back even further than that...

What do I mean?
 
Well, in the mid 1400s a series of documents were written that literally changed the world…
 
Understand, these documents were written before Luther posted his “95 Theses” in 1517 & before King Henry VIII split from the Church of Rome in 1530…
 
These documents were written when the Pope of Western Christianity was still head of all of Western Christendom and served as the foundation for Western Christian theology. His words shaped all of theology, and these documents are responsible for tying Western Christianity to White supremacy, colonialism and imperialism…
 
Pope Nicholas V wrote both Dum Diversas & Romanus Pontifex in 1452 & 1455 respectively…
 
The first authorized Western European kingdoms “to reduce any ‘Saracens (Muslims) and pagans and any other unbelievers’ to perpetual slavery.” The second “extended to the Catholic nations of Europe dominion over discovered lands during the Age of Discovery. Along with sanctifying the seizure of non-Christian lands, it encouraged the enslavement of native, non-Christian peoples in Africa and the New World.”
 
Pope Alexander VI wrote Inter Caetera in 1493 “stating one Christian nation did not have the right to establish dominion over lands previously dominated by another Christian nation, thus establishing the Law of Nations,” which encouraged European nations to be civil toward each other in the subjugation of non-European people and lands.
 
Together, the Dum Diversas, the Romanus Pontifex and the Inter Caetera came to serve as the basis and justification for the Doctrine of Discovery, the global slave-trade of the 15th and 16th centuries, and the Age of Imperialism.

Those Church Doctrines helped shape and establish White Supremacy...

And, the Western Church has never repented of it’s allegiance to the White supremacist doctrines which gave rise to Western Civilization.
 
Western Christianity and Western Society are married to one another and rose together as any “power couple”…
 
It’s why the Catholic Church has so much sway over the lands & people conquered by Spain…
 
It’s why the Anglican Church has so much sway over the lands & people conquered by Britain…
 
 
And it’s why the Church is “ineffective” at speaking truth to power…
It’s why Dr. King said in his “I Have a Dream Speech”:
 
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.
 
I would say “now is the time to make Becoming Beloved Community real,” for building Beloved Community is a higher calling than the promises of democracy…
 
How can the Church become Beloved Community if it still fears upsetting the status quo and continues to urge the “moderation” that Dr. King railed against in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail?”
 
How can the Church be what Christ calls us to be if it’s still married to Western Civilization and subject to White supremacy?
 
 
 
The Church is beholden to gradualism.
 
Where Jesus went and overturned the tables of the moneychangers, the Church is content to simply rearrange furniture. Like the scribes and Pharisees, the Church wants to hold on to its power and relationship to power.
 
 
And the Church has become the drug dealer, pushing a faith that distracts people from the Gospel…
 
Reinforcing personal relationship to the detriment of communion…
 
…prosperity and exceptionalism to the detriment of humility…
 
…xenophobia, racism and bigotry to the detriment of love…
 
…gradual and cautious welcome to the detriment of “radical hospitality”…
 
None of this sounds Christian…right?
 
 
But America is a “Christian nation”…and the majority of our leaders swear their allegiance to Christ. 
 
So, what’s the problem?