Empire Baptized

 Book of the Year, Reform Magazine (UK)

"Wes Howard-Brook has performed a great service with Empire Baptized. He explains how the transition in Christianity from Jesus's way of peace to the coercive ways of Christendom happened. An enormously enlightening account that helps us better understand our present dilemmas".- Ted Grimsrud, author of The Good War That Wasn't--And Why It Matters: The Moral Legacy of World War II; Senior Professor of Peace Theology, Eastern Mennonite University

In “Come Out, My People,” Wes Howard-Brook outlined an ambitious interpretation of the Bible as a struggle between two competing religious visions: a “religion of empire” and a “religion of creation” embraced by the prophets and Jesus. Here, through a study of the early “church fathers,” he shows how Christianity in effect opted for the religion of empire. This was reflected not just in accommodation to the Roman Empire after Constantine, but through the spiritualization of Jesus’ prophetic message. The combined influence of Greek philosophy and Roman imperial social structures shifted the emphasis from fostering egalitarian relationships and transforming the world to the goal of saving one’s “soul.”

Howard-Brook concludes with a reflection on what it might mean to reject imperial Christianity and to rediscover the transformative power of the Good News of Jesus for followers living amidst empire today.

A Q/A with Wes Howard-Brook: https://radicaldiscipleship.net/2016/09/12/empire-baptized/

Wes Howard-Brook, a former attorney for the US and Washington State, has been teaching the Bible at the intersection of church, academy and the street since 1988. He is recently retired from Seattle University and continues to collaborate in the ministry, Abide in Me with his wife, Sue Ferguson Johnson. He is author most recently of Creation and Empire as well as "Come Out, My People": God's Call Out of Empire in the Bible and Beyond, Empire Baptized: How the Church Embraced What Jesus Rejected, 2nd-5th Centuries) and (with Anthony Gwyther) of Unveiling Empire: Reading Revelation Then and Now.