The Empire’s Power
Brian McLaren reflects on the different understandings of power held by the early Jesus movement and the Roman Empire:
The historical reality of Christian empire, like Christian anti-Semitism, is bathed in irony. Jesus was an oppressed brown Palestinian Jew, living in a Middle Eastern nation that was occupied by a European empire centered in Rome. Jesus challenged the empire of Rome by proclaiming an alternative empire, the empire of God. The similarity of the terms highlighted the radical contrasts between the two empires:
Rome’s empire was violent. God’s empire was nonviolent.
Rome’s empire was characterized by domination. God’s empire was characterized by service and liberation.
Rome’s empire was preoccupied with money. God’s empire was preoccupied with generosity and was deeply suspicious of money.
Rome’s empire was fueled by the love of power. God’s empire was fueled by the power of love.
Rome’s empire created a domination pyramid that put a powerful and violent man on the top, with chains of command and submission that put everyone else in their place beneath the supreme leader. God’s empire created a network of solidarity and mutuality that turned conventional pyramids upside down and gave “the last, the least, and the lost” the honored place at the table.
Not surprisingly, the Roman Empire saw Jesus and his nonviolent movement as a threat to their violent regime, so they had him tortured and publicly executed as a matter of standard procedure. By pinning a naked human being to wood … the empire showed its own absolute dominance and its victim’s absolute defeat. The message was clear: Jesus’ message of truth and love meant nothing in the face of the empire’s crushing power and domination….
Echoing its founder’s nonviolence, the Christian faith initially grew as a nonviolent spiritual movement of counter-imperial values. It promoted love, not war. Its primal creed elevated solidarity, not oppression and exclusion: “For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26–28). The early Christians elevated the equality of friendship rather than the supremacy of hierarchy (John 15:15; 3 John 14, 15). Because of their counter-imperial posture, including their refusal to be soldiers in the Roman army or to participate in the imperial cult that proclaimed the divinity of the emperor, they were often mocked, distrusted as unpatriotic, and persecuted.
McLaren confronts what Christianity has lost in its embrace of the power of empire:
Since Constantine, Christianity has repeatedly claimed a legitimate right to do violence to its members [and others] to protect its interests and conserve its supremacy. It has sought far-reaching and sometimes almost limitless control over the behavior and minds of its subjects. At times, it has behaved like a totalitarian power, suppressing dissent and claiming divine and absolute authority, capable of absolute corruption.
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When Rome Wears the Skin of Christianity
| Jesus didn’t come to make Rome nicer. It came to make Rome obsolete. The fact that Rome is back, wearing Jesus’ name tag, should enrage every single one of us. By Anthony Parrott • 10 Sept 2025 |
| See if you recognize this political movement I’ve been reading about. Their core beliefs are pretty straightforward: The poor deserve what they get. If people are struggling financially, it’s because of their own bad decisions, laziness, or moral failures. Helping them just enables their weakness. Immigrants and foreigners are inherently dangerous to our way of life. They bring crime, disease, and foreign ideas that corrupt our pure culture. The wise response is to keep them out or, at minimum, keep them in their proper place. Empathy is actually weakness. Feeling sorry for people’s suffering makes you soft and clouds your judgment. A strong leader doesn’t get distracted by bleeding hearts—they make the hard decisions that weak people can’t stomach. The sick and disabled are burdens on society. Resources spent caring for them could be better used on productive citizens. While we shouldn’t be cruel, we also shouldn’t pretend they contribute much value. Social programs create dependency and undermine personal responsibility. True charity comes from individuals, not governments. Public welfare corrupts both the giver and receiver.The lower classes need to know their place. Society works best when everyone accepts their natural station. Equality is a dangerous fiction that leads to chaos. Traditional values and cultural purity must be protected at all costs. Mixing with outsiders or accepting foreign ways weakens the community and threatens everything our ancestors built. Oh and I should mention this political movement existed two thousand years ago. I’m talking about Rome.The empire that crucified Jesus for being a threat to exactly these values. What’s awful is I very well could have been describing large swaths of American Christianity in 2025, and you wouldn’t have blinked. The fact that you probably nodded along, thinking “Yeah, sounds about right for the MAGA, Christian Nationalist crowd,” tells us everything we need to know about how far we’ve fallen. Because Christianity was supposed to be the radical opposite of all this. When Jesus showed up, he wasn’t trying to tweak Roman values—he was (non-violently) obliterating them. The idea that you should help the poor, care for the sick, welcome the stranger, treat slaves as equals, show empathy to the suffering? This was revolutionary. This was new. This was dangerous enough to get you killed. Roman philosophy said the poor deserved their poverty.Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor.”Rome said foreigners were threats.Jesus said, “Welcome the stranger.”Rome said empathy was weakness.Jesus wept. And now we have a form of Christianity that has hollowed out the gospel, scooped out its heart and soul and blood, and put on its husk like some demonic skinwalker. It calls empathy sin. It blames the poor for poverty. It treats immigrants like invaders. It abandons the sick and disabled as burdens. It opposes the very social programs that early Christians pioneered. The early Christians didn’t merely practice individual charity—they revolutionized civic life. Basil of Caesarea built the first hospital. Fourth-century Christians created systematic welfare programs within each polis. They understood that following Jesus meant transforming not just hearts, but systems. For modern Christians to oppose welfare, public healthcare, education, immigration, international aid, and care for refugees is to abandon the faith our ancestors died for. This betrays our tradition. It’s choosing Caesar over Christ, Rome over the kingdom of God. When Rome looked at a suffering person, they saw someone getting what they deserved. When Jesus looked at suffering people, he saw the image of God being crushed by systems that needed to be transformed.We know which side built hospitals. We know which side fed the hungry. We know which side welcomed the stranger. And we know which side is currently wearing Christianity’s skin while serving Rome’s spirit. Are we awake enough to tell the difference? Because if we can’t distinguish between the empire that killed Jesus and the movement that follows him, we’re well and truly lost. Jesus didn’t come to make Rome nicer. It came to make Rome obsolete. The fact that Rome is back, wearing Jesus’ name tag, should enrage every single one of us. |
